Tornado Season

Joined : 22 Dec 2007 Posts : 192 Location : Missouri

Here in southwest Missouri, tornado season is in full swing. Here is a photo of some hail we just got pelted with...and another one is on the way.

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/7412/iceor4.jpg

Subject: Re: Tornado Season Mon Jan 07, 2008 8:41 pm

Get hunkered down, Bill. Move your pipes to shelter now so you are not scrambling when the winds pick up.

Keep your head down,
showme

Subject: Re: Tornado Season Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:00 pm

Holy Moly! I was wondering how you folks in Mizzou were doing these days. Stay safe!

Jay

Joined : 22 Dec 2007 Posts : 192 Location : Missouri

Subject: Re: Tornado Season Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:06 pm

We call them snowflakes up here, Ken. tongue

Pacem en Puffing! tongue

Subject: Re: Tornado Season Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:22 pm

We get nailed pretty bad over here. Thankfully most of them track up the river. In 73 or 74 (can't remember at the moment) one came up out of the river and totally destroyed Brandenburg. A few years back the same thing happened to Borden Indiana. Not a single structure in the town was inhabitable, most were totaly destroyed.

We seem to get the worse of em in the summer time. 2 yrs ago when I vacationed at home we had a tornado within a mile of the house everyday for a week. Call me crazy but I like to sit on the hill and watchem run the river. Its actually relaxing watching Mother Nature show off. Never thought to carry a camera with me. Maybe I will this year.

Subject: Re: Tornado Season Fri Jan 11, 2008 9:27 pm

Wow, Bill. Take care of yourself, man, and be safe.

TC

Subject: Re: Tornado Season Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:41 am

One dead and a few dozen houses and Arkansas Linears (trailers, or double-wides if you're really rich!) destroyed from our twisters last week. Odd to get them in mid-winter, but then when you get several days in the 70s in January, well, with that much energy in the atmosphere at that time of year, somethings got to blow up.

A colleague of mine has as her research specialty mapping and trying to predict tornado paths in Arkansas. Some interesting data so far, she's trying to get every path onto a GIS file and time-link it to about 30 different physical factors for a prediction set. With all the dopler and viper and various sensors and radars we have these days, if the dozen or so critical ones and how they interact could be understood, predictability could be greatly increased.

She was able to answer (for the most part) an interesting question that our regional meteorologists have wondered about for years; Arkansas is estimated to be 4th in tornado frequency, comparing population densities and length of tracks on ground, we probably fall to 5th or 6th, yet we're #1 per capita in tornado related deaths. And no, it's not the old myth that southerners sit at the kitchen table and read the bible while northerners go to their basements (which was published in a questionable meteorological text a generation ago and is a good example of how once bad or bogus information makes it into our "knowledge" stream, it's hard to remove it.) Even correcting for income (primarily frame house vs. trailers) it's primarily forest cover. In Oklahoma and Texas, you can watch those puppies miles away coming towards you, in Arkansas (and Missouri is similar) by the time you hear or see it coming over the ridge or tree tops, it's probably already in your lap. While many factors impact these trends, this seems to be the most influential factor in predicting deaths and injuries.

Natch

Guest

I remember two tornadoes in my county in northern Ohio when I was a child and teenager. Indiana and Illinois gets some bad ones too. This past week it seems that Mississippi got hit bad. Wisconsin got their first in 50 years. Makes me wonder if a tornado took old Ezekiel; some say it was an alien space ship.

Subject: Re: Tornado Season Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:56 am

Man, you guys have had it rough out there over the last few weeks!
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Subject: Re: Tornado Season Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:58 am

Last year wasn't so bad (2007) here in my little neck of the woods. November of 2006 the strongest recorded tornado in the US for the year passed within 2 miles of the house. It picked a guys truck up off of the road and tossed it into the woods. They found his wallet 15 miles away in someones front yard. He was in the truck when it happened affraid

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Subject: Re: Tornado Season Sat Feb 02, 2008 1:09 pm

I lived just outside Tusla for almost 3 yrs. Miss the voilent weather, but not the destruction it created.

I'll never hears any kind of siren the same way since those yrs spent out west.

be safe...please.
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Subject: Re: Tornado Season Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:42 pm

In the 70s, we lived in western AR. When I hear the word "tornado" an old echo rings in my ear..."This is the National Weather Service...tornado warning for Sequoyah and Leflore Counties in OK" I can't remember the number of times I heard that while living there but it still brings goosebumps to my arms.

Jim
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