|
One of the biggest tornado myths out there is that tornadoes do not hit big cities. When we hear about tornadoes, we typically see them form over rural and suburban areas. What it actually comes down to is landmass. Because the United States is more country than City. In fact, only 3 percent of the entire land area in the United States is categorized as urban. It is pretty much throwing darts at a dartboard, you aren't going to hit the middle every time. Realistically, tornadoes can happen anywhere at anytime.  Today marks the 8th anniversary of the historic 2011 super tornado outbreak. It is now the largest tornado outbreak in U.S history as there were 362 tornadoes confirmed in just a 4 day time span. One of the tornadoes in this outbreak was the violent EF-4 tornado that struck Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama. This devastating tornado was 1.5 miles wide as it tore through Tuscaloosa and had estimated winds of 190 mph. It then would go on and cause destruction in Birmingham, AL where the National Weather Service found EF-4 damage. In total, this tornado was on the ground for an hour and a half and for a staggering 80.6 miles. Overall, the tornado killed 64 people and caused up to 2.2 billion dollars in damage. It was the costliest tornado in U.S history before the EF-5 Joplin tornado took the top spot in May of that same year.  Next, we a trip from Dixie Alley to the Southern Plains. On May 3rd, 1999, a supercell produced 14 tornadoes in a 3.5 hour span. One of them was the powerful and violent EF-5 tornadoes that stuck Moore, Oklahoma and Oklahoma City. The tornado first entered the western portions of Moore and produced high-end EF-4 to low-end EF-5 damage. The tornado continued to move to the northeast and then entered the southern areas in Oklahoma City where it continued to produce EF-4 damage. This tornado was so powerful, that an 18 ton freight car was tossed 3/4 of a mile across an open field. This tornado killed 56 people and injured. A total of 1800 homes were destroyed and 2500 were damaged resulting in 1 billion dollars in damage.  And finally, the last significant tornado to strike the Stateline area (Illinois/Wisconsin border) that many people might not known about was the F4 Belvidere tornado on April 21st, 1967. A 26.6 mile monster that first touched down a little before 4 PM in the afternoon a few miles southeast of Cherry Valley, IL. It then continued to move northeast and would enter the city of Belvidere right around the time students were getting on the buses to head home. One hundred twenty seven homes were destroyed, and hundreds more were damaged. The most notable and horrific part of this tornado was the mayhem at the Belvidere High School. Buses had already picked up the elementary school children and were loading the high school students when the tornado struck. In fact, 13 of the 24 fatalities occurred at the high school.  The lesson to take from this, urban areas are just as vulnerable to tornadoes as rural areas are. Whether you live downtown in a metro city, or on the outskirts of a big city, you still need to have a severe weather plan on hand in case severe weather or even a tornado rolls into your area. Have your safe place ready to go and make sure you have a way to receive watches and warnings, whether that be a weather radio, your cell phone, or tuning in to your local TV stations.
To learn more about this and other severe weather topics around the globe, be sure to click www.globalweatherclimatecenter.com/severe-weather-topics! ©2019 Meteorologist Joey Marino
0 Comments
 Derechos are an interesting weather event that don’t get seen very often here in the United States with many people not knowing what they are until they experience one. They resemble a squall line on radar, as they are typically embedded in them when they do occur. A derecho is a type of severe thunderstorm that is a long-lived, widespread wind event of which is associated with a line of thunderstorms. In order to be classified as such, the event must span more than 240 miles and acquire wind speeds of 58 mph or greater throughout the entirety of the event. There must be consistent wind damage reports that span along the specified minimum length of track to verify that a derecho occurred. They can produce tornado-like damage; however, the damage will be aligned all in the same direction. Derechos are rare because for them to thrive for such a long time with such intensity, they need consistent fuel (instability) and enough shear throughout the environment to support constant wind speeds of that nature. When a line of thunderstorms form along a front, it isn’t unlikely that storms will pop-up ahead of it; the issue with this is that those storms can eat up the fuel that the approaching line needs due to the strong downdrafts that the pop-up storms can produce. Also, timing has a significant influence on the development of derechos. Fronts moving through at night have a harder time to keep the fuel going as the differential heating used to promote lift during the day is no longer there. So the environment typically becomes more stable and less likely to have the energy to propagate the storms with as much intensity as they would if it was a hot, sunny summer afternoon in the south. Derechos are a very interesting weather event that we are constantly researching to try and begin forecasting them ahead of time. To learn more about this and other severe weather topics around the globe, be sure to click www.globalweatherclimatecenter.com/severe-weather-topics! ©2019 Weather Forecaster Ashley Lennard  Credit: NPJ Climate and Atmosphere Science Recent tornado outbreaks in the Southeast U.S. have spawned talk of extreme severe weather that is occuring in an area of the country that is not typically used to such extreme tornado outbreaks. An early March outbreak in eastern Alabama ended with 23 fatalities and over 90 people injured after an EF4 tornado tore through over 60 miles of the state. By mid-March, another outbreak yielded 15 tornadoes in the same state, albeit no fatalities or injuries occurred during this outbreak. The outbreaks may come as a precursor for what the 2019 Tornado season, which usually is beginning in February and March, could bring to the Central and Southeast U.S. Several factors go into creating a record-breaking tornado season: above-average temperatures, increased moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and even the development of El Nio. However, it isn’t the frequency or magnitude of tornadoes that is catching most scientists’ intentions (although these are important nuances that should be noted). It is the movement of tornado outbreaks that has alerted scientists and prompted new tornado research. In 2018, two researchers, Vittorio A. Gensini of Northern Illinois University, and Harold E. Brooks of the National Severe Storm Laboratory in Oklahoma, studied the spatial trends of tornado outbreaks. The results were clear. Tornado outbreaks are on the rise in the Southeast U.S. in states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky. This is in comparison with the Great Plains, historically known as “Tornado Alley”, where tornado outbreaks are actually decreasing. The study used STP, the Significant Tornado Parameter index, and U.S. climatological tornado data to analyze where tornadoes are occurring and in what severity. The STP measures the magnitude of a tornado of EF2 strength or greater, and how likely strong tornadoes will occur in a given area. The scientists in this study were able to use STP to explain the changes in regional tornado formation in recent decades. You may be wondering why this is a big deal. Brooks and Gensini noted increased physical risk and social vulnerability for people in the Mid-South as compared to the Central U.S. While most of the country’s tornadoes occur in the Plains, most tornado casualties occur in the Southeast. This may have to do with a lack of proper tornado-resistant infrastructure. In the Plains, most infrastructure dating back decades have been equipped with cellars in the case of a tornadic supercell. In the Southeast, many more people are impoverished, living in structures such as mobile homes and trailers which are not equipped with proper tornado shelters. This could spell disaster for an area with an increasing frequency of tornadoes, and it may only get worse. To learn more about other important severe weather topics, click here! © 2019 Weather Forecaster Jacob Dolinger  Major storms can occur in every season, but there are significant differences between winter and summer storm systems.
|
Archives
May 2019
|
RSS Feed