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geez, this sucks - or blows - depending
- Thread starter queenlives
- Start date
That can't be real. The lights are still on and there's no rain. If it is real.......Holy $hit.
It could be very real. The lights could be on. I've seen firsthand F4 and F5 tornados that were a mile wide on the ground 2 miles away and never even sprinkled at my house.
The picture posted at the beginning of the thread (stunning photograph btw) is a classic supercell. In these types of storms, the most common location for tornado/funnel cloud formation is at the southwest corner of the storm. As a result, it is fairly common for the edge of the storm to be relatively nearby the funnel cloud. In addition, the precip line is often ahead of the funnel leaving the tornado itself and immediate surrounding area precip free. There are exceptions, but the classic supercell/tornado combo tends to follow that pattern.
If you were to be situated in the track of an oncoming F4/F5 tornado... your experience would typically be something like this:
-gusts of wind preceeding the storm blow through
-precip begins... typcially some combination of rain and hail
-precip breaks briefly
-my... my... it sure is getting windy
-funny, my ears feel like they do when I am in the mountains
-that's odd the street sign from a mile away just landed in my yard.
-what's that strange noise?
-This can't be good, my feet are no longer on the ground and I am being pulled mercilously towards that rapidly rotating cloud of debris
-Man, this stuff flying around really hurts... I should have gone to my basement when I heard those strange sirens blaring
-Wow, everything got really calm all of sudden and the sun is out again. Too bad it appears as though I landed a mile from my house.
Modern radar's abililty to identify hook echo's is a very powerful tool for issuing warnings and saving lives. I first started studying tornadoes (and hurricanes) as a teenager back in the late-80's/early-90's. My very first report was on the future of 3D radar imaging and the life saving influence it would have via more accurate warning capabilities. I surely didn't understand it fully back then, but it's pretty neat to see something you did back in the day that came to fruition. There began my 20 years of severe weather system research. It more or less became a permanent hobby.
The dark side of hook echo identification and modern satellite/radar is that their capabilities are being used to skew trend data for weather patterns. Much of it becomes propaganda. A clear hook echo is now good enough to report/locate most tornadoes... including the 100's every season that went unreported in years past when we did have those tools. In the same way, tropical weather systems, especially TD's and Tropical storms cannot hide in any corner of the planet and are now identified thoroughly. Rewind 50/60 years ago and there were dozens of tropical depressions and tropical storm equivalents that went unreported each season throughout the worlds oceans. In effect, comparing modern data with data from even 25 years ago is a nectarine to orange comparison. Unfortunately, all too often now this data is used to further agendas.
Regardless, the life saving abilities are phenomenal compared to yesteryear and scientists will only continue to improve them.
The movie was entertaining. It was filmed where I grew up in NW Oklahoma. They scouted out 100+ year old farm towns and bought these old farm houses that people built with their bare hands just to blow them up in the movie. It really bothered me back then.
The funniest part of that movie is the scene where the cows and farm equipment were flying by them while they were driving. At one point, that giant tractor thing hits the windshield of their car and destroys it the glass. Then two seconds later, the car is driving along with a perfectly good undamaged windshield. Guess the directors spliced that sequence wrong.
