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THE Tornado Thread Pt. 1(merged)

Re: Bad Tornado in Joplin

Unread postby Lore » Tue 24 May 2011, 19:52:21

AdTheNad wrote:
Lore wrote:One thing I have no respect for and that's looters.

Does that include people who loot the world's natural resources? Actually this thread probably isn't the right place for this comment, but it might make some people think.


Equally, but a topic alredy discussed ad infinitum on here.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
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Re: Bad Tornado in Joplin

Unread postby vision-master » Tue 24 May 2011, 19:58:36

We had a tornado that wiped out a few miles on Sunday in Mpls. I posted this fact and it wuz deleted. Nice work there mods. :roll:
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Re: Bad Tornado in Joplin

Unread postby Novus » Thu 26 May 2011, 16:44:05

I can't help but think that it was out dated and poor building codes that led to the high death toll in Joplin. Concrete buildings like the hospital are still standing but the particle board homes are all turned into wood chips. In earth quake zones they have strict building codes to reduce damage and proven to save lives. It is tornado ally and tornadoes happen every year but they persist with weak and lax building codes and standards. It is incomprehensible in this day and age and yet nobody talks about it.
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Re: Bad Tornado in Joplin

Unread postby Pops » Thu 26 May 2011, 17:19:15

They rated this storm an EF 5 - thats sustained wind over 200mph, and this one had multiple vortices to boot. I don't know but I just don't think you are going to be able to afford to build much besides a hospital above ground that can withstand those loads. In fact I saw a structural engineer yesterday on the tube who didn't sound optimistic the hospital would be salvageable.

Home depots and Walmarts are made from a kit I'd bet, the same in LA as Joplin. you can see in this pic of the home depot the only thing standing is the loading dock and probably restroom corner.

Image

A guy I know parked his car by that loading dock and survived, he got pretty lucky.

You can only build the levees so tall, design for an earthquake so strong or a wind so high the best you can do is have a hidey hole and pay attention. In fact many people interviewed admitted they had heard the warning sirens but ignored them.

But you are right, this country is pretty backwards when it comes to codes, I live in the next county over and we have no code compliance requirement whatsoever.
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Re: Tornado outbreak in US; 241 twisters, 14 states, 45+ dea

Unread postby dohboi » Sun 29 May 2011, 02:20:38

"I'm sure the all liquor stores were robbed last night."

Typical unsupported (and ungrammatical) racist blather. Exactly the idiotic bigotry spouted after Katrina.
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Re: Tornado outbreak in US; 241 twisters, 14 states, 45+ dea

Unread postby AgentR11 » Sun 29 May 2011, 11:19:47

dohboi wrote:That looks pretty awful. People used to think that tornadoes were less likely to go through cities.


Random is random; and random certainly doesn't equal smooth.

As the tracks are thin and short, luck and the odds are usually on our side, but they are no guarantee that every single tornado in any particular time period won't track right through a downtown of a major city.
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Re: Tornado outbreak in US; 241 twisters, 14 states, 45+ dea

Unread postby PrestonSturges » Sun 29 May 2011, 13:28:26

SpockLives wrote:
pstarr wrote:The severity and increase in tornado activity is to be expected. The news blackout of the cause, AGW, isn't.

Certainly "Tornado Alley" earned its name long before the modern climate change debate, and even before the coming ice age debate of the 70's.

Care to cite an example of that "debate?" A couple people did (correctly) pointed out that it could get cold again, and there was a puff Time magazine story that was based on nothing in particular. However, high profile scientists were warning about a (future) greenhouse effect since about 1960. But a "debate" is another AGW denier zombie lie.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age ... -1970s.htm
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Re: THE Tornado Thread Pt. 1(merged)

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 20 Nov 2013, 15:34:10

The cost of the deadly and devastating tornado and severe weather outbreak Sunday in the Midwest could top $1 billion, according to RMS, a risk management firm.

Although damage estimates are far from final, Sunday's outbreak could exceed the billion-dollar mark, making it the costliest severe weather event for the insurance industry ever to occur in November, RMS reported.

"Sunday's big tornado outbreak is yet another atypical storm of what has been an unusual 2013 severe weather season," said Matthew Nielsen, director and meteorologist at RMS. Before Sunday, the 2013 tornado season had been one of the calmest in decades.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2 ... s/3643549/

We didn't get hit but a lot of Detroit and Toledo Edison customers lost power from the very high hinds that accompanied the storm fronts generating the tornado's elsewhere. Yesterday I saw a billboard on I-75 in Michigan snapped off close to ground level and laying on its back. I also had to detour twice to get around line crews replacing shattered power poles just south of US-20 in Ohio. DTE has called in crews from Pennsylvania and Colorado to help restore power, at peak loss 302,000 customers were cut off. As of last evening 100,000 were still in the dark and last night was the first really cold night around here, about 25 F.
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Re: THE Tornado Thread Pt. 1(merged)

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 20 Nov 2013, 18:00:00

Good to hear you came through that one ok.

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/midwest-tornado-outbreak-communities-come-together-20131119

Midwest Tornado Outbreak: At Least 55 Tornadoes Confirmed So Far

The tornadoes killed six people in Illinois, the most to die in tornadoes on a single November day in the state. Two of the twisters, including the one with a 46-mile path that devastated neighborhoods in the central Illinois community of Washington, received a preliminary designation of EF4. The state has never seen an EF4 — the second-strongest rating given to twisters, indicating wind speeds between 166 to 200 mph — in November, according to weather records.


These are beyond weird weather. These are weather disasters never before seen in these part at this time of year.

Something has shifted...
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Re: THE Tornado Thread Pt. 1(merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Wed 20 Nov 2013, 20:53:34

dohboi wrote:Good to hear you came through that one ok.

http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-central/midwest-tornado-outbreak-communities-come-together-20131119

Midwest Tornado Outbreak: At Least 55 Tornadoes Confirmed So Far

The tornadoes killed six people in Illinois, the most to die in tornadoes on a single November day in the state. Two of the twisters, including the one with a 46-mile path that devastated neighborhoods in the central Illinois community of Washington, received a preliminary designation of EF4. The state has never seen an EF4 — the second-strongest rating given to twisters, indicating wind speeds between 166 to 200 mph — in November, according to weather records.


These are beyond weird weather. These are weather disasters never before seen in these part at this time of year.

Something has shifted...


Things have been odd all year here, and the wind has been blowing hard three out of four days for the last two months. When I was a kid we would fly kites in the fall but this fall any kid trying would land in Pennsylvania down wind. Northwest ohio is not what it used to be weather wise.
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Re: Strange Weather Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby dohboi » Mon 28 Apr 2014, 17:51:31

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/0 ... te-change/

Tornadoes, Extreme Weather And Climate Change

...heavy and extreme precipitation events often associated with thunderstorms and convection are increasing and have been linked to human-induced changes in atmospheric composition.


Image

Beginning in 2000, tornado intensity — as measured by a twister’s damage path — started rising sharply


Image
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Re: Strange Weather Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Mon 28 Apr 2014, 21:15:48

How about looking at a longer record for Tornadoes?
Here is a plot of Force 1 and higher tornadoes from 1954 to 2012 from the NCDC database which is not suggestive of an increase

Image


and here is a plot of F3+ tornadoes over the same period which shows strong tornadoes are decreasing in occurrence

Image

and a plot of normalized tornado damage from Simmons et al, 2013

Simmons, K.M., et al, 2013. Normalized tornado damage in the United States, 1950-2011. Environmental Hazards, V 12, issue 2, 2013

In 2011, thunderstorms in the United States resulted in 550 deaths from tornadoes and more than $28 billion in property damage, according to data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with the vast majority of economic losses resulting from tornadoes. This article normalizes U.S. tornado damage from 1950 to 2011, using several methods. A normalization provides an estimate of the damage that would occur if past events occurred under a common base year's societal conditions. We normalize for changes in inflation and wealth at the national level and changes in population, income and housing units at the county level. Under several methods, there has been a sharp decline in tornado damage. This decline corresponds with a decline in the reported frequency of the most intense (and thus most damaging) tornadoes since 1950. However, quantification of trends in tornado incidence is made difficult due to discontinuities in the reporting of events over time. The normalized damage results are suggestive that some part of this decline may reflect actual changes in tornado incidence, beyond changes in reporting practices. In historical context, 2011 stands out as one of the most damaging years of the past 61 years and provides an indication that maximum damage levels have the potential to increase should societal change lead to increasing exposure of wealth and property.



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Re: Strange Weather Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby dohboi » Mon 28 Apr 2014, 22:19:59

"Normalized" :lol: :lol: :lol:

Translation: manipulated to give the desired result.

Observe carefully the last five years in the first of the bar graphs I displayed above. Ill provide it again in case you have trouble finding it:

Image
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Re: Strange Weather Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Mon 28 Apr 2014, 22:56:51

Translation: manipulated to give the desired result.


Lets see their analysis was published in a peer reviewed journal....yours, on the other hand was not.

If you can explain why it doesn't make sense to normalize losses based on population changes, number of dwellings/buildings, inflation etc. then please do so. Otherwise your comment is pointless.
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Re: Strange Weather Pt. 4 (merged)

Unread postby dohboi » Mon 28 Apr 2014, 23:18:13

I'll spell it out for you. Picture the last five bars as a hand. :lol:
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Re: THE Tornado Thread Pt. 1(merged)

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 29 Apr 2014, 07:45:44

I moved the tornado discussion over here because it is more relevant here than in the strange weather thread. We have always had extreme weather events and tying them to global climate is always guesswork because climate is 30+ years of weather averages and weather changes hourly.

The last two days have been rough in the USA for tornado outbreaks but not unlike many seasons over the course of my lifetime. The statistical graphs are quite compelling and despite my tendency to see the bad in weather/climate I am reassured that we have not gone off the rails in terms of frequency and intensity, at least not yet.
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Re: THE Tornado Thread Pt. 1(merged)

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 29 Apr 2014, 11:26:31

Increased tornadic activity is indeed the among the hardest to connect conclusively to gw of the various weather extremes. But that is exactly why it is is so concerning that latest research does suggest just such a shift.

Of course, if one wants to just accept the most comforting data, that, I guess, is one's own choice.
....

From Sigmetnow at neven's forum on the latest outbreaks:

Multi-day, severe tornado outbreakS (!) currently thrashing the southeastern US.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/deadly ... -28-n92111

Two huge low pressure areas are cut off from the jet stream, and blocked by a high pressure area, preventing the severe weather from moving.

"Textbook Omega Block between two cutoff lows. Unsettled weather likely."

https://mobile.twitter.com/nymetrowx/st ... 60/photo/1

Two swirling low pressure centers, tornado-producing thunderstorms in between.

#gifanimation: http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/eaus/vis-animated.gif

This is the most electrically prolific set of t'storms I have ever seen in my career. Nearly 70,000 strikes per hour last I checked. #severe”

Unbelievable! - 8 tornado warnings right now all in close proximity
along with a few having debris balls! #alwx #mswx

https://mobile.twitter.com/1ChrisNelson ... 84/photo/1

Every major tornado today fell in the high risk area & PDS watch. Great job by the SPC.

https://mobile.twitter.com/wxdam/status ... 68/photo/1

This article includes what ensemble models suggest could occur this week, based on what similar conditions in the past have generated (may take a moment for images to load):

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... _days.html


Does anyone know what 'debris balls' are?
...

Now this from Climate Central:
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/desp ... otal-17363

Despite Spate of Tornadoes, 2014 on Track for Low Total

Tornado seasons have always seen considerable variability from year to year, but the stark difference between the tornado seasons of 2011 and 2014 are part of a trend in higher amplitudes between seasonal extremes that Carbin and Brooks have noticed.

They have been scouring tornado records and found several interesting trends:

>>the extremes in the start days to the tornado season have widened in recent years;

>>the number of days with tornadoes has declined, but the number of tornadoes per day has increased; and

>>the number of tornadoes seen in a given month seems to vary with temperature for some months. For example, warmer winters — a likelihood with a warming climate — typically see more tornadoes than average, while, conversely, warmer summers see fewer.
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Re: THE Tornado Thread Pt. 1(merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Tue 29 Apr 2014, 21:56:41

There wasn't a tornado exactly, but one of my high school class mates had a tree blown down and it just missed her house in Toledo.
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Re: THE Tornado Thread Pt. 1(merged)

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 30 Apr 2014, 02:55:57

Was it a derecho (straight-line wind storm), by any chance?
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