More Tornadoes
Oklahoma City just can’t catch a break. They got nailed again with a cluster of twisters tonight. I have part of my extended family living in the area, so I check on it.
This year has been strange with a group of tornadoes in the Plains in January, then the traditional time for the storms was quiet, and now they have been occurring daily.
Watching them was weird. At one point the radar indicated that a tornado made a right turn to the south. Tornadoes normally head to the northeast. Things are not acting properly.
The warm moist air for these storms is being pulled out of the Gulf, so we have periods of cloudiness and rain in the forecast, but it still hasn’t happened here, it is flowing to the Plains.
The Gulf will be replenished by the flooding that is occurring at various places in the Mississippi watershed. Rains this heavy aren’t breaking the drought, they are washing away the topsoil.
Update: NBC reports on the multiple tornadoes that hit: 9 confirmed dead, flash flooding taking place, baseball-sized hail, I-40 is littered with overturned vehicles, and a Weather Channel crew found out what it’s like to be inside tumbling dice.
The local NBC affiliate, KFOR, has experienced tornado teams, and one almost got wiped by the twister that suddenly turned south.
4 comments
A friend of mine from Oklahoma wonders if the Bermuda Triangle and Moore, OK. have something in common. Because ships keep disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle. And schools keep disappearing in Moore, OK.
Ba da boom.
Some minor design changes when they are built, and the central hallway could be a reasonable storm shelter, not as good as underground, but a hell of a lot better than what they have been building, and it doesn’t have to look like a bunker.
It looks like people tried to flee and got caught in a traffic jam on I-40 when a tornado hit.
Yah, folks in OK don’t quite know what to do. This guy’s sister and brother still live in OK. His sister Facebooked “Phew, that tornado’s on the wrong track to hit (brother’s) house.” Then a few minutes later: “OMG, it can’t turn like that! It’s headed straight toward (brother’s) house!” Luckily it didn’t get there before deciding to do something else entirely… but the traditional rules for how to behave in a tornado no longer seem to apply, and people don’t know what to do.
We are experiencing the same problem with hurricanes – they are not acting like we expect them to act, so we know what to do.
That tornado was headed towards my people when it turned, so it was good news for them, but bad news for living in the area. How do you provide advanced warning when they may head off at 90° from their current path for no known reason?