A Record Breaking Tornado
Dr Masters reports: Largest Tornado on Record: the May 31 El Reno, OK EF-5 Tornado
The largest tornado in recorded history was Friday’s May 31, 2013 EF-5 tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma, the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma announced on Tuesday. The EF-5 re-classification was based upon Doppler radar data taken by Oklahoma University’s mobile RaXPol radar. According to comments made by tornado researcher Rick Smith at a press conference today, the mobile radar was positioned on top of an overpass, and recorded winds close to the surface of up to 295 mph in satellite suction vorticies that orbited the large, main vortex. The large, main vortex had EF-4 winds of 185 mph, and the satellite suction vortices moved across the fields at that speed, and rotated on their own at speeds of up to 110 mph, giving a combined wind speed of up to 295 mph in some of the satellite vortices. It’s no wonder that so many storm chasers got in trouble with this tornado, since these suction vortices moved as speeds of up to 185 mph towards them as the tornado rapidly expanded into the largest on record.
What they discovered is that as well as the central tornado, there were several ‘satellite vortices’, like mini-tornadoes, on the edge of the core tornado’s wind field. The vortices were moving around the edge of the tornado at speed of the wind, 185mph, and adding their spinning speed to produce the observed wind speed of 295mph at ground level.
The storm chasers could outrun a normal tornado, but they didn’t have a prayer of getting away from the voriteces coming at them at nearly 200mph.
The current death toll is 18.
5 comments
295 mph at ground level…
*NOTHING* other than a concrete underground bunker is going to survive that. We have bred superstorms with global warming. I’m just wondering how many of these it’s going to take before the Okies give up and all try to move to California again…
Move to California? No room! No room! … uh.. We have earthquakes! And we’re in a drought! And the hills are on fire! .. um… and high taxes! …
Just wait until I move to Canada (with the mosquitoes and angry mooses)…. or maybe New Zealand (although they do have that ozone hole thing and the night sky is all wrong)…
No room!
They missed the sell off of the decommissioned missile silos that would have been perfect. The problem is not just that the wind speed it high, but it changes direction rapidly. I have watched trees that leaned but survived the hurricane coming ashore, but then they toppled when the hurricane passed over and they got hit by the backside winds that are just as strong but coming from the opposite direction.
There are a lot of abandoned mines that could house the new ‘Okies’, and many of them would feel politically at home in Arizona and Utah.
There are things that you could do wind foil shapes that would protect your home, but they would make things even worse for those around you. It isn’t the wind as much as the flying SUVs that make anything other than an underground bunker ineffective. There’s a big difference in facing hundred-mile-per-hour rain and a 100mph 2X4.
Move to California? No room! No room! … uh.. We have earthquakes! And we’re in a drought! And the hills are on fire! .. um… and high taxes! …
ok, that really did make me laugh out loud. thanks!
me, i’m waiting for canada to warm up some more, so i can move there for the health care and still have the florida winters.
Yah Ellroon, we got enough Okies in Bakersfield (Oklahoma City West), we don’t need more of’em :).
Sadly, I’m past the age where moving to Canada is a practicable thing for me. They don’t want old farts like me.