9 June, 2011: Tornado track
 

Attachment 32686

The brown streak across this image is the track of the recent Massachusetts tornado.

I saw this at new scientist.
The picture is credited thus: (Image: NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen/USGS, using Landsat 5 data provided by Julia Barsi of the Landsat Project Science Office).

I'm sure this wasn't the only brown streak this tornado caused, but it is probably the biggest.

I found these figures more hardhitting than the brown streak across the satellite image.

I find it interesting that people still take the attitude that the odds are so low that they don't do anything - at all - to provide some protection for themselves in their homes.

If I lived in tornado land I'd have a concrete bunker basement with a week's worth of supplies and some nice pipe-births. If storms where present we'd all just bunk out in the shelter.

Same thing if I lived in a flood-plane. I'd build my house on a scissors jack. Flood coming? I'd jack that baby up a story or two and split the scene.

Ahhh, would be nice. I live in a tornado zone but have nowhere to go. If I were really threatened I'd probably run across the road to the sort of ditch...but other than that I just wait it out.

Anyone who wants to volunteer to finance, locate, and build a concrete bunker...PM me!

Love,

Dorothy

Interesting how it goes pretty much in a straight line. Anyone know why?

Same amount of land on each side.

(Sorry, was messing with the old goose joke: You know how when geese fly in a V one side is longer than the other? Know why? More geese.)

I don't know why. I'm sure it looks straighter because the pic is from so high up...but I think tornadoes just follow a pattern like any weather system.

Fascinating pic Zen....
I tried looking for a few others. Curious about the path they take ...
Found a couple links

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-7...52520after.jpg

Here is
another ... The link has a couple more images as well.
Not sure if I got them all posted properly but ...



http://www.jamesspann.com/wordpress/...-5-600x448.jpg

Lastly this link has a zoom feature. They all seem to go in a very straight line...

Seems like they'd be able to calculate the path and get everyone out of the way. More than just the general warning signal that is sent out.

I wonder what it would look like if they did an overlay of all the tornadoes that have gone through a specific tornado alley.

Everything you ever wanted to know about tornadoes, but were afraid to ask:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/#The%20Basics

Here's a NY Times article about why they're so much harder to predict ahead of time than other severe weather phenoms:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/us/29tornadoes.html

That's funny, the damage doesn't look as bad from out here.

:lol2:

You sly dog, you.

Oh yes, and just remember, that these tornados, floods, fires (in Texas and Arizona/New Mexico) plus the 90+ temperatures on the east coast have absoulutely, positively beyond a shadow of a doubt has nothing whatsoever to do with climate change. . . . Really.

Thanks blue - I was wondering that. I feel much better now.

Let me help just a leetle:

See, way way up in the sky, and looking towards the planet (we'll call it 'Earth'), a tornado might seem like a fairly straight line. That is to say, even though they bob and weave, from a billion miles away you're just gonna see some squiggles.

A 'nado doesn't start in, say, Cincinnati, veer down to south KY, then veer back up to Cleveland...no storm does THAT, not even a 'less sarcastic obviously exaggerated' version of THAT.

It's not rocket science, why the lines seem 'straight.' It's barely even meteorological science.