9 June, 2011: Tornado track

[ZenGum]

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.

[casimendocina]

It is one of more than 875 tornadoes to have hit the US since the beginning of the year. They have claimed the lives of more than 363 people

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

[SPUCK]

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.

[infinite monkey]

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

[CaliforniaMama]

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

[infinite monkey]

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.

[classicman]

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



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





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

[CaliforniaMama]

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.

[infinite monkey]

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

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

What direction do tornadoes come from? Does the region of the US play a role in path direction? Tornadoes can appear from any direction. Most move from southwest to northeast, or west to east. Some tornadoes have changed direction amid path, or even backtracked. [A tornado can double back suddenly, for example, when its bottom is hit by outflow winds from a thunderstorm's core.] Some areas of the US tend to have more paths from a specific direction, such as northwest in Minnesota or southeast in coastal south Texas. This is because of an increased frequency of certain tornado-producing weather patterns (say, hurricanes in south Texas, or northwest-flow weather systems in the upper Midwest).

[infinite monkey]

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

[glatt]

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

[infinite monkey]

You sly dog, you.

[blueboy56]

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.

[classicman]

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

[infinite monkey]

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.