Tornados and other events

[eurydicebound]

Well, tornado season got off to a roll last week, in the vicinity of yours truly. Here at home, I pulled Will out of school early and we all went to hide in the bathtub, since the storm shelter was flooded. Oops. At David's school, he took off down two flights of stairs at a dead run to reach their tornado shelter in time in the CS building. Cue storm, rain, hail, and lots and lots of wind.

Resume scene. Danger has passed and the house is still standing, and the kids have been let out of the bathtub to comfort the dog. There is no power, but things are otherwise all right. The students come out of the CS building to the sight of their cars, with glass littering the parking lot and the roof of the concession stand from the football stadium liberally scattered across an entire row of vehicles.

Our car was three rows back. It lost three windows and has a whole bunch of little dents now from the landscaping gravel that was being stored on a pallet at the edge of the parking lot. It's really rather stunning what pebbles launched in 75+ mph winds can do.

http://www.lawton-constitution.com/ftpage/030504.pdf

That's got a picture of the parking lot David was in. The building pictured is where he has most of his classes. Our car was back behind the camera, if that makes sense.

I thought for a time that my trip to GTS was cancelled, but I've been able to make arrangements AND get my car repaired, so it's all good. Managed to make it happen for $400 rather than the $1200 plus everyone quoted me. Boo-ya.

Any way, the upshot of this is that I've been without internet since the day before that storm, and I'm now trying like crazy to get caught up. Glad to be seein' y'all again, though.

Comments

[anaka.livejournal.com]

Tornado season runs from March through early July, though it's over typically by June for the most part. Late ones happen, but they're rare, at least here.

According to the NOAA, there are about 1,000 tornados a year on average. Most of them occur through North Texas, most of Oklahoma, up through Kansas and southern Nebraska. The average person doesn't see nearly that many, though. I think I've had roughly... ten tornado scares in my life. Of course, I spent 5 years living out of state, so make of that what you will. I probably have at least one evening a year spent watching storms on television, and one day every two-five years actually in a shelter.

I've actually only seen 1 tornado, and it dissapated before it hit the town. I have seen rotation in the clouds, which is a freaky, freaky thing. Talk about suddenly feeling like the most insignificant thing on the planet... to borrow a quote, it's real "wrath of God" type stuff. :)

Damage paths can be up to a mile wide and fifty miles long, though those are unusual. Most often they have a footprint that's maybe the size of a house or smaller, which is why they can skip through a neighborhood and utterly destroy a house here and a house there, while the next-door neighbors have minimal damages.

Selling storm shelters is a big deal here. Lots of people have them. I can think of... 4 within two blocks of me. There's almost always a public shelter in the area as well. Schools usually have something built in that they can use... basements are used too, except that very few people actually have basements where I live. Too much clay in the soil, so they crack. Shelters are usually made of metal or other materials and set into the ground, then buried.

The big public shelter in the town I live in is the football stadium, a giant concrete monstrosity the length of a football field and two stories tall. There are garages and classrooms underneath. It was built by the WPA way back when, and is the nicest one around by a wide margin. It could hold half the town if needed.

The average warning for a tornado to be imminently in your area is 12 minutes. That's the "it's on the ground and headed your way, take tornado precautions." They're working on new radar coming out around 2007 that should be able to bump that to 20 minutes.

In truth, though, people know ahead of time. Every TV station here has at least one real meteorologist on staff, with the cutting edge of radar and weather predictive software on the market. As soon as they know it's possible, they're on the air with regular programming suspended, tracking the thing through radar and the spotters on the ground (the movie, "Twister," does have some basis in reality, despite the questionable science, Cary Elwes' bad accent, and special effects). If you only have 12 minutes warning, it's because something changed REALLY fast or you weren't paying attention.

This is why, btw, there are very few fatalities associated with Oklahoma/North Texas tornadoes. Always lots of property damage, but relatively light on the injury/casualty side of things. Nothing like when they happen in Kentucky or Illinois or Florida, as they simply aren't prepared for such things.

Strange as it may seem, I can handle tornados. I've spent about a fifth of my life under a tornado watch, it feels like, and the media in the area is geared for it. The thing I can't handle is earthquakes. They freak me right the heck out, as there's no shelter you can head to for 20 minutes until it's over. Wierd.

Anyway, I rambled. Any other questions? :)

[mearls.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks. It's funny to think of all the little things that don't necessarily come to fore when you talk to people from across the US.

We actually had a tornado touch down in my hometown a few years back, probably around 1989 or so. There was literally an empty, churned path through the forest. Luckily, it didn't hit any houses.

New England hasn't seen a really bad blizzard since 1978 or so. We had some flooding in my hometown in 1987 or so, that's about it.

Of course, I've just jinxed us to suffer some sort of catastrophe.