Moore Oklahoma Obliterated by F5 Tornado, 24 dead, at least 9 of them kids

[Ed Anger]

Raz: I don't see anything in your cut and paste that says sirens only go off when the feds issue a Tornado Warning.  And I know for a fact they go off around here without anything forming.

I think that's how it works around here as well. 

And if anything touches down, it's up Ed's way.  We're east of downtown and it's a bit hilly for that where I live.

We have a tornado magnet in my county.

[merithyn]

A tornado spotted by radar is still spotted.  Maybe Iowa has it's different protocols, but those are from the national weather service and are the ones I know about.

Oh and the Salvation army has a great song:  I always feel the urge to sing it when I see one of those guys with a red kettle.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foXs9bZq-vg

It doesn't say that the radar spots a tornado. It says that if a tornado is indicated by radar, ie the right conditions for a tornado are found to be happening.

[Razgovory]

A tornado spotted by radar is still spotted.  Maybe Iowa has it's different protocols, but those are from the national weather service and are the ones I know about.

Oh and the Salvation army has a great song:  I always feel the urge to sing it when I see one of those guys with a red kettle.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foXs9bZq-vg

It doesn't say that the radar spots a tornado. It says that if a tornado is indicated by radar, ie the right conditions for a tornado are found to be happening.

Meri, the right indications for a tornado happening lasts for hours.  The warning only last for 30 minutes, so I don't think that's what they mean by warning.  Now when when the right conditions for a tornado occurring are found to be happening, it's called a "Tornado Watch".  They typically don't sound the sirens for those.

[merithyn]

Meri, the right indications for a tornado happening lasts for hours.  The warning only last for 30 minutes, so I don't think that's what they mean by warning.  Now when when the right conditions for a tornado occurring are found to be happening, it's called a "Tornado Watch".  They typically don't sound the sirens for those.

You're mistaken. A tornado isn't a tornado until it's half-way between the cloud base and the ground. So, the spiral is formed in the clouds - and recognized by radar - but isn't a tornado until it actually comes half-way to the ground. In other words, alarms sound before tornados form.

LINK

A tornado begins as a rotating, funnel-shaped cloud extending from a thunderstorm cloud base. A funnel cloud is made visible by cloud droplets, however, in some cases it can appear to be invisible due to lack of moisture. When the funnel cloud is half-way between the cloud base and the ground, it is called a tornado. The tornado's high-speed winds rotate about a small, relatively calm center, and suck up dust and debris, making the tornado darker and more easily seen.

[MadImmortalMan]

Rank    Name (location)    Date    Deaths
1    "Tri-State" (Missouri, Illinois and Indiana)    March 18, 1925    695
2    Natchez, Mississippi    May 7, 1840    317
3    St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Louis, Illinois    May 27, 1896    255
4    Tupelo, Mississippi    April 5, 1936    216
5    Gainesville, Georgia    April 5, 1936    203
6    Woodward, Oklahoma    April 9, 1947    181
7    Joplin, Missouri    May 22, 2011    158
8    Amite, Louisiana and Purvis, Mississippi    April 24, 1908    143
9    New Richmond, Wisconsin    June 12, 1899    117
10    Flint, Michigan   June 8, 1953   116



Just for perspective.

[11B4V]

Wow then the Joplin one was the costly in 50 years or so.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Thanks to Meri for correcting Raz's stupidity. It just shows how impossible it is to even play at having a human conversation with that basement dweller. I will admit to not knowing jack about construction standards in Oklahoma and in fact have read a good article about the thick, loamy clay that makes up most of central Oklahoma's soil and is why so few homes there deal with the huge expense and trouble of building and maintaining a basement, well as good as any article about soil in central Oklahoma can be. So now it makes perfect sense as to why tornado shelters are not as ubiquitous in Oklahoma as I would have expected. But in my defense, I never claimed to be speaking authoritatively about Oklahoma, all I said was, I'd think tornado shelters would be ubiquitous there at least at schools and other locations. As I said, here in the eastern part of the United States most older schools (and every state I attended in the U.S. was older) had somewhere to go for bomb shelter practice. That's not a huge sample size, but it didn't seem out of the norm, and those bomb shelters would obviously be great tornado shelters (if we had many tornadoes on the East coast, which we do not.)

[CountDeMoney]

Raz knows his basements.

[CountDeMoney]

That was about 4 lives burned up there, Sylvester.

[OttoVonBismarck]

You're mistaken. A tornado isn't a tornado until it's half-way between the cloud base and the ground. So, the spiral is formed in the clouds - and recognized by radar - but isn't a tornado until it actually comes half-way to the ground. In other words, alarms sound before tornados form.

Another thing that makes Raz's proposition so wrong, is radar cannot actually definitively say if there is a tornado or not. A siren that only sounded when it detected a tornado via radar would never sound. They look for the telltale hook echo and other indicators which are almost always present when a tornado forms, and then the siren goes off. But maybe there is a tornado forming, maybe there is one that never totally touches ground or only does for a moment etc. But radar cannot actually say definitively if a tornado ever existed at all. That's why anytime there is a storm that goes through an area and there are tornadic conditions, the NWS will indicate that there are scattered "tornado sightings" but it will not just confirm those just based on the radar indicators and visual sightings. They actually have to go check out the track and see what happened to confirm a tornado was there. (Maybe this is expedited for ones that are caught on video or something.)

Probably the only time radar can be really close to certain there is a tornado is when there is a massive debris ball (which I think only happens with the most massive tornadoes), as that creates a unique radar signature. But those tend to be the big monsters like the one that hit Moore, and for those rare super tornadoes there is never any real difficulty in confirming one happened.

Even today with much better collections equipment there are still probably a huge number of tornadoes that actually touch ground that never get confirmed. Parts of the country are still sparsely populated enough that no one is around to see them and if it just rampages through a deserted field or even through the woods there's no guarantee anyone will ever go out to confirm a tornado was there (woods you could obviously tell by tree fall.)

[Admiral Yi]

Tornadic?

[CountDeMoney]

Tornadic as in tornadic activity.  The weatherpipples out there in Tornado Magnet, Iowa never use that term?

[Razgovory]

Meri, the right indications for a tornado happening lasts for hours.  The warning only last for 30 minutes, so I don't think that's what they mean by warning.  Now when when the right conditions for a tornado occurring are found to be happening, it's called a "Tornado Watch".  They typically don't sound the sirens for those.

You're mistaken. A tornado isn't a tornado until it's half-way between the cloud base and the ground. So, the spiral is formed in the clouds - and recognized by radar - but isn't a tornado until it actually comes half-way to the ground. In other words, alarms sound before tornados form.

LINK

A tornado begins as a rotating, funnel-shaped cloud extending from a thunderstorm cloud base. A funnel cloud is made visible by cloud droplets, however, in some cases it can appear to be invisible due to lack of moisture. When the funnel cloud is half-way between the cloud base and the ground, it is called a tornado. The tornado's high-speed winds rotate about a small, relatively calm center, and suck up dust and debris, making the tornado darker and more easily seen.

That's nice, but doesn't contradict what I said.

[Razgovory]

You're mistaken. A tornado isn't a tornado until it's half-way between the cloud base and the ground. So, the spiral is formed in the clouds - and recognized by radar - but isn't a tornado until it actually comes half-way to the ground. In other words, alarms sound before tornados form.

Another thing that makes Raz's proposition so wrong, is radar cannot actually definitively say if there is a tornado or not. A siren that only sounded when it detected a tornado via radar would never sound. They look for the telltale hook echo and other indicators which are almost always present when a tornado forms, and then the siren goes off. But maybe there is a tornado forming, maybe there is one that never totally touches ground or only does for a moment etc. But radar cannot actually say definitively if a tornado ever existed at all. That's why anytime there is a storm that goes through an area and there are tornadic conditions, the NWS will indicate that there are scattered "tornado sightings" but it will not just confirm those just based on the radar indicators and visual sightings. They actually have to go check out the track and see what happened to confirm a tornado was there. (Maybe this is expedited for ones that are caught on video or something.)

Probably the only time radar can be really close to certain there is a tornado is when there is a massive debris ball (which I think only happens with the most massive tornadoes), as that creates a unique radar signature. But those tend to be the big monsters like the one that hit Moore, and for those rare super tornadoes there is never any real difficulty in confirming one happened.

Even today with much better collections equipment there are still probably a huge number of tornadoes that actually touch ground that never get confirmed. Parts of the country are still sparsely populated enough that no one is around to see them and if it just rampages through a deserted field or even through the woods there's no guarantee anyone will ever go out to confirm a tornado was there (woods you could obviously tell by tree fall.)

Sigh.  It helps to actually read what I wrote.

[merithyn]

That's nice, but doesn't contradict what I said.

A tornado spotted by radar is still spotted.  Maybe Iowa has it's different protocols, but those are from the national weather service and are the ones I know about.

It doesn't say that the radar spots a tornado. It says that if a tornado is indicated by radar, ie the right conditions for a tornado are found to be happening.

Meri, the right indications for a tornado happening lasts for hours.  The warning only last for 30 minutes, so I don't think that's what they mean by warning.  Now when when the right conditions for a tornado occurring are found to be happening, it's called a "Tornado Watch".  They typically don't sound the sirens for those.

My comment was in response to this. The point is that a tornado does not have to be spotted in order for the radar to go off, something that you claimed.