by Bill Evans
At school: Follow the drill! Go to the interior hall or room in an orderly way, as you are told. Crouch low, head down, and protect the back of your head with your arms. Stay away from windows and large open rooms like gyms and auditoriums.
In a car or truck: Vehicles are extremely dangerous in a tornado. If the tornado is visible, far away, and the traffic is light, you may be able to drive out of its path by moving at right angles to the tornado. Otherwise, park the car as quickly and safely as possible—out of the traffic lanes. (It’s safer to get the car out of any mud later, if necessary, than to cause a crash by stopping in the roadway.) Get out and seek shelter in a sturdy building. If you are in open country, run to low ground away from any cars. Lie flat and facedown, protecting the back of your head with your arms. Avoid seeking shelter under bridges, which can create deadly traffic hazards while offering little protection against flying debris.
In the open, out of doors: If possible, seek shelter in a sturdy building nearby. If not, lie flat and facedown on low ground, protecting the back of your head with your arms. Get as far away from trees and cars as you can; they may be blown onto you.
In a shopping mall or a large store: Do not panic. Stay aware of crowds. Move as quickly as possible to an interior bathroom, storage room, or other small enclosed area, away from windows. Crouch facedown and protect your head with your arms.
In a theater or other public building: Do not panic. If possible, move quickly and in an orderly fashion to an interior bathroom or hallway, away from windows. Crouch facedown and protect your head with your arms. If there is no time to do that, get under the seats or pews, protecting your head with your arms or hands.
What To Do After The Tornado
Keep your family together and wait for emergency personnel to arrive. If you can, render aid to those who are injured. Stay away from power lines and puddles with wires in them; they may still be carrying electricity. Watch your step to avoid broken glass, nails, or other sharp objects. Stay out of any heavily damaged houses or buildings; they could collapse at any time. Do not use matches or lighters, in case there are leaking natural gas pipes or fuel tanks nearby. Remain calm and alert, and listen for information and instructions from emergency crews or local officials.
* A True Bill Evans Weather Story *
Tornado Chasers—Are They Crazy?
Want to feel your heart pounding in your chest? Want to feel the real-life fright of your life? You’re excited yet anxious, nervous and scared, trying to keep your composure. Who are you? You’re a tornado chaser experiencing a very real once-in-a-lifetime thrill ride. I have done it personally and I can tell you, there is nothing scarier than standing right in front of an approaching tornado spinning at 250 mph.
I’m in western Oklahoma, it’s late in the day. I’m with a crew of chasers equipped with cameras and a portable Doppler radar, driving right into the teeth of a nasty super cell, into the area known as the “bear’s cage.” It’s the area between the main updraft of the storm and the hail. Pritt J. Vesilind, who chased tornadoes for National Geographic, put it this way: “It’s aptly called the bear’s cage, because chasing tornadoes is like hunting grizzlies—you want to get close, but not on the same side of the river. Sometimes you get the bear; sometimes the bear gets you.”
The sky is pea green and black but everything is calm as we approach the super cell. When we enter the mammoth storm, we’re immediately hit with a ripping gust of straight-line winds of 60 mph. Rain is pouring down as if it was being poured out of a pitcher onto our van. We can’t see a thing. Brilliant lightning is zapping and snaking all around, sounding like cannons.
It wasn’t a good idea to drive head-on into the storm’s fury, but we were on the only road in the desolation of this part of western Oklahoma. Emergency vehicles, flashing red lights, sheriff’s deputies, storms chasers, and spotters are everywhere.
The road takes us slightly to the storm’s right, where we are blasted with hail the size of golf balls, and some larger! The van’s windshield cracks from the force of the hail. As we fearfully press on, outside we can see the wall cloud where the tornadoes would be found. Inside, the crew is looking at Doppler radar and the instruments, getting a fix on the super cell’s path.
We see beautiful mammatus clouds overhead and the sky begins to take on a reddish hue in the light of the setting sun. The rain and hail end. The crew stops to set up the camera outside. The world looks eerie and very frightening. The Doppler radar shows a hook echo. Our excitement and anticipation grow. We hope to see this awesome, beautiful freak of nature drop from the sky. Dark clouds billow across an open field in front of us right before we’re hit with another round of hail. In the distance we can see a vortex spinning at the surface, picking up dust and dirt as the tornado snakes down to meet it.
I jump in front of the camera to describe what I’m seeing; my heart is pounding and I’m nearly out of breath. Barely able to contain my composure, I do a play-by-play of the tornado as it spins up debris: soil, plants, and eventually some power lines. As the storm crosses the road going away from us, it climbs back into the cloud as quickly as it had descended. Fortunately, no homes were destroyed and no one was hurt.
The crew was great, courageous, and brave. I was very happy to have witnessed this powerful, awesome form of extreme weather and to be heading home safe and sound.
Weather Myths Solved!
One of the most frequent questions I get asked when I speak to students is “Will opening windows to equalize the air pressure save my house from destruction by a tornado?”
I’ve always wondered who originally thought of such an idea. Most likely it was born of the desire to do something, anything, to make the tornado less harmful or to somehow ward it off. Well, let me tell you, raising a window is certainly not going to render an EF5 tornado harmless! In reality, this is a dangerous and useless waste of time. Instead of opening windows, you should be getting to a place of safety. Raising a window will do nothing to stop one of the most violent forces on the planet.
Since I am a meteorologist in New York City, one of the largest cities in America, kids often say to me, “Tornadoes never hit big cities.” Well, that was disproved in the spring of 2007 when a funnel cloud was sighted on Doppler radar over Staten Island, New York. It passed over New York Harbor and touched down in Brooklyn, New York, as an EF1. The tornado uprooted trees, damaged roofs, and blew over fences. The last time that happened was 100 years earlier. Tornadoes do not form in big cities as often as they do in tornado alley, but they’re not unknown in metropolitan areas. The Dallas–Ft. Worth area in Texas has been hit with tornadoes. Oklahoma City is often rife with tornadoes. St. Louis, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Omaha, Chicago, and Detroit have all experienced tornadoes right in town or in their suburbs! The incorrect idea that one’s town is protected is due to short memory, the rarity of tornadoes, and wishful thinking!
While chasing tornadoes in Oklahoma, I thought to myself, “If we need to seek safety from an approaching tornado, would a highway overpass be a safe place?” Well, common sense should dictate that anytime you find yourself aboveground in the path of a tornado, either deliberately or by coincidence, you are in harm’s way. Every year, dozens of drivers pull off highways in the face of an oncoming tornado and run under overpasses. They also block the road near the overpasses, putting other motorists in extreme danger. On May 4, 1999, this myth was put to rest when a woman and her child climbed underneath an overpass with several other people. The intense winds grasped the woman and, unfortunately, carried her half a mile to her death. Her child was only slightly injured. It’s too bad this myth could not be dispelled before someone was killed.
When driving home from college once on a rural road, I was flagged down by the highway patrol. They were making everyone get out of their cars and lie in a roadside ditch because a tornado was coming right at us. I could see the funnel cloud as it passed over us in the dim sunset light. I had never been so happy to be lying in a rain-soake
d, muddy ditch before! Since we were lower than the surface of the land around us, we survived unhurt.
Those who live in tornado alley always hear “the southwest corner of a basement is the safest location during passage of a tornado.” People often say this because we know that tornadoes generally move along a cold front or squall line from southwest to northeast. But is it really true? In 1996, Professor Joseph Eagleman from the University of Kansas proved that this could be a deadly choice. Eagleman found that actually the southwest part of the basement was the worst place to be because of the way houses moved during a tornado. In a tornado, a home can be shifted off its foundation. If it collapses, it can sometimes crush people who sought shelter in the basement. As a general rule, basements are a safe place during a tornado, but sometimes even a basement is not safe.
An EF-2 tornado forms over the University of Alabama campus in Huntsville, Alabama, on January 21, 2010.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce
Tornado Oddities
The Great Bend, Kansas, tornado of November 1915, is the tornado that seems to have the greatest number of oddities associated with it. To begin with, it was an unusual time of year—in fact, it is the latest in the year that a violent tornado has ever struck the state of Kansas. The funnel began its late-evening journey 5 miles southwest of Larned, 16 miles southwest of Great Bend. Because it was nearly dark, the tornado was visible only occasionally, during flashes of lightning. The oddities began southwest of Pawnee Rock, where a farm was leveled to the ground and two people were killed. From a short distance away, one could not tell that a farmstead had ever existed there. Five horses were the only survivors. They were carried a quarter-mile away from the barn and found, completely unhurt and hitched to the same rail.
At the edge of Great Bend, the Charles Hammond house was unroofed. The family was completely unaware of the damage until they went outside to see what had happened to a neighbor’s home. The south wall of Grant Jones’s store was blown down, but shelves and canned goods that stood against the wall were unmoved. The Riverside Steam Laundry, built of stone and cement block, was reduced to a fragment of upright wall, yet two nearby wooden shacks seemed almost untouched.
At the Moses Clay ranch, on the east edge of town, 1,000 sheep were killed, the most ever killed by a single tornado. A cancelled check from Great Bend was found in a cornfield, one mile outside of Palmyra, Nebraska…305 miles to the northeast, the longest known distance that debris has ever been carried. Receipts, checks, photographs, ledger sheets, money, clothing, shingles, and fragments of books rained down on almost every farm north and west of Glasco, 80 miles to the northeast of Great Bend.
A necktie rack with ten ties still attached was carried 40 miles. A four-page letter from a swain to his fair damsel was carried 70 miles. A flour sack from the Walnut Creek Mill was found 110 miles to the northeast, perhaps the longest distance ever recorded for an object weighing more than one pound. Up to 45,000 migrating ducks were reported killed at Cheyenne Bottoms. Dead ducks fell from the sky 40 miles northeast of that migratory bird refuge.
In Great Bend, an iron water hydrant was found full of splinters. Mail was lifted from the railroad depot and scattered for miles to the northeast. Some of it was returned to Great Bend, but some was sent on from where it had been found…one of the earliest forms of airmail! Farmers living 2 miles from town were unaware of the tragedy and were dumbfounded when they visited town the next day and beheld the tragic spectacle. Over 20,000 visitors viewed the wreckage the following Sunday.
Things that seemed impossible were discovered for days after the storm. An iron jug was blown inside out. A rooster was blown into a jug, with only its head sticking out of the neck of the container!
Fish Falling from the Sky!
History mentions many instances of things (other than rain, snow, sleet, hail, or other usual forms of precipitation) falling from the sky. I have personally seen it happen myself, so I know that it’s true! The earliest account of strange things falling from the sky appears in the Bible in the Book of Joshua. The Israelites, led by Joshua, have routed the Amorite army and are in pursuit of the survivors. A shower of stones falls from the sky and kills more of the enemy than those who died in battle. There are other biblical accounts of things falling from the sky, like the locusts and frogs that tormented Egypt.
About forty times a year, there are reports of creatures falling from the sky. Fish and frogs are the main culprits, having dropped out of the sky many times and in many places around the world.
It’s raining spiders!
Christian Oneto Gaona; used by permission.
In 2006, a fish encased in ice crashed through the windshield of a parked car at a marina in Seattle, Washington. Snakes, periwinkles, tadpoles, jellyfish, and even crabs have rained down many times—and often, still alive!
When a tornado passes over a lake or pond, it can sweep up objects of all shapes and sizes, and then drop them some distance away. Waterspouts have swept up different species of fish, eels, worms, birds, jellyfish, squid, and even alligators, carrying them many miles inland and depositing them on unsuspecting residents below, often encased in ice or hail.
Waterspouts and tornadoes can lift living creatures high into the clouds, where the temperature can be as cold as –60ºF (16ºC), and the animals become covered with ice. Sometimes the creatures fall to the ground alive but frightened. Often times the “deposit” happens in an area where the sun is out and the sky is blue, leaving everyone who witnessed the event to wonder what happened!
Here are some other reported occurrences:
In 1995, Nellie Straw was driving through Scotland in a storm when hundreds of frogs pelted her car.
In 1881, in Worcester, England, a thunderstorm brought down tons of periwinkles and crabs.
In 1890, birds’ blood rained down on Messignadi in Calabria, Italy.
In 1877, several 1-foot-long alligators fell on J. L. Smith’s farm in South Carolina.
In November 1996, a town in southern Tasmania was slimed. Apparently it had rained either fish eggs or baby jellyfish.
A Korean fisherman, trolling off the coast of the Falkland Islands, was knocked unconscious by a single frozen squid that fell from the sky.
In 2004, Kate Walker of Dartford, England, got the shock of her life when twenty crabs rained down on her while she was gardening.
In 1966, Father Leonard Bourne was dashing from a downpour across a courtyard in North Sydney, Australia, when a large fish fell from the sky and landed on his shoulder. The priest nearly caught it as it slid down his chest, but it squirmed away, fell to the flooded ground and swam away!
In 1989, in Ipswich, Australia, Harold Degen’s front lawn was covered with about eight hundred sardines that rained down from above in a light shower.
In Chilatchee, Alabama, in 1956, a woman and her husband watched a small dark cloud form in an otherwise clear sky. When it was overhead, the cloud released its contents: rain, catfish, bass, and bream—all of the fish alive! What a dinner they must have had!
Great Tornado Web Sites >>>>
All about Tornadoes: www.tornadoproject.com/
www.crh.noaa.gov/lmk/preparedness/tornado_large/fslide1.php
www.whyfiles.org/013tornado/index.html
www.nssl.noaa.gov/primer/tornado/tor_basics.html
www.weatherwizkids.com/tornado.htm
Frequently asked Tornado Questions: www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/
Fujita EF Scale: www.spc.noaa.gov/efscale/
All about Derechos and Straight-line Winds: www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/derechofacts.htm
Tornado Graphics: www.usatoday.com/weather/tg/wtorwhat/wtorwhat.htm
* * *
Try This at Home!
Make Your Own Tornado!
Tornado in a Box (Best!): www.tornadoproject.com/cellar/workshop.htm
Tornado in a Bottle (Easier!): www.weatherwizkids.com/tornado1.htm
Tornado in a Jar (E
asiest!): www.weatherwizkids.com/tornado2.htm
Tornado in Another Box: wow.osu.edu/experiments/weather/tornado.html
* * *
Section
2
Hurricanes
Hurricanes: Monsters of the Tropics
Hurricanes are the extreme-est of the extreme! Their winds and waves have wiped out entire communities worldwide and have changed coastal landscapes all over the planet. Hurricanes are the deadliest of storms with more than 20,000 American lives lost in the last 150 years. In a single year, as many as eighty-five hurricanes can prowl across the earth.
A hurricane is a gigantic machine, a tremendous latent heat pump, which can produce violent winds, incredible waves, torrential rains, tornadoes, and tremendous amounts of flooding.
What we call a hurricane is really a tropical cyclone, which is the generic term for a low-pressure system that generally forms in the tropics. The winds of a hurricane swirl around a calm central zone called an eye, which is surrounded by a band of tall, dark clouds called the eyewall. Pressure changes around the eyewall create the hurricane’s strongest winds.
A washed-out bridge in the middle of a flood
U.S. Geological Survey/Department of the Interior