Centerfield

Yeah, something big ripped through KU yesterday, as you can see here. I'm afraid I slept through most of it; you know it's going to be an interesting day when you wake up to the sound of tornado sirens. Lots of big trees down, a few cars totalled, and the windows of the old Wheatfields blew out, but fortunately, there don't seem to be any deaths.

A friend of mine emailed me today to ask if I still had a place to work. Yes, the library decided to open, so not only did I have a place to work, I got to drive there, muttering dark curses under my breath while everyone else was cleaning up the damage.

The trees always suffer badly, especially after a dry winter when they're brittle. It was mostly those lovely tile roofs on campus, wasn't it? They're so pretty--until those tiles start flying around at 100+ mph.

Coulda been worse, Jean. You could've been out cleaning up the damage with them. :-) Chain saw, boots & gloves. If you go to do that, don't forget that Tylenol and Ben-Gay are your friends! I learned the hard way to take my pian-killers before the muscle stiffness sets in.

Q: Will Hemenway buy better glue for those tiles this time? :-O

You two are welcome to come down here for hurricane season if you'd like....

Been there, Pat! Done that, even got the T-shirts. Aside from growing up on the Texas Gulf Coast, my first hurricane as an adult volunteer was Elena in 1985. I was in NOLA in '88 when Gilbert came through and missed, and we got home just in time to get clipped by the remnants passing over Kansas. Then Hugo, then Andrew on the "secondary" Louisiana landfall. After that my first-born arrived and I quit deploying out-of-state to search rubble and hand out meals. Stuck to tornados and floods instead, since they have the courtesy to come and visit instead of making me travel....

I have a similar post that will go up April 26, about what I was doing fifteen years before that date. The Hesston tornado actually didn't hit the area all that bad, considering, tearing up fields and mostly missing population centers. Not that it was good (two dead) but as an F5 it could've been a LOT worse. As it was on April 26, 1991.

I've worked on the aftermath of four of the fourteen F5 tornadoes that have occurred in my adult lifetime. That's kind of cheating the count, though, since the Hesston/Goessel mess is counted as two different F5's. But one spawned from the other in the same storm, just a few minutes apart, and the ground damage track was continuous, so it's three out of thirteen if you don't pick such nits.

Well, such tales sure are a curative for any petty jealousies that came to my mind because folks elsewhere were playing baseball and tossing back fruity drinks to drive away the humidity while we huddle in the dark and cold watching bad TV.

Tornadoes and truly dangerous hurricanes are quite rare up here in MA. The last dangerous tornado up here was Worcester in 1947, I think. And most of the "danger" from any hurricanes tends to be assets lost due to flooding and lack of electricity. A hurricane's intensity is generally quite diminished by the time it reaches our latitude. So we've at least got that going for us. Maybe there's some explanation for a 3 BR house costing $350,000+ up here after all.

Best to all you folks in harm's way.

Aw, c'mon, we know you've got your own natural disasters in Massachusetts! Ted Kennedy, for example. And don't you have blizzards and ice storms and floods? Those can be nasty too, even if they don't carry your roof away and roll your car along like a misshapen marble for a few miles. And you can always train and then volunteer, and come see the goodies up close. :-)

Besides, the Worcester tornado you mention shows that no place is really safe. Something like 100 dead, wasn't it? You can get whacked anywhere, some places just get whacked more often than others.

[History factoid: The first written-recorded tornado in North American history hit Rehobeth, Massachusetts in 1671. No one died.]

Pat,

Your offer is of some interest. Will you be serving Hurricanes? ;-)

Tully,

Actually, those purty red roofs seem pretty much intact. (except from K-State students. I had a FOF who was involved in a prank with a K-State chem major. In the middle of the night, before the big KU-K-State game, they sneaked onto campus and poured a mysterious liquid over the red tiles. In the morning, lo and behold, the KU fans found out that their famous crimson roofs were now K-State purple.)

Nope, I didn't do any cleaning up (one of the things I pay rent for), but lots of other folks did; in fact, the library was practically empty, so my back got a bit of a break. Thanks for the painkiller tip, though!

This time around, the main damage to KU seems to be power lines, trees, and the cars that happened to be parked under the trees. (and I saw a downed air conditioner that looked as big as a Toyota) But the roof tiles were OK. (maybe Hemenway popped for Superglue this time around. ;-)

We did find out that there is 6 million dollars worth of damage out there, and Sibelius flew over the city. Everybody wave to her, now!

Right no one is 100% safe from tornadoes. But there's Worcester, and then there's living in Tornado Alley. Ther's some relevant math, that's all I'm saying. Rehoboth is right next door to Attleboro, BTW.

The thing that I really wonder about with tornadoes is whether sparsely settled topography has much of anything to due with frequency of formation and strength. Clearly, a tornado that hit a densely populated area could do tremendous damage and kill many people. Imaging a tornado hitting one of the big metropolises. Have we ONLY been lucky, or is there something in the fundamental; mchanics that makes formation in urban areas less likely?

Poor Ted Kennedy. Let me reiterate that he really looked fit the other night. Not big fat and red. He looked tannish, trim, and well-groomed, pretty healthy for a guy his age. Of course, he is getting up there. At some point you get old enough that you really can't sustain a substantial girth. You either have a stroke or heart attack, or if you stay alive you wither down a little bit.

Have we ONLY been lucky, or is there something in the fundamental mechanics that makes formation in urban areas less likely?

Yes, there is. There's a thermal effect around cities that reduces cell formation and stability. The supercell thunderstorms that form tornadoes are mostly a function of moisture, wind, thermal imbalances, and atmospheric instability. Affect any of those, and you reduce both formation and stability.

Most tornadoes (in the US) come from storm lines caused by dry air moving eastward into low-level warm moist air masses (coming up from the Gulf of Mexico). When they meet, the warm moist air rises, chills, and the storm gets rolling.

There's a neat map here showing world tornado incidence densities. As you can see, "Tornado Alley" has darn near perfect topography and weather patterns for it. So do Bangladesh and Uruguay.

Wow, that's really interesting. It seemed plausible to me, because the other explanation reqires a really long run of luck.

So then theoretically at least, there'd be some possibility to mitigate tornado formation in tornado alley with artifical heat islands, presuming you could efficiently/cost effectively make enough of them? I'm willing to bet that the required scope is well beyond cost-effective feasibility, but it's still interesting that topography + low population density + intersection of weather patterns is the basic equation.

Jean, there is a bar in the French Quarter that NEVER CLOSED. It was open throughout the entire hurricane, the post-storm "mandatory" evacuation, the aftermath, and it's still open. They had ice, one kind of beer, and water. Gave the water and ice away free to all who needed it, probably made a fortune selling beer to the few residents who never left.

So yes, I can get you all the Hurricanes you want... ;)

I'm willing to bet that the required scope is well beyond cost-effective feasibility

Hee hee. Safe bet, even before you reach "scale." Ever crossed the Plains?

It's not low population density. Just that urban downtowns tend to disrupt storm cells, so they suffer less powerful hits. But when you look at scale, how likely are they to be hit in the first place?

Gentle upslope feeding low-riding warm moist air into higher-riding cold dry air masses at velocity, during the periods of greatest day/night temperature variability. Generic twister recipe. Except in the southern hemisphere, where it's cold moist air meeting hot dry air....