"The devastation is incredible." #Alabama #tornado kills at least 23 https://t.co/JO3wAWy5s4 #AlabamaTornadoes pic.twitter.com/Peebh9ozH2
— Fire Engineering (@fireengineering) March 4, 2019
Video shows destruction in Beauregard, Alabama after #tornado leaves at least 22 people dead, according to officials in #LeeCounty. https://t.co/hGIE2J1cs1 pic.twitter.com/K6V8hPRwFZ
— Washington News Line (@WashNewsLine) March 4, 2019
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Hurricanes are larger and do more damage, but tornadoes can have faster winds and strike with little to no warning. Tornadoes scare me.
Tornadoes are common in Nebraska. Not so much in Alabama.
Mega vacuum cleaners moving fast in a narrow swath, but inescapeable, unless you have an underground cellar like they build with the houses in Kansas. It is further south lately due to Global Cooling sending the Jet Stream dips further south.
Where's the mockery, Althouse? You left out the mockery, surely. No quibbles about the freezing of the tweet? No mentioning that "incredible" is the wrong word since you obviously believe the story?
Man, that must be one magical and resilient home-built carport!
Even the vehicles appear largely unscathed (see end of video).
It's a standard tornado damage story. Entertainment.
The trouble with tornados is that you can't get a reporter leaning into the wind.
There aren't many dust devil stories, to it's not a vortex fetish. They like damage.
Angular momentum: threat or menace?
Tornadoes are very common in Alabama, Georgia and right across the southeast. You get that warm moist air from the Gulf colliding with cold dry air sweeping in from the north...we have all kinds of severe storms across the Southeast. Just a few years ago another large tornado (EF4) barreled through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, AL. 64 killed. Just a few years before that, a tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta, almost taking out CNN. I know, I know. Close.
Interestingly, I never watch daytime or morning TV, but I turned on Good Morning America this morning to see reports on these tornadoes and in their run-up and opening they focused instead on a snowstorm hitting the Northeast. Because...Northeast. Snow in Boston led the news. People killed in Alabama by a tornado did not.
It's like a figure skater: when she draws her arms in, her skirt flies up.
David Begley said...
Tornadoes are common in Nebraska. Not so much in Alabama.
Small quibble. Quick search seems to indicate Alabama is on par with IA and NB. different time frame might yield different results.
This is our life after a Tornado went through July 9th. No loss of life, but it went down main street, so life was really altered.
Seeing the aftermath is truly awe inspiring. The randomness, and precision is amazing. I saw a hanging basket of petunias on the porch of a house that was missing the entire roof.
A single 2X4 driven into a brick wall. Stwaw, sticking out of fence posts, looking like a porcupine.
I know someone who vacays in Gulf Shores every year. Previously it was always Feb. This year it is March...
A turtle atop fence post is one of the warning signs of a tornado.
"Tornadoes are common in Nebraska. Not so much in Alabama."
Unfortunately that is not true.
I find that kind of devastation very credible.
It's the kind of devastation one would expect from a tornado.
Why must we always turn our crisis into the crisis of all crises?
Has our society devolved to a state where if it's not shocking we can't be bothered?
The morphology of tornadoes in the southeast is a bit different from those in the Great Plains, in particular because they are more likely to be rain-wrapped and therefore harder to see at a distance. (Plus all the pine trees get in the way of the sightlines) But radar will still see them. Dixie Alley is the nickname given to the local maximum in tornado occurrences over the southeast, both in Late Fall and early Spring.
Tornados are common where cold and warm air masses collide. Happens in nature, happens in comments sections.
"Tornadoes are common in Nebraska. Not so much in Alabama."
Not really. Between 1991 and 2015 Nebraska averaged 54 per year and Alabama 47 per year.
"It is further south lately due to Global Cooling sending the Jet Stream dips further south."
It's not further south lately. It's pretty consistent as regards general location and number year-to-year according to the national weather service. MS, AL and FL in the southeast are all in very active tornado zones. In fact, FL averages the same number per year as NE (tied for 4th) and AL ranks 8th and MS 10th in storms per year.
I remember the Tuscaloosa tornado.
Tornado warning is much improved and actually very good. No they do not predict a tornado with time, and geographic precision. They do give watches, warnings and emergency notifications. July 9th the had warnings out for Pella, Bonderant and Marshalltown, hours in advance with greater precision and time, the closer it got to touchdown. Pella is home to Vermeer Manufacturing, with over 1000 per shift. That day, they were hosting a customer appreciation event, which put more than 500 extra people on site. With all the warning, employees followed what they had practiced. But, they also protected 500 souls that normally are not there. Much the same happened in the other communities.
Great warning system.
Temujin observes: Interestingly, I never watch daytime or morning TV, but I turned on Good Morning America this morning to see reports on these tornadoes and in their run-up and opening they focused instead on a snowstorm hitting the Northeast. Because...Northeast. Snow in Boston led the news. People killed in Alabama by a tornado did not.
Yep. Every winter, the northern Oregon coast gets 100+ mph winds but one never hears about it on the 'news'. If NY gets 50mph winds, it's an item.
Inga... said: "Tornados are common where cold and warm air masses collide. Happens in nature, happens in comments sections."
The accepted technical term for that latter phenomenon is shitstorm.
"David Begley said...
Tornadoes are common in Nebraska. Not so much in Alabama."
Wrong.
Q: What do an Alabama tornado and a redneck divorce have in common?
A: In the end, someone is going to lose a house trailer.
Not really. Between 1991 and 2015 Nebraska averaged 54 [tornadoes] per year and Alabama 47 per year.
Ha ha. Nebraska is a much larger state area-wise than Alabama (47.5% larger), so the foregoing statistic means that Alabama gets (or got during that time period) considerably more tornadoes than Nebraska per unit area (the areal density of tornadoes is what really controls the probability of encountering one in any given spot) — to wit: Alabama experienced 28% more tornadoes.
Y'all are hilarious.
Beauregard is a tiny place near Auburn, AL. 22 dead is a big chunk of the community there.
An EF3 tornado is a big deal if it touches down. The people in the path face loss of life and property and disruption of everything. It's a sad event.
And now it is freezing and people are trying to recover through the cold.
The only plus side to tornadoes, is that, unlike other natural disasters, they don't stick around. Hurricanes, blizzards, forest fires, mud slides: these things don't just touch down, they squat and linger.
Insights like the above probably don't offer much consolation to those who lost their homes or a loved one in a tornado.
David Begley said...
Tornadoes are common in Nebraska. Not so much in Alabama.
I wish that were true. There's a website called Tornado History Project that has a database of tornadoes dating from 1950 through 2017. Counting all tornadoes in the database timeframe, Alabama has had 2,127 tornadoes compared to Nebraska with 2,854. The situation is more interesting when you sort by F numbers. Looking only at the F5 (most powerful) ones, Alabama has 9 entries in the database compared to 1 for Nebraska. For F4, Alabama has had 35 compared to 33 for Nebraska. For F3, it's 139 for Alabama and 97 for Nebraska. In short, Nebraska has more total tornadoes, but Alabama has more powerful ones.
I am originally from Kansas. It seemed my spring time youthful years included a LOT of basement time.
Moved to Alabama over 30 years ago and thought I'd left twisters behind.
Not so, and few around here have basements.
@LarryJ, I've been aware of the Tornado History Project ever since one of my sons received a one year TDY assignment to Huntsville, AL. A colleague of his acquainted him with the Tornado History Project, and he learned that Huntsville has had three F5 tornadoes form southwest of the city and follow essentially identical tracks to the northeast. As JAORE points out, few in or around Huntsville have basements. He learned how to identify shelf clouds and other warning signs.
Wife and I had to ride out a Category 4 hurricane several years ago. I wouldn't care to have to ride out an F4 tornado.
American Red Cross is offering its contact service so families displaced by the storm can find loved ones. For immediate assistance, call Red Cross at 1-334-749-9981 or go here: https://www.redcross.org/get-help/disaster-relief-and-recovery-services/contact-and-locate-loved-ones.html
"Q: What do an Alabama tornado and a redneck divorce have in common?
A: In the end, someone is going to lose a house trailer."
Normally, I enjoy this commenter's comic writing. Sadly, this time... cruelly facetious.
I remember the sky that afternoon was a dark greenish-grey color and perfectly still. We were all out riding out bikes but had stopped to look up at the sky. Even as kids, we knew something was very bad. A couple days later everybody went out in cars to look at the some of the affected areas. Several very small towns around us (Kokomo) were just gone.
"The second Palm Sunday tornado outbreak occurred on April 11–12, 1965, in the Midwest U.S. states of Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa, with 47 tornadoes (32 significant, 17 violent, 21 killers). It was the second-biggest outbreak on record at the time. In the Midwest, 271 people were killed and 1,500 injured (1,200 in Indiana). It was the deadliest tornado outbreak in Indiana history, with 137 people killed.[1] The outbreak also made that week in April 1965 the second-most-active week in history, with 51 significant and 21 violent tornadoes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Palm_Sunday_tornado_outbreak#Indiana
Whenever we get significant snow in my area there are friends and colleagues from across the country that send me kind words of concern and offers of assistance. I've come to a point where I thank them but also point out that a bit of snow, even 10" or more that snarls roadways and maybe even knocks out power, is nothing compared to the destruction and death that tornadoes and hurricanes visit on people in other parts of the country.
Wishing, hoping, and praying for all the folks affected by these recent disasters.
The big tornado outbreak in April 1974 was when I first got interested in following the weather. We lived about 150 miles east of the outbreak in Kentucky, but it was such a big local weather story that I remember vividly today even though I was only 7 years old.
The Palm Sunday tornado is the first I remember experiencing. Our community lost an older couple to that tornado. There was no warning system in place at that time. Dad had to be good at watching clouds and weather circumstances. My memory was of the dichotomy of total destruction, and at the same time, a wagon, or small shed, standing unaffected. All experiences since them have just validated the first observation.
Evolution bounded by a progressive envelope.
I grew up in Alabama. I had tornado nightmares as a kid. The house next door to my grandmother's was only a basement because the people there did not rebuild above ground after a tornado. They moved into the basement and made it their home. Many people around there in the 40s and 50s had storm shelters built into the embankments near there their houses.
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