Tornado coverage
 

I have been watching the Weather Channel during this unfortunate period of tornado breeding storms down south. Easy to get hooked and amazing live feeds they are able to show. T&P to those affected and I am interested in where they are as my daughter is in Savannah. Anyone else watching?

Tough stuff - 80 mile path - wow.

My parents had one about 16 miles away yesterday, though thankfully I don't think anyone was hurt.

I grew up in Iowa and only remember ever seeing one in person, though it was relatively small.

When we drive from St. Paul to Cedar Rapids there are stretches where you can still see a tornado path many years later.

-spence

One of my childhood best friends lives in Tulsa, Ok. He's just bought a new house and had a steel tornado room installed as he is in tornado alley. I will take a crappy winter over that stuff any day.
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What's amazing it the forecasting. When they say it's going be bad it generally is. Much different from what we've seen with hurricanes/tropical storms the past few years here in New England.

-spence

It's crazy stuff, I was in KC the weekend Joplin was hit. Had 2 tornado alarms go off in the middle of the night pretty scary. The next day, Sunday, all of the news teams put their copters up looking for tornadoes by 3pm, non-stop coverage on all channels, found out about Joplin about 8pm that night.
I've never seen storms like that here in NE. 65K tops amazing

Forecasting tornadoes is a lot more predictable these days, than forecasting hurricanes will probably ever be. Approaching cold front, Doppler radar will show the intensity of the associated thunder storms, and will also pick up signs that cyclonic rotation is starting. Real time data will always trump computer models. ;)

NWS is almost complete with the Dual Pole radar rollout, much better than NexRad.

I also was amazed with the live feeds of the tornadoes.

Wait till someone gets too close trying to film it with their i phone.
And throws it into the maelstrom.
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http://www.tornadovideos.net/


these guys have custom cars - the Dominators

one of the best, pioneering, chaser died last year along with his son and a top notch photographer. I read about it in Nat. Geographic. It was a fantastic edition.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...ahoma-tornado/

My daughter lives in SC :(
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was watching a show where they are now using
mini quad copters to take DATA prior to the tornado
which will create a new computer model that gives
tornado predictability (warnings) several hours notice.

I haven't seen that one. I wish the RFP for that would come across my desk.

I would not want to be in the path of one....tornados as we all know cause a lot of destruction and death.

I am surprised that it is not mandatory for a shelter on the property in the building code especially in tornado alley

A lot of areas don't even have basements.

-spence

Most don't. His is built in the middle of the house. I was visiting several years back and this wall cloud come in and it is pretty table flat where he lives and I could not believe how nasty it looked. Like nothing I had seen before. Thankfully a twister did not come down from it but it did hail and rain like crazy. He has been lucky living in Tulsa for over 30 years and only 1 close call
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most amazing storms I've ever seen in the KC area when I was working out there. Never had anything like that here, hurricanes are a different story though