BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US

Subject: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Apr 12 - 12:24 PM

Over 100 tornados in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska..etc., last night.

I see one was reported in South Wichita....I hope John & Linn are ok.

I used to live in Wichita and there was almost never any reports of tornados near city limits.

Anyone else in the midwest have anything to report?

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Apr 12 - 12:46 PM

The bottom end of that storm system swept through North Texas this morning at about dawn, it has rained on and off for several hours, but (knock wood) none of the super cells or tornadoes in the mix here. Just helpful rain.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Apr 12 - 06:14 PM

The weather system that prompted concern was an unusual one, and was so large that the weather service issed warnings 24 hours in advance. This is the first time they've done that within the memory of most of the current talking-head weathermen on local TV channels, and it got them really excited with the result that all TV programming on all the channels we can get was preempted for "weather news."

(Having nothing but weather to watch was not much different than having nothing but the regular programming to watch.)

An unusual aspect of this storm system was that the whole system was showing "ground speeds" of up to 50 mph. Normal is "up to" about half that.

The storm system had a very predictable "trajectory" as is pretty much the usual case even with smaller ones here, so it was fairly easy to "see it coming" in the places where there was damage. Occasional checks during the day - and most of the night - made it easy for us to be fairly relaxed about it, although Lin began making plans (for me) to build us a proper storm shelter.

The areas where damage was reported in Wichita were all on the south "fringes," and the place hit worst appears to have been a "trailer park" on the southwest fringe of the city. There was enough debris there that emergency responders were forced to "walk things in and out" (as much as about 1/2 mile - 1 km) and there were reports of downed (live) electricals and "probable gas leaks." A concern there was that numerous "elderly" persons, most of whom were not injured needed help just to get out of the damaged area.

Damage reported east of there was "isolated" according to early reports, with varying damage reports ("the house is fine but the garage is gone" kind).

There has been no confirmation in either of the two places reporting the most damage that the damage was actually due to a tornado, but the system that went through was displaying "normal winds" of up to about 70 mph, and sporadic gusts higher.

The former Boeing plant, now called "Spirit Aerospace," reported "some damage to all buildings and a couple of roofs gone," but no real details. (Those roofs are football field sized, if actuall "gone.")

The "Airplane Museum" reports that they'll be shut down for "a couple of weeks" to assess and repair damage to planes on exposed exhibit. A KC135 was reported as "ripped loose and turned 180 degrees from its moored position." Hopefully "180 degrees" means it's pointing the other way, and not upside down. (For those unfamiliar, the KC135 is an aerial refueling tanker capable of carrying about 250,000 lb of fuel. The one in question is empty now, we presume.)

There were numerous reports from "spotters" of tornado funnels, but confirmations will require ground-path inspections before we'll really know how many were real. In most places straight winds, very heavy rain, and hail (up to 3" diameter in sporadic reports) did most of the damage known at this time.

Nearest approach to us was about 15 miles. We got brief heavy rain, and some longer periods of lighter stuff. We occasionally heard some thunder, but nothing close enough to worry about lightning damage in our immediate area.

But now the storm system has moved on eastward, and is predicted to remain a threat to places in that direction for as much as 3 or 4 more days.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Janie
Date: 15 Apr 12 - 06:30 PM

Glad you and Lin (and many others) fared well, John.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: gnu
Date: 15 Apr 12 - 06:40 PM

Ditto.

Some nasty footage on the TV. The hail (50mm) was scarey too.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Apr 12 - 06:46 PM

I just looked it up on Google Earth and see that, as usual, damage was near McConnell AFB and the old Boeing area.
That area on the SE side of town seems to be a regular track for storms...

I have been to Boeing many times when they were still in business there...(my employer used to buy scrap metal from them).

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Apr 12 - 07:07 PM

A Recent Report indicates that Woodward OK was hit, with the 6 killed there being the only fatalaties I've seen.

By coincidence, just yesterday while "archiving" (digitally) some old family records, I scanned a list of "teams" (including my dad) sent down in the "Woodward Reconstruction Convoy" (about 250 names) from Wichita Aircraft Plants after the 1947 tornado that is cited as "the worst in Oklahoma history." And I also found a couple of photos showing him running around with a hammer when Beech sent a crew down to Udall KS a few years earlier.

The article linked also gives latest estimates of areas where the storm system is still active, and it still has the potential to do a lot of damage. Anyone anywhere east of here should be watching it for the next couple of days.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Apr 12 - 08:01 PM

Relax- there's no such thing as global warming/global climate change.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 15 Apr 12 - 09:46 PM

It was an odd evening in Kansas City last night. The weather was unusually warm for April, and the wind so strong that the trees made a constant rushing sound. The air had a heavy, tropical feel to it.

If I closed my eyes, I could pretend that I was in Flamingo, on the southern tip of the Everglades. The sound of the wind was the sound of the sea, and the voices of people on their porches, having a beer, were the voices of fishermen on the beach.

I'm sorry to hear about the six deaths in Oklahoma. Most of the news has been less terrible than that - property damage, tornadoes spotted, and even hail the size of baseballs.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 16 Apr 12 - 07:55 PM

Western Kansas got a pretty good dose of tornado season from the big system that just moved through; but just to add insult to injury, after a week or two of "seventies" (F) temperatures they were talking frost warnings for this morning - just as the new wheat crop is breaking through enough to be stunted by it.

Last time I remember somethin' like that happened, maw said "first thing you know they'll be chargin' 15 cents for a loaf of bread;" but that didn't happen.


(They went straight to 23 cents.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Apr 12 - 08:03 PM

When I worked at Dillon's (13th & Waco) about 1955, you could get "Red Label" bread for 10 cents...cigarettes were 23 cents.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Apr 12 - 09:22 PM

There is always such a thing as global climate change occuring. Sometimes it's more extreme than other times. We appear to be in a rather extreme period of climate change at present. The sun is also behaving in a rather unusual fashion, and the magnetic field of the planet Earth is declining quite noticeably, and the position of magnetic north is changing quite noticeably too. Could there be an overall connection between these various phenomena? Perhaps. If so, it is certainly not all caused by human activities, it couldn't be, but some of it (the changing climate) may be partially caused by human activities. After all, massive deforestation and heavy air pollution are quite likely to affect climate patterns wordwide.

The extremists and fanatics on either side...that is, the pro and anti-climate change zealots...will insist that either ALL of it is human-caused...or that NONE of it is. I think both sets of climate change fundamentalists are probably wrong in that respect. Such people usually are wrong, because their position is a faith-based one, not a reason-based one. It arises out of their emotions, and it has a specific emotional agenda...to identify and condemn someone else as being "evil". The "someone else", of course, is anyone who doesn't see it your way. In the eyes of a fanatic, he must therefore be either deeply stupid...or evil...or both.

And if so, well then, it's assumed to be okay to ridicule him, accuse him of all sorts of terrible motivations, show no respect for him, insult him, and so on.

And we see quite a bit of that at the two opposite extremes of the climate change debate, don't we? Quite a bit of it on this forum too.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 Apr 12 - 05:24 AM

LH -

Every good politician (and preacher) knows that "permission to hate" is possibly the most powerful tool in the kit for controlling the flocks.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Apr 12 - 09:44 AM

Yes! ;-D You are so right. Giving "permission to hate" is particularly useful in times of war...or in an election, which is a formalized type of propaganda war between 2 or more power-hungry groups whose objective is either gaining political power...or retaining it.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 17 Apr 12 - 10:15 AM

I see in the paper that the trailer park that was hit had a tornado shelter, and apparently all the residents were in it - except an 88 year old woman who couldn't move fast enough. She was dug out of the wreckage and is doing okay. At least physically.

All trailer-residents ought to have a shelter; there are just too many deaths associated with trailers.

But then there's my sister-in-law's sister, who iived in a trailer and refused to go to the shelter if warned. There's a fool born every minute, I guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Greg F.
Date: 17 Apr 12 - 12:09 PM

You're so right, LH - why would anyone want to believe the consensus of 99% of the climate scientists?

In addition to the sun, the magnetic fields, and the shifting North Pole, equally likely that space aliens are influencing weather on earth as part of one of their fiendish experiments. Unless, of course, its the Russians.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Apr 12 - 02:43 PM

It's totally obvious that the changing solar activities on the Sun have a significant influence on Earth's weather patterns. We wouldn't even have discernable weather patterns here without the Sun heating this planet up each day, and we'll all very soon be frozen and dead in its absence, so why would you poke fun at the notion that changing solar patterns strongly influence weather on planet Earth?

And why would you link that to silly stuff about space aliens doing experiments or the Russians....? One does not establish the worth of one premise by dragging in something else that is completely irrelevant and ridiculous, and attempting to thereby create "guilt by association"......unless, of course, one has totally no respect for the persons one is talking to, no respect for honest dialogue either, and one merely wants to sound off in a sarcastic manner to put someone else down.

That's not legitimate debate. That's playground bullying.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: Greg F.
Date: 17 Apr 12 - 05:41 PM

Sigh

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: gnu
Date: 22 Apr 12 - 01:55 PM

My cousin sent me pics of the damage at the Boeing plant in Kansas last Saturday. Extensive!

He was moved to a different hotel which has a shelter and the guests were sent into the shelter Saturday evening. A .5 mile wide tornado passed a mile away and he said the noise was frightening even at a mile away. He called his wife here in Moncton, midnight local time, because he was scared and she asked, "Do you know what time it is?"
I never did care much for her.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 22 Apr 12 - 05:12 PM

leenia -

In Wichita, and in Sedgwick County where it's located, all "trailer parks" are required to have a storm shelter. Unfortunately that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be located where everyone can get to it as quickly as necessary or that the person in a wheel chair will be able to get down the typical stairway into the usual kind that's essentially a hole in the ground.

Several of the nearby towns/counties also have ordinances with similar requirements.

It's common understanding here that "tornados love trailer parks" since they always go there first when the hit town.

At one extreme, there are no similar requirements for "RV parks" and I know of only one of the dozen or so nearby that has a "tornado shelter."

At the opposite extreme, the City of Wichita has no public tornado shelters.

It's only within the last few years that there have been a very few schools where they've actually built shelters, or reinforced existing structures to make "safe rooms," although most of the schools are substantial enough to have "relatively safe" areas where they can herd the kids in. The school situation is a little iffy at a couple of schools where 20% - 30% of the kids are in "temporary classrooms" that resemble an empty trailer home with the inside walls removed.

A new move has been to provide "shelters" at fairly regular intervals along the turnpike in the area. These consist of the "sewer pipes" that allow water to get across the road, where they've added substantial doors on (some of) them and put up a sign.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: gnu
Date: 22 Apr 12 - 05:24 PM

Seems odd. Shelters would not cost much money. They don't have to be fancy, just effective. Of course, that would not a apply in large urban areas needing to accomodate a great number of people.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 22 Apr 12 - 06:36 PM

The argument against "community shelters" in Wichita is that large enough shelters in many areas would need parking places for people who came to them, and traffic congestion would expose more people who "didn't get there yet" to more risk than just sittin' tight where they were.

Most "core area" buildings are substantial enough that people can find fairly safe places in them, and the City Council and County Commissioners assume that "everybody has a basement" 'cause they all do.

A "tornado shelter" big enough for a typical family (4 to 6 people?), built to recommended specifications, would easily cost 20% of what many individual houses in my neighborhood are worth (not including the building permits - if your lot's big enough to get one). That's a pretty big bite for an individual when you still haven't fixed the roof damage from the last little hail storm.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: gnu
Date: 22 Apr 12 - 09:37 PM

6 people? Yer talking "fancy". I am talking cheap. Bury a 10' long concrete or galvanized corrugated steel pipe and put a hand pump in it for bailing water. It only needs to be occupied during a storm which, I assume, doesn't last too long. It ain't rocket science. Beats a bath tub, no?

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 23 Apr 12 - 09:36 AM

Gnu, I don't think your idea would actually be simple, esp. in a old, built-up city like Wichita.

A friend of mine has just moved into a new home outside Kansas City. It has a special room, extra-strong, for a storm shelter. Seems like a good idea.

About that 88-year-old woman who couldn't walk to the storm shelter at the mobile-home park: it occurs to me that she, her family, and her landlord had 48 hours to do something about that, and they didn't do it. Shameful!

I have another acquaintance, a structural engineer, who went to Joplin, Missouri (site of an EF 5 tornado last May) to examine buildings and say whether they were a write-off or not. He reported, to my surprise, that even in that tornado, the quality of the construction made a difference. But nobody wants to hear that cheap construction, slapped together by lazy workmen, is the first to go in a tornado.

When the tornado hit Moore, OK in 1995, there was a ruin subdivision which had been marketed to senior citizens. Afterwards, an inspector found that the nails which "anchored" the walls to the sill had only gone in 1/2 inch. Nobody wanted to know.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: gnu
Date: 23 Apr 12 - 11:31 AM

leeneia... "Gnu, I don't think your idea would actually be simple, esp. in a old, built-up city like Wichita."


Me, previously... "Of course, that would not a apply in large urban areas needing to accomodate a great number of people."

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 23 Apr 12 - 01:28 PM

Oh, okay. I was thinking the same thing.

One factor affecting your idea, even in the country, is that where there have been no glaciers, land may consist of a thin soil over bedrock. Some of this bedrock may be weathered to where a backhoe can remove it, but some may not. This is why many homes don't have basements - the rock is in the way.

Subject: RE: BS: Storms-tornados in Mid-West US
From: gnu
Date: 23 Apr 12 - 01:55 PM

Dynamite is cheap.

If you don't have yer powderman's papers and yer on bedrock, just add four anchors, two lengths of wire rope and two turnbuckles and Bob's yer uncle. If I was down there, I could make a mint goin door-ta-door selling and installing them on accounta I don't expect everyone's got a rock drill. I'd have two models. A Plain Jane and one with seats on a raised floor. Then there's accesories... survival kits, crank radio, crank lantern, chloride tablets, Winchester Defender 13 (fer yer looters), lots a stuff... anybody got any more crazy ideas?