2/2/07 DISC: FL

[Terry L. Schenk]

CENTRAL FLORDIA TORNADOES

I was up monitoring radar this morning as a squall line, ahead of a strong cold front, moved through Central Florida. Shear values went up dramatically and a supercell formed and moved across Sumter, Lake, and Volusia counties. I live in Seminole County but chose not to head north to intercept since, 1) most tornadoes that form in this kind of setup in Florida are rain-wrapped, 2) the cell was moving at 50-65mph, and 3) it was, of course, dark. This storm will again point out the need for folks to have a NOAA weather radio in their home as the death toll stands at 14 and will likely go higher. Shown below is a velocity shot of the cell as it moved across Interstate 4 a couple of counties north of Orlando. It is not unusal for us to have tornadic storms in Central Florida during an El Nino winter. In fact, we have had tornadoes on November 7th, November 18th, Christmas Day and now on Groundhog Day! All of that and we have not even reached the climatological peak for severe weather which occurs in the last two weeks of February/first two weeks of March. I am headed to the National Chasers Convention in Denver in a couple of weeks and plan to chase in the Plains several times this Spring. For now, however, the action is right here close to home!

Terry
www.SignificantEvent.com

 

[B Ozanne]

Is anybody more familiar with how widespread the damage is? How many different towns?

It looks very widespread on tv, but you never know. They could be showing the same neighborhood.

 

[Jordan Hartley]

at least 14 dead here is an article on the storms out of S Florida,

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/lo...2007,0,1862774.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

7 reports of tornadoes, Florida decares state of emergencey.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070202/D8N1MRAO0.html

Deaf women heard tornado before home destroyed

http://www.local6.com/news/10912481/detail.html

Video of tornado damage and interviews with survivors,

http://player.clipsyndicate.com/player/play_clip/77997?cpt=8

 

[Danny Neal]

Is anybody more familiar with how widespread the damage is? How many different towns?

It looks very widespread on tv, but you never know. They could be showing the same neighborhood.

I have been hearing from Northern Sumter County from just west of The Villages through Lady Lake(3 dead) to Paisley(11 dead) through Deland and into New Smyrna Beach. SO a little around 50 miles of damage. I don't think this was ALL one tornado but it looks incredible.

 

[Marc Austin]

I, like many of you, was monitoring the situation late last night. I couldn't believe the strength and appearance of this monster supercell as it moved across central Florida. I even noticed on the radial velocity how one couplet weakened as another strengthened south and west of the original. I guess I would venture to say it looked like a cyclic supercell, which is very uncommon in FL, but it's interesting because I recall during 1998 we had a similar tornadic even in the Kissimee area. That was also an El-Nino year, so we are feeling the effects of the El-Nino, even if it isn't the strongest. Well anyway, here are some of the animtated radial and base scans:

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s307/mda02/Feb12007baseanimationregional.gif?t=1170436606

This is the regional radar from just before the storm hit Umatilla, FL.

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s307/mda02/Feb12007radvelregional.gif?t=1170436569

This is the regional SRM from the same time. The storm was just NW of Eustis at this time.

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s307/mda02/Feb12007baseanimation-1.gif?t=1170436490

Here is a closer look at the storm that caused all the devistation. This is from around the same time as above. Notice the apparent hook echo NW of Eustis, FL.

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s307/mda02/Feb12007animation.gif?t=1170436530

Here's a closer look at the very noteable couplet as the storm was just about to strike Umatilla, FL.

 

[Danny Neal]

I have heard one mention of NOAA weather radio on CNN by Chad Meyer. He basically described it as a "box that you plug into the wall, and for maybe 10 years it will collect dust but, when a tornado emergency hits it will yell out tones from the national weather service." Hmm that explanation right there makes me want to jump out of bed and buy 10! None of these communities had tornado sirens. Shocking.

 

[B Ozanne]

I just thought it was a particularly bold statement to say that we need a nationwide law to make weather radios mandatory. Smoke detectors aren't even mandatory. Sure, they may be required in new construction or rentals, but nothing says you can't take the batteries out.

I'd say that Chad Meyers on CNN is doing a particularly good job. He has mentioned weather radios a few times.

 

[Danny Neal]

I just thought it was a particularly bold statement to say that we need a nationwide law to make weather radios mandatory. Smoke detectors aren't even mandatory. Sure, they may be required in new construction or rentals, but nothing says you can't take the batteries out.

I'd say that Chad Meyers on CNN is doing a particularly good job. He has mentioned weather radios a few times.

And to add onto that he is probably still a little shaken about the fact that his mom and dad live 3 miles north of the damage path. I thought it was an odd description of the NWR, but he is by far and away blowing away other coverage from the meteorological side of this story.

 

[Chris Vagasky]

I'm watching the WESH coverage right now. This is a topic over in W&C, about the public's perspective of the (E)F-Scale. The reporter in the field mentioned that some have said the damage is about 1/4 mile wide, which "might be consistent with an (E)F-3 or maybe an (E)F-4..."

The damage looks intense from what I've seen. I know that when I went to bed last night, around 1am CT, that the storms didn't look too bad -- I was monitoring because I have a friend in Citrus County, where it looks like the first touchdown was -- soon after the storms crossed onto the peninsula, they rapidly intensified.

If I had to make a prediction based on the arial footage I saw, based on the EF-Scale, I'd say probably EF-3 or (maybe) EF-4 in some places.

Something else I've noticed is that Florida is no stranger to severe weather, but their main interaction seems to be with hurricanes. When you listen to them talking about supercells and tornadoes, they seem a little unsure of themselves.

 

[Dan Robinson]

What a time to implement the EF scale - the first major event for the new rating system happens less than a day after it went into effect. I will be very interested to see the new assessment and rating process in action.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

From what I've seen, the worst damage, not surprisingly enough, seems to be concentrated in a few trailer / mobile home parks. The destruction of the mobile home does not strike me as impressive, but I haven't watched much TV. For what it's worth, looking through the EF-scale report ( http://www.wind.ttu.edu/EFScale.pdf ), single-wide and double-wide manufactured homes are Damage Indicators 3 and 4, where the max damage is in the F2 - low F3 range depending upon adjustment to the mean from Degree of Damage 10+.

 

[Chris Vagasky]

Jeff, what I've seen on TV are some single family residences in Lake County. Some of those homes are DIs 6-8, which would be consistent with high F2 - F3 range. Some houses I've seen are just the concrete slab with a little bit left of their structure. Those houses may have been on the southern end of the storm, where the tornado's wind added with the forward momentum of the storm.

 

[MClarkson]

Because I had friends in daytona, I watched this storm as it developed a rather impressive look(especially for florida) till it moved offshore. I remember 3 exact times... I called a buddy to tell him the storm was probably going to his south by about 5 miles but it looked pretty strong... that was 4am... then the circulation passed over I4 near deland at about 410am and over I95 south of daytona at about 420am. Then I went to bed, knowing the scope of any damage wouldnt be entirely evident till sunrise. Now its apparant that that supercell was producing tornados for a good chunk of its existance, including obviously at least 1 strong one.

 

[beaudodson]

CNN showed a car wrapped around a tree.

 

[Kiel Ortega]

Several of us here at the lab have been putting together some graphics of our WDSS-II rotation tracks product. I awoke at 5AM for no reason and thought the top news story would be the Groundhog and global warming report! After we get the images sorted out and all nice, I'll post them (though some of them may end up on the national networks later). Also, I put together a track of the circulation center (eyeballed from velocity) which we're piping into Google Earth. Coolest thing with it is when the rotation would strengthen there was a right turn in the track. From what I can tell, this might be a LONG track tornado (~65-70 mi) as the velocity images never really showed any occulsion or stop/slow in the low level rotation.

Another thing is we compared the lead times of certain places (the storm was in an area where 3 CWAs border). In the areas along the Lake-Marion county line, if you were in Lake Co. you got an extra 10-12 minutes of warning.