Mike Smith
EF5
With regard to Hannah's annotated map of the long-track supercell: why would NWS PAH take their radar offline during the storm?
Quad-State Supercell/Tornado Event (2021-12-10)
- Thread starter Warren Faidley
- Start date
Matt Zumbrunn
EF2
It says a power outage took NWS Paducah's radar offline.
Mike Smith
EF5
Matt, but the radar was down all evening. Why wasn't it put back online? Thanks.
I have no idea if this is legit or not. I suspect it isn’t. It’s supposed to be a screen shot of a video taken last night with many vortices Illuminated by lightening. I hope someone has more info on it than I do. It was sent to me because I have an obvious interest in storms.
Mike Smith
EF5
JamesCaruso
Staff member
Check out this haunting damage video. Very eerie the way the videographer reveals the damage (be sure to watch from the very beginning)…
Warren Faidley
Supporter
I enlarged the image and the sides of the pixels are very uniform and unusually vertical, which ***likely*** means the "tornadoes" are poles or some other type of man-made or natural objects. The one on the right, extends in front of the horizon with slightly lighter pixels. There are also no ground disturbances (dust) at the base of the objects, which is telling. I'm not saying it's faked, but most of us have shot similar nighttime images with polenaodes, smokestacknadoes and treenadoes, which are considered harmless by the SPC.
Rick Schmidt
EF3
Todd--The thin 'tornadoes' are trees and fence-posts/poles in the foreground. Warren, you beat me to it!
Alex Elmore
EF2
I believe they suffered a power outage AND major comms outage that may have lead to this. I assure you, if it would have been able to be put back online any sooner, it would have.
Jeff Wright
EF4
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2010
- Messages
- 406
That happened in 2011 as well, best as I recall. Or rather, I think it was NOAA weather radio…
Warren Faidley
Supporter
If anyone has a velocity radar loop from the tornado that struck Bowling Green, I would love to see it. There was an interesting "shift" or rapid reformation of the meso towards the south right before it hit Bowling Green which caught some people off guard. There was so much going on that evening, it grabbed my attention, but I did not have time to record it. I would love to see how it actually developed.
I am donating 100% of my own profits from the sales of my book "The Ultimate Storm Survival Handbook" (link below) to relief efforts for one year. It's only $4.99 for the e-version and it makes a good gift. Thank you.
I am donating 100% of my own profits from the sales of my book "The Ultimate Storm Survival Handbook" (link below) to relief efforts for one year. It's only $4.99 for the e-version and it makes a good gift. Thank you.
JamesCaruso
Staff member
Maybe this belongs more in the thread about poor media use of weather terminology (in fact, I will post a link to this from there), but I was reading a Wall Street Journal article about this event just now, and it was so frustrating. They interview and quote meteorologists, yet still come away with nonsense like this:
“…In all, the National Weather Service on Friday received reports of 37 tornadoes across Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee. They arose from a single severe thunderstorm system forged in the vise of a high-pressure system from the east and a colder low-pressure front from the west on a day when temperatures in central and southern states reached near-record highs. The colliding fronts drew a plume of warm, moist air from the south and pushed it into the upper atmosphere. As the plume rose, meteorologists said, the water vapor it held chilled and condensed into water. That released the energy needed to fuel a titanic explosion of whirlwinds.…”
“…As typically happens, powerful winds at ground level and high in the atmosphere lit the fuse for the tornadoes, the scientists said, with the former blowing in one direction and the latter in the other. That tilts horizontal winds into a vertical funnel. A kink in the jet stream—narrow bands of strong wind in the upper atmosphere at high latitudes—may also have added a kick to these wind storms...”
“…Tornadoes typically spring into being one after another in a line as a storm system advances, often appearing and disappearing in minutes. But Friday’s twisters arose mostly in isolation, meteorologists said. A single twister that formed near Little Rock, Ark., held itself together for hours as it plowed its way across four states, scientists said—with devastating consequences.”
And they couldn’t even get the tornado ranking scale correct - note reference to F-scale, not EF-scale:
“Meteorologists rank tornadoes on a six-point scale known as the Enhanced Fujita scale, from F0 (wind speeds up to about 85 miles an hour) to F5 (winds in excess of 200 miles an hour). An F1 tornado, with wind speeds of about 110 miles an hour, can peel the roof from a house, overturn a mobile home or blow a car off the road...”
And of course, nowadays we can’t read about a severe weather events without journalists looking to cite it as evidence of global warming. It’s even in the subtitle of the article:
“Scientists said the twisters were spawned by unusual heat and humidity and were reluctant to blame them on climate change”
And then again here. It’s obvious that it would not have even come up, if the journalist wasn’t baiting their subject, probably asking questions like, “Isn’t this the result of climate change?”:
”Federal weather scientists were reluctant to blame climate change for the unseasonable heat that supercharged the storm system. “It’s plausible, but we don’t have all the links in the chain to make the connection,” said Harold Brooks, a senior research scientist at the NOAA Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.”
Edit: adding article link, but it’s likely paywalled:
www.wsj.com
“…In all, the National Weather Service on Friday received reports of 37 tornadoes across Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee. They arose from a single severe thunderstorm system forged in the vise of a high-pressure system from the east and a colder low-pressure front from the west on a day when temperatures in central and southern states reached near-record highs. The colliding fronts drew a plume of warm, moist air from the south and pushed it into the upper atmosphere. As the plume rose, meteorologists said, the water vapor it held chilled and condensed into water. That released the energy needed to fuel a titanic explosion of whirlwinds.…”
“…As typically happens, powerful winds at ground level and high in the atmosphere lit the fuse for the tornadoes, the scientists said, with the former blowing in one direction and the latter in the other. That tilts horizontal winds into a vertical funnel. A kink in the jet stream—narrow bands of strong wind in the upper atmosphere at high latitudes—may also have added a kick to these wind storms...”
“…Tornadoes typically spring into being one after another in a line as a storm system advances, often appearing and disappearing in minutes. But Friday’s twisters arose mostly in isolation, meteorologists said. A single twister that formed near Little Rock, Ark., held itself together for hours as it plowed its way across four states, scientists said—with devastating consequences.”
And they couldn’t even get the tornado ranking scale correct - note reference to F-scale, not EF-scale:
“Meteorologists rank tornadoes on a six-point scale known as the Enhanced Fujita scale, from F0 (wind speeds up to about 85 miles an hour) to F5 (winds in excess of 200 miles an hour). An F1 tornado, with wind speeds of about 110 miles an hour, can peel the roof from a house, overturn a mobile home or blow a car off the road...”
And of course, nowadays we can’t read about a severe weather events without journalists looking to cite it as evidence of global warming. It’s even in the subtitle of the article:
“Scientists said the twisters were spawned by unusual heat and humidity and were reluctant to blame them on climate change”
And then again here. It’s obvious that it would not have even come up, if the journalist wasn’t baiting their subject, probably asking questions like, “Isn’t this the result of climate change?”:
”Federal weather scientists were reluctant to blame climate change for the unseasonable heat that supercharged the storm system. “It’s plausible, but we don’t have all the links in the chain to make the connection,” said Harold Brooks, a senior research scientist at the NOAA Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.”
Edit: adding article link, but it’s likely paywalled:
Deadly Tornadoes That Ravaged Six States Tied to Weird Weather Patterns
The tornadoes that ripped through six states in as many hours Friday night were spawned by unusually hot, humid weather at a time of year when twisters are rare, federal weather scientists said.
www.wsj.com
Maybe this belongs more in the thread about poor media use of weather terminology (in fact, I will post a link to this from there), but I was reading a Wall Street Journal article about this event just now, and it was so frustrating. They interview and quote meteorologists, yet still come away with nonsense like this:
“…In all, the National Weather Service on Friday received reports of 37 tornadoes across Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee. They arose from a single severe thunderstorm system forged in the vise of a high-pressure system from the east and a colder low-pressure front from the west on a day when temperatures in central and southern states reached near-record highs. The colliding fronts drew a plume of warm, moist air from the south and pushed it into the upper atmosphere. As the plume rose, meteorologists said, the water vapor it held chilled and condensed into water. That released the energy needed to fuel a titanic explosion of whirlwinds.…”
“…As typically happens, powerful winds at ground level and high in the atmosphere lit the fuse for the tornadoes, the scientists said, with the former blowing in one direction and the latter in the other. That tilts horizontal winds into a vertical funnel. A kink in the jet stream—narrow bands of strong wind in the upper atmosphere at high latitudes—may also have added a kick to these wind storms...”
“…Tornadoes typically spring into being one after another in a line as a storm system advances, often appearing and disappearing in minutes. But Friday’s twisters arose mostly in isolation, meteorologists said. A single twister that formed near Little Rock, Ark., held itself together for hours as it plowed its way across four states, scientists said—with devastating consequences.”
And they couldn’t even get the tornado ranking scale correct - note reference to F-scale, not EF-scale:
“Meteorologists rank tornadoes on a six-point scale known as the Enhanced Fujita scale, from F0 (wind speeds up to about 85 miles an hour) to F5 (winds in excess of 200 miles an hour). An F1 tornado, with wind speeds of about 110 miles an hour, can peel the roof from a house, overturn a mobile home or blow a car off the road...”
Deadly Tornadoes That Ravaged Six States Tied to Weird Weather Patterns
The tornadoes that ripped through six states in as many hours Friday night were spawned by unusually hot, humid weather at a time of year when twisters are rare, federal weather scientists said.
Ugh...not that I ever thought any scientists worked on or near Wall Street or any entity related to them, but this more or less confirms I was right.
Not all journalism is good journalism, even when written by professionals.
Drew Terril
Staff member
I'd be interested to see that loop as well. I spent two years at WKU and that southward shift is likely what kept the main campus from taking a direct hit. I'll see what I can find when I get home off the road and can get back to my laptop.
You guys can create the loop on your own...no purchase or special access required.
NOAA's Weather and Climate Toolkit (WCT): free to download and not terribly difficult to use: NOAA's Weather and Climate Toolkit (Viewer and Data Exporter)
Level II radar data files on that day: AWS S3 Explorer
You probably want KPAH, KNQA, and KHPX.
NOAA's Weather and Climate Toolkit (WCT): free to download and not terribly difficult to use: NOAA's Weather and Climate Toolkit (Viewer and Data Exporter)
Level II radar data files on that day: AWS S3 Explorer
You probably want KPAH, KNQA, and KHPX.
