The Cardioid: the basis for all tornado outbreaks???

[Joey Ketcham]

Tell me, do you guys insist to have the background of someone telling you that the next house is on fire before you believe that there is a problem there?

You can't even compare the two, Dave. There is no house and there is no fire.

You've come to us with this scientific theory of yours, if you want to establish credibility than you need to start by telling us who you are and what your credentials are. It would make a world of difference to know if the person telling us the theory is someone with a PH.d in Atmospheric Science and has worked as a Climatologist for 30 years for NOAA, or some kid who just graduated high school and taking some online courses at Mississippi State who thinks he has the answer to everything.

You refuse to provide us any personal information about who you are, what your credentials are, where you're from, what line of work you're in. All things that would add credibility to your theory. And then when I search your name on Google I only get 7 hits. I'm sorry, but I call complete and utter BS on this.

 

[Jim wyman]

Dave,
If you had just shown us some data on this and provided step by step logic to your conclusions to support your theory, MAYBE, just MAYBE, someone would have listened....Graphs, photos, even a simple text write-up might have remotely convinced someone as to where you were going with this. Repeated attempts by members of this forum asking you to present such evidence have been met with silence and even further jibberish.... IF you haven't figured it out by now - NO one wants to listen to you anymore.... You just keep digging yourself deeper and deeper into the muck...Sooner or later, your head is going to go under....

Jim

 

[Greg Campbell]

Perhaps even more damning than lack of data is the complete lack of a reason why tornadoes should occur along a curve.

If someone looks hard enough, they will likely find an outbreak or two that developed along a cardiod-like line. Given the curving shapes interacting airmasses can assume, this sounds plausible. That still leaves us scratching out heads and wondering, "OK. So what?" Last I looked, there are no giant Spirograph wheels churning in the sky, describing perfect cardioid arcs and dropping tornadoes at periodic intervals. To claim some insight into tornadogenesis without proposing a tentative causal mechanism is pointless. You may as well claim that the cardioids I see in my bowl of fruit loops (trust me, they're in there! ) will predict the stock market. IMO, it's just baseless, wild-eyed crackpottery.

Dave, if you want to talk about how things like Coriolis forces, jet streaks and a thousand other forces can/might interact to generate cardioid shaped frontal boundaries, zones of uplift, or something - then you will have something to talk about. Throw us a bone, dude! Until then, you seem to be arguing that a simple observation or two (tornadoes on a curve) somehow represents anything more than coincidence. And since no one else can see even these supposed observations....

OK, I'm done.

 

[Dave Van Grun]

This is how it all started! I am reading an article in WEATHERWISE about am obscure tornado outbreak in the Midwest on March 20, 1976(after Fujita, CLOUDTOPS TO SUCTION VORTICES.) I note the questions Professor Fujita asked in the article which gets me thinking. I had obtained an HP 25 for Physics class and I used it to establish Least Distance by means of Great Circle calculations between storms( I had also obtained a computer printout for Kansas City for the Super outbreak and I went from storm to storm to assess respective distances, do you know a Dr. Horace Hudson from there because he gave it free to me although he told me that the cost should have been thirty bucks). In addition I used the HP to address the nine tornadoes of Storm B(Hoyleton et al storms) which by my accounting was

A exp^-kxt sinBx

But Professor Fujita was interested seemingly in these nine tornadoes to that extent, he was interested in the overall question of why these storms occurred as they did(In my opinion and from thirty-three year memory). From this, I went to April 11, 1965, Palm Sunday event and noticed some striking resemblances and I asked the question: Is there a common thread here! I then checked the basic meteorological equations and found something interesting in the pressure field and horizontal velocity, the basic Newtonian relationships found in first year Dynamic Meteorology courses.

du/dt=-1/rhopartial pressure/partial x +fv
dy/dt=-1/rhopartial pressure/partial y-fu

These are balancing terms for each. I then wondered what would happen in a two-dimensional format

d(u+v)/dt=-1/rho(partial pressure/partial x+partial pressure/partial y)-f(u-v)

Taking the term,f(u-v) which is the two-dimensional aspect of the Coriolis effect times the u and v components in a zonal format, subjecting this to a double integration and solving, I found the outcome to be the cardioid(It has been also confirmed by a prominent mathematician). We are talking only of a series/sequencing in the domain [0,pi] and not [0,2pi]. This is interesting! I applied it to the Palm Sunday outbreak with the outcome

Storm Grouping x coordinate y coordinate
B,A,C -(2cosx-cos2x) (2sin x-sin2x)
D,F,E (2sin x-sin2x) -(2cosx-cos2x)
G and 2 Lake Michigan waterspouts (2cosx-cos2x) -(2sin x-sin2x)
J,K,L,M -(2sin x-sin2x) (2cosx-cos2x)
H,I,00826,N -(2cosx-cos2x) -(2sin x-sin2x)
00626,00726,[J,K],O -(2cosx-cos2x) -(2sin x-sin2x)
L,P,Q,R -(2cosx-cos2x) -(2sin x-sin2x)

Think about it! What might be the likelihood that this outbreak is entirely deterministic? It is very profound that these storms should fit a pattern that I am raising here. It needs testing from an objective point of view which is why I am coming to this website!

If you guys want to test it, go right ahead!

 

[L.B. LaForce]

From what I understand, the cardioid shape DOES NOT come from the path/track of the tornado. the Cardioid shape comes from the distance between the tornado families. That the distance from storm A to storm B. Those distances plotted out on a polar graph represent the shape of ONE HALF of the cardioid shape, or the "lobe."

 

[Jim wyman]

Reminds of that thing called a ....what is it.. deals with wind direction and height.... Hmmm ... HODOGRAPH!

 

[L.B. LaForce]

Yeah, looks like a hodograph. Yes Jeff, that is another thing I wondered too. I think he is referring to the distance between the tornadoes-whether it be when they touchdown, or lift..I do not know.

EDIT: too many holes in his theory. I need more information on these questions we have. He just keeps posting all this calculus stuff, which not everyone knows. Im trying to simplify it, but arrggghhh!!!!

 

[Jeff Duda]

Reminds of that thing called a ....what is it.. deals with wind direction and height.... Hmmm ... HODOGRAPH!

Just FYI, the Ekman Spiral Dave has mentioned several times is used to model an Ekman boundary layer hodograph. There's a good picture of it in the Dynamic Meteorology, fourth edition, by Holton, Fig. 5.5, pg. 131. (Used that book in both dynamics courses)

 

[Dave Van Grun]

If the cardioid is implicated in tornado outbreaks, then the critical points within that curve are suspect. The distance between storms in my view reflects the distances between those critical points. Any given area therefore will be comprised of suspect locations commensurate with those critical points involved. These areas can be as small as about 700 miles or s large as 20,000 square miles. In each case four storms were involved(curious!). In the case involving the small area, I believe that in the Browning Study, a mistake was made in thinking that Storms H-1 and H-2 were NOT separate and distinct storms but it is understandable why these were thought to be impulses from the same storm even though two storms may have (and probably) impinged on each one another's turf. Is it not true that the Tornado Watch Box does enclose a 20,000 square mile area which was probably derived from the Super outbreak and isn't interesting that four storm families enclose this area? The differences between these two outbreaks involves the amount of energy associated with the impulses deriving these respective areas of tornadoes. I believe that the national weather service must address what energies may point to tornado strike areas of the future. For example, in the Hoxit and Chapell assessment of the Super outbreak, five separate and distinct low pressure areas essentially combined into the single depression over Iowa which initiated all those 148 tornadoes. The energies involved in that accommodating five low centers into one should be assessed as to the various outcomes of the storms then derived if the cardioid series/sequencing is to have any support, as in, circles(pressure fields) to tornado strike areas(cardioid halves) with storms being located at the critical points!

 

[John Cameron]

Mr Van Grun,

Any thoughts on the Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak, April 10, 1979?

 

[Lanny Dean]

When you say "critical points" are you referring to places in which dy/dx = dx/dy = 0?

Jeff,
you might want to give him a little while....so that he may have a chance to go back over this: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Calculus-2063/2009/7/Tornado-outbreaks-deterministic-events.htm

Dave, all I can say is shame on you. Interesting e-mail I received regarding someone posting on StormTrack....seems as though someone is/was trying to take credit for somebody elses hard work.

What a shame. And even if you were/are a colleague of this guy, it still does not make it right. My hunch, as stated before, is that you are not and were not.

Whatever!

This guy should have his ass handed to him IMO. Not only myself but most others who have participated in this thread certainly gave him the time of day per say. I re started this thread because I was very interested....maybe I should say shame on me???

I am out of here!

 

[Jacob Ferden]

Yep, good bye. Enough wasted time.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Can we just have this thread stricken from the record? Is there a way I can delete my posts on this thread for having even given it a chance?

EDIT: unfortunately I could only delete some of my more recent posts. What sickens me more is knowing there's some "expert" out there for real (this Scotto guy on that site) blabbering this crap elsewhere.

DUMB!

 

[Michael Nicolaou]

Nice to see that Lanny, great work as always. Maybe a new job as PI and a storm junkie as you seem to always sniff out and deliver the goods.

Am I the only one amused by the fact that this was in the "Teens" section of the website:

Experts > Teens > Homework/Study Tips > Calculus > Tornado outbreaks as deterministic events

 

[Jacob Ferden]

Am I the only one amused by the fact that this was in the "Teens" section of the website:

Experts > Teens > Homework/Study Tips > Calculus > Tornado outbreaks as deterministic events

Amusing, yes. Surprising, no.