• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Windspeed Estimate Video Scale?

Dave Gallaher

Dave Gallaher

EF5
Joined
Jan 8, 2005
Messages
794
Location
Huntsville, Alabama
While watching Tornado Alley on IMAX last weekend and wondering what the windspeeds were in some of Casey's penetrated intercepts, I wondered if anyone has ever set up a reference page of videos that would represent different velocities by interaction with trees.

I recognize that a margin of error would be present depending upon tree species, growth age, terrain features, etc. But after all these years of storm videos, some good examples should be available from the ST archives.

I've sought to educate my own estimates by guessing, then verifying with measurements posted by NWS. It'd be nice to have a video scale that showed representatives of confirmed velocities. Perhaps some spotter trainings offer this? I don't think I've encountered it in the various spotter classes I've taken.
 
Starting at about 0:39 in this video, you'll see sustained winds over 50 mph with a gust to 61 mph. The picture quality wasn't great, and there aren't many objects to see affected, but it's something.
 
Being the novice that I am, this is an idea I've wondered about. Could a tornado be rated in a video based on what it does to trees. And not just interaction with trees, but with any object where the tor causes a change in said object.
I would think several possible factors would need to be accounted for: distance from the tor, lighting, video quality, surrounding meso components and larger regional weather phenomena...I'm sure others can add more criteria that would need to be considered. Given that, is the idea of using video to rate a tornado's wind speed impossible???....I've just blown my head apart...I need to go get a coffee now.
 
I would think it is possible to get at least a rough estimate on windspeed by measuring how fast an object in the video is moving, however its probably not going to be very accurate. Still, this is a pretty interesting idea.
 
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