During work a tornado warning came on the radio, it was in a county north of us and heading east at 20 mph.
A co-worker then asked me why you aren’t supposed to try and outrun a storm, her logic is that a car can go WAY faster than 20 mph.
I really didn’t have a good answer so i let her win that debate unopposed. But why aren’t you supposed to try and outrun a storm?
Because storms don’t follow streets, and cars do.
Most likely because most people don’t consider that it’s only going 20mph. Whenever you have to “outrun” something, most people take that to mean that you have to go as fast as you can and end up driving recklessly.
I love tornado stuff - I just don’t like being in them. So I will direct all interested parties to the Discovery Channel show Stormchasers, and team member Reed Timmer’s commercial tornado video site. (Not to worry - plenty of free samples.)
If you really want to get the adrenaline pumping, watch the last season finale of Stormchasers*. The crazy effers were trying to escape from a tornado by driving. In reverse. Down a mud road.
*I would love to provide a link, but my coal-powered computer doesn’t really work for streaming video.
p.s. by all means, check out the new chase vehicles for this upcoming season.
It occurs to me that if you tell people they can outrun a storm, a lot of them may try it, cause a traffic jam, and therefore fail to outrun the storm. So “yes, you can outrun a storm” is sort of a self cancelling assertion; if enough people believe it, it won’t be true.
Beyond traffic jam problems, forecasting storms is not an exact science. People are better off in their houses or storm shelters in the path of a storm than they are taking a risk of being surprised by a storm while they’re in their car in the middle of nowhere.
Yes, it can. But then there things like traffic, stop signals, and turns that sometimes keep it from going nearly as fast as 20 mph. And as mentioned above, a car is limited to certain routes while the storm can take any path. It’s not like being on an unlimited expanse of pavement with no obstructions.
[Thick, Southern, Boss Hogg-like accent]
What we have here, is a failure to evacuate.
[/TSBHA]
The mistake is trying to outrun it, like the Looney Tunes coyote running away from a boulder rolling downhill; the smart thing to do is go off at a right angle.
Just because a tornado is moving to the northeast at 20 miles per hour doesn’t mean you can put a ruler on a map and know where and when it will be at point X. Storms don’t move in an exact stragith line, new funnel clouds develop, the current storm skips, etc.
If you’re going to do anything in a car, drive perpendicular to the direction of the storm. Better yet, get the hell into the basement.
Driving conditions often aren’t very good around tornadoes. Visibility may be low because of heavy rain, and the severe thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes can also do things like flood streets (we got to see this firsthand in Pittsburgh last night). Driving on flooded streets is dangerous in itself, tornado or no tornado. We had a lot of people get stranded in their cars doing just that last night. Tornadoes or other winds in a severe thunderstorm can blow down trees or large branches, which could cut off your escape route from the tornado, or damage you or your car if they fall on you.
Also, just because this particular tornado was moving at 20 MPH, doesn’t mean that’s the fastest a tornado can go, either. From what I understand, 60 is more typical.
Britannica (link) offers this:
If you’re trying to outrun a tornado, you’re (understandably) probably not paying as much attention to other cars in your vicinity as you otherwise would. Like any other kind of distracted driving, that’s going to increase the chance of accidents. A car wreck would be a very bad thing if you’re trying to outrun a tornado.
Tornadoes aren’t always visible. Sometimes they’re hidden by rain, or happen at night. You can’t drive away from a tornado if you can’t see it.
Tornadoes don’t always occur singly. Some storms generate more than one. You could end up in a Scylla and Charybdis type situation.
Your car isn’t going to give you much protection if the tornado does catch you. You’re more protected from tornadoes if you’re lying in a small ditch than you are if you’re in a car.