It’s dark and rainy outside right now.
I’ve been reading books about the weather.
Tornados: Has anyone ever been thrown around in one and lived?
Is it safer in the house, car, or local library?
What would happen if the barometer fell way farther than ever before?
Yes, people have been picked up and carried around by tornadoes and lived. I don’t have cites off-hand, sorry, but a lifetime in Illinois has primed me with plenty of well-substantiated anecdotes. Actually, the way a tornado kills you is, it throws things at you at 200 mph. It picks up debris, like doorknobs from the houses it’s trashed, and throws them at your head. This is why you need to be under cover.
A car is the worst place to be, because a tornado will pick it up and twirl it around and slam it down, and you don’t want to be inside. You are much better off to get out of the car and go lie down flat in a ditch, or get up under an overpass, if you’re on the interstate. The best place to be, of course, is down in a basement or cellar. Tornadoes tend to pick up everything that sticks up above ground level, but they usually don’t have enough suction to take the basement stuff with them. When you’re in the basement, you need to crouch against a solid wall, away from the basement windows, and away from the chimney stack if there is one (they tend to get dumped over, on you if you’re right next to it), and cover your head with your arms. This is to keep 200 mph doorknobs from hitting you.
Depending on what kind of construction your library is, you might be safer there than at home (but don’t leave home to find one!) An old-fashioned Carnegie Public Library built of stone, is practically tornado-proof. Go down in the basement and stay away from the windows–crouch against a wall, not against a bookshelf.
However, if the library is the same kind of construction as a home, or God forbid, a mobile home, you’re better off at home, because at least then you’ll be HOME. After a tornado, the streets are sometime completely impassable, what with downed power lines and tree limbs and local flooding, and you might have trouble getting home.
Mobile homes (trailers) are death traps. You’re far, far safer out in the ditch along the road, lying flat, than in a trailer of any kind, even the ones with so-called “hurricane”, “storm”, or “tornado” anchors. A big F-5 tornado laughs at hurricane anchors, ha-ha!
AFAIK, the barometer doesn’t have any particular predictive capabilities where tornadoes are concerned. Was that what you meant? That if you see the barometer suddenly plummet, it means a tornado is a-comin’? I have never heard this. Where are you? You can look on the National Weather Service Warnings Chart http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/nationalwarnings.html and see exactly what’s going on where you are, straight from the horse’s mouth. Hint: put the name of your town into Find On This Page.
Then it’s broken and it’s time to buy a new barometer.
Oh, I think I know what she’s getting at. Perfect Storm, is that it? There’s something in there about record low barometer readings? If that’s it, that has to do with storms known as “nor’easters”, which are essentially oceanic gales and which have nothing to do with tornadoes.
DANGER!!!
Sorry to disagree, DDG but PLEASE EVERYONE, if you’re in your car and a tornado is approaching, DO get out of and away from the car, DO find a ditch or low area and cover up, but DO NOT GO UNDER AN OVERPASS!!
The famous news footage shot by a group of people who did that is deceptive, and has led to a few people getting in serious trouble! The tornado in the video was an F0 (weakest tornado). What happens when stronger tornadoes go over bridges is that they pretty much suck everything (and everybody) out from under the bridge and deposit it/them as debris.
Here’s a link to a good fact sheet regarding tornadoes. I can’t find a link right now to an authoritative statement about overpasses, but I’ll keep looking.
Here’s the link I wanted. Looks like I was wrong about the “suction” of the tornado passing over, but I was right about the danger. Please read the section about overpasses!
Depending on the situation, if you’re in a car, your best bet may be to outrun the tornado. Twisters can move at a max of about 60 mph; if you’re on a freeway heading in the right direction (i.e., away), and other conditions allow for safe movement at high speed (visibility may be low or the road may be slick due to rain), then just get outta there.
As for pressure: The center of a tornado has the lowest pressures which ever occur naturally at the surface of the Earth, but that won’t help you much as a warning, because by the time you’re at the center, you probably already know there’s a tornado. Tornadoes are usually preceded by a significant drop in the barometer, but no more than you’d get for a bad thunderstorm-- Tornadoes are usually spawned from bad thunderstorms, after all.
Also, to clarify, when getting into shelter in a basement, you want to stay away from the walls. This is where the debris is deposited. Get into a small interior room, and/or under a sturdy piece of furniture (workbench).
What xenophone41 said about highway overpasses is absolutely correct. In the May 1999 OKC outbreak, people were killed going under the overpasses. In fact, to the dismay of many, people were actually LEAVING THEIR HOUSES TO GO TO THE NEAREST OVERPASS. Like Chronos said, if you are driving, the safest thing would be to gauge the tornado’s speed and direction (doesn’t take long). They can reach speeds of 60mph, but this is often in the early spring months. During much of spring and summer, 25-35 mph is much more frequent, and lower speeds are not uncommon. HOWEVER, if you can’t see a tornado (due to clouds or rain) and MUST make a decision, get into a ditch or a culvert. SOME overpass bridges are decent, especially if you can crawl up into between the girders, but these are fairly rare and a bad idea unless you know exactly what type it is before you get there, i.e. not a good idea in most cases. Many bridges are just flat concrete, and are a very bad idea, due to the funneling effect.
Vis, the safe storm chaser
Bad Idea. (during a tornado) Being anywhere under an overpass is dumb. It acts like a wind tunnel and can amplify tornado winds. And if the tornado is an f[2] or greater you will get sucked out.
The best place to be sheltered from an on-coming tornado is below ground.
Tornados are strange, some people have literally been thrown for miles, survived and ended up with out a blemish scratch or broken bone.
Thank you for the good advice.
What I meant about the barometer was; What happens if it gets too low(the lowest in Ohio was the storm of 76 28.28)
What happens to the human body? Whta happens if it gets too high? say above 31.00?
Really nice weather?
Eh, I went to Xenophon’s link, which had another link in it http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/papers/overpass.html and I read both of them, and I’m sorry, but I don’t see a lot of facts at either website, just a lot of conjecture. “We think this might happen…” etc. I think the Southern Region National Weather Service is just trying to cover their asses in case someone does get killed while sheltering under an overpass. Then they can say, “We told you not to…” So I remain unconvinced.
Re trying to out-drive a tornado, this only works if you are absolutely certain which direction it’s heading, and you can drive at right angles to it. In the Wichita Falls tornado of (I think) 1983, 29 people were killed, and most of them were in their cars trying to escape.
With really low barometric pressure, like in the middle of a severe gale, the effect on the human body is, AFAIK, nil. Nothin’ bad happens to you, other than saying, “Oh, gee, there go the lights.” I don’t know where’d you go to experience extremely high barometric pressure, other than some kind of scientific lab.
Well, I was about to jump in with the useful link to the Nat’l Weather Service presentation about the Oklahoma City tornadoes last year, but I see Duck Duck Goose has beat me to it. Reading through it, there is some ‘cover-our-ass’ type reasoning in there from the NWS folks, but the simple fact remains that overpasses are horrendously bad places to be in a tornado. It’s not so much because you’ll get sucked/blown out into the storm (though that does happen too), but the fact that you’re a very exposed target for whatever debris happens to come whirling by at two or three hundred miles an hour.
One chilling excerpt from the site, regarding an overpass in Moore, OK:
There were approximately 12 people under the bridge (the exact number is not known). Perhaps it’s possible to argue that since there were 12 there and only 1 died, that’s not bad. Unfortunately, what has not been well-publicized are the horrific injuries suffered by all but one of the survivors under the bridge. The casualties all had serious injuries, some life-threatening, from the effects of flying debris. Their injuries included, but are not limited to: compound fractures and shattered bones, missing fingers, missing ears, missing noses, and being impaled by pieces of shingles, 2x4s, etc…
You should go back and look at slides 14 and 15, which are not conjecture. They show that going up under an overpass puts you back into the high wind force area of the tornado’s circulation, actually increasing your chance of being battered by debris and/or becoming debris.
Wind speeds approach 0 near ground level. This fact alone is enough to persuade me to seek shelter in a ditch rather than an overpass.
BTW, DDG, I thought the rest of your information/advice was very good.
vanilla: This site gives very complete and understandable details regarding air pressure and its relationship to various meteorological phenomena. As DDG said, no natural changes in barometric pressure you’re likely to experience are dangerous in and of themselves. (If you intend to ever spend time at high altitudes — > 10K feet above sea level — then you should research the medical effects of low pressure / low oxygen environments.)
So DDG, if you think “overpasses” are good shelter from an approching tornado then I suggest you get under one next time a tornado is approaching.
Quoth DDG:
IIRC, it was 1979 (no big deal), and most of the people were killed were in a parking lot of a supermarket, who tried to run away from the storm, instead of following proper procedures of getting into an enclosed small area inside the store.
Vis