I love my wife very much. She is reasonably well educated and very successful in her job, but once in awhile, she gets an insane notion in her head and I need to prove her otherwise.
Today’s case in point is that she told me that a lot of damage done by hurricanes are not by the hurricanes themselves, but by the tornados that form on the fringe edges of said hurricanes. In an attempt to keep harmony in the home, I said nothing, but she could tell by the look on my face I thought her mad since tornados are generally created on land (although waterspouts are the rare exception) through wind conditions that have nothing to do with hurricanes which are created over water.
Can someone set the straight dope for us so that one of us can be committed once and for all?
Me too, regarding the Lake Michigan thing. Now that was exciting, since we were sitting on the deck outside our house, and watching the thing form about 100 yards from us.
Most hurricanes produce tornadoes, but are they the main source of wind damage? No way. Most hurricanes produce maybe a handful of tornadoes, but even in those that are prolific tornado producers (say maybe 100+), there is no way that the land area affected by tornadoes is anywhere near the order of magnitude of the land area affected by the hurricane. Furthermore, tropical tornadoes are typically weak (F0 and F1s), and do not last much longer than a couple minutes. This would be from tornadoes on the day or so of landfall.
The outbreaks mentioned above occuring a day or two after landfall occur when the amount of wind shear is still relatively high, but with added surface heating (more breaks between rain bands) the next day or two, those tornadoes are more closely related to their Plains cousins, and can be stronger.
But bottom line, tornadoes are not the main cause of damage. I’d argue that tornado damage is well below 1% of the overall damage on most storms (no cites, but I could probably find some if needed), when you consider storm surge, inland flooding (arguably the biggest damage producer), and strong winds near the coast.
I don’t suppose it makes much difference that a Cat 5 hurricane only has a wind speed rating of an F2 tornado when you consider that Katrina’s hurricane winds themselves span an area over 200 miles wide.
You know a storm is serious when tornados are only a symptom.
I saw some programme about tornados, where they interviewed Dr Fujita (AKA Dr Tornado)
During hurricane Andrew not only were tornados spawned, but also they adapted a pattern where five or six of them were rotating around a central point, sort of a tornado of tornados.
The pattern of detstruction was also characteristic of tornados, even given that you might have thought that the hurricane would mask it, things such as small areas suffering intense destruction(and certain types of impact damage) whilst areas adjacent underwent relatively mild damage.
In terms of wind blown damage, these tornados were very much more destructive than even the peak winds of Andrew, and over far wider areas that you would want to know.