Checking in here in North Texas. Rough couple of days. I’ve been through tornados and I’ve been through hurricanes. At least with hurricanes you know they’re coming. It will be what it will be for at least another month.
Hurricanes are only really dangerous if you are in the area that is affected by the storm surge. Move a couple of miles inland with your multiple days of warning and you are mostly out of danger. Unlike a tornado that could strike without warning while you are sleeping.
Once you get away from the immediate coast then you are dealing with a lot of rain which can happen without a hurricane. It floods in the usual spots which are easy to avoid.
Earlier this evening, I was driving home, to suburban Chicago, from visiting my family in Green Bay. I’d pulled off at an exit just before the IL/WI state line, intending to get a bite to eat. As I got out of my car, the tornado sirens went off.
I quickly pulled up my weather radar app, and saw that there was a nasty little storm cell about 20 miles west of me (which had led the NWS to issue the tornado warning). I got back in the car, got back on the highway, and started driving south on I-94 again, figuring I had enough time to get out of harm’s way (I was correct), but also figuring that, if the weather really started getting ugly, I would be pulling over, getting out of my car, and getting down into the ditch.
Ok. Not to ever disparage your quick thinking and very good luck.
The PTB around here say never try to out drive a tornado and never get in a ditch. Hail can beat the, umm…hell out of you. Tree/branches/debris could land on you.
Rain water could wash you down the ditch.
There’s really no safe place driving in a tornado. Maybe a long tunnel, if available.
But I think you were far enough away.
I admit, it was a bit of an educated risk that I took. I knew where the storm was, thanks to my radar app, and I knew that it wasn’t going to be moving in the direction of my travel: it was 20 miles due west of me, and it was moving ENE, while I would be driving due south. The mental math that I did told me that, by the time the storm (which was a compact, isolated cell) reached the N/S highway I was on, I would be well south of it.
But, again, I also had determined that, if I could see things starting to get bad to my immediate west, I would be pulling over and sheltering.
Also, yes, in fact, if you are out in the open (i.e., on a road), and you have to shelter from a tornado, the NWS does recommend a ditch.
I was watching the Yellowstone prequel 1883 a while back, there was a pretty intense tornado scene. I had to wonder how freaked out you would be if you had never seen one and had no idea what you’d be in for.
While it can be random, in my experience most tornadoes or storm cells capable of producing tornadoes for my area develop to the SW near Lawton or to the W in the El Reno/Minco area. Tornadic cells are more likely to form over flat terrain vs hilly, and western Oklahoma is definitely flat!
Moore is a suburb that started growing rapidly in the 1990s, so it’s very possible that tornadoes used to go through there and no one really noticed because it was farmland. However, that poor city has had 4 EF4 or EF5 tornadoes since 1999. That is every EF4 or EF5 that touched down in Oklahoma County (plus one) ended up going through Moore.
Moore has a lot going for it - good schools, relatively affordable housing, low crime, etc. But this particular Okie would be hard-pressed to actually consider moving there!
I remember reading that native peoples were able to discern from observing the sky when a dangerous storm was forming, or if one was approaching from a distance. They of course didn’t have sophisticated weather tracking and warning like we have today, but they were more in touch with the natural world than the average person is today. We depend on scientific weather forecasting models to tell us when there is a high likelihood of a significant weather event and can plan for it accordingly whether is materializes or not.
How the native peoples handled these events is another question. Since many were at least partly nomadic I assume they would quickly pack up their village and ride out of the area, but as already been said, it’s hard to out run a tornado.
I’m sure there were settlers back then who had lived through dangerous storms and knew what the sky looked like before they happened, but perhaps not the ones who had just come from somewhere where tornadoes were unheard of. I assume they would have been very freaked out the first time they saw one.
Mojave Desert? Nope, sorry. Last biggie earthquake out there was centered in Landers, California, in 1992. Granted, it’s a sparsely populated area, so the damage was nothing like you’d get in downtown LA.
~VOW
Wasn’t that a good series?
The Tornado part was nicely done. In a Hollywood sorta way.
I have actually seen about 5 tornadoes on the ground in my life, mostly in southern Oklahoma. I was within a couple of hundred yards of a small funnel but it wasn’t visible due to the dense rain. The most memorable one was a large funnel we sighted from the house. We were standing in the sunshine and the storm was about two miles away moving due east. I called a friend who was in the path of the tornado to warn him but it drew back into the clouds before it reached is house. Only later did we hear that it had destroyed a trailer park and damaged the local airport when it touched down.
What scares me more than the tornado is a microburst. They can be completely unexpected, small but very powerfull. One struck a friends trailer home, completely destroying it and toppling trees. Hs wife died and he ended up in the hospital yet the other houses in the neighborhood were untouched. Pretty rare but very dangerous!
I’ve seen dust devils in the Mojave. I know most aren’t nearly as strong as a tornado. When one went through our bivouac one guy stood there are tried to will it away. It didn’t work. He was finding sand in places he didn’t know he had but he was unharmed. That’s as close as I got. Some were relatively close to me in Texas but didn’t see one.
Tornado Alley is moving AWAY from me (NE KS).
https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news/2024-06-04-tornado-alley-shifted-study-coleman-et-al-2024
Watching Daniel Shaw’s live stream from Nebraska at the moment. No tornadoes yet but there are some fantastic-looking cloud formations making their way across the plains.
Sun May 26, my little hometown was hit with a tornado warning. At 7 am, i was lying around in bed listening to the rain and distant thunder. Then my phone goes with a tornado warning. A tornado has been sighted in the town 5 miles west of me. I turn on the TV to the local station and the weatherman is telling all people in my town to take cover.
I go to the interior bathroom, and sure enough the house starts to rock, the wind is really blowing. I am thinking is this it? Turns out it was “only” straight line winds (probably in excess of 80 mph). Power is out (for 61 hours) at my house. The only remaining tree (a small one) in my yard is uprooted, I got trash (shingles, outside plastic furniture, vinyl fences) and limbs from all the neighbors to my west. I am still picking up limbs from my neighbor to the west who really needed to get a tree surgeon before the storm.
There were massive trees down around town. Big Oak trees were uprooted while other Oak trees were shredded at the trunk. Oak trees that 5 or 6 ft in diameter.
Fortunately my house was not damaged, but my girlfriends house (1/2 block away) lost a bunch of shingles in her roof. she had a couple big tree limbs on her roof. Her power was out for 82 hours. Her big pecan tree was hardly damaged.
Fortunately, no fatalities in my town and there wasn’t much catastrophic property damage.
Good grief. I’m glad you’re ok.