Maybe it’s just because I’m a weather dork, I don’t know, but it pisses me off to end when people confuse tornados with hurricanes or vice versa. They are not the same thing. They LOOK completely different. They are DIFFERENT weather events. They form from DIFFERENT causes. They LOOK completely different.
Even news reports do this. “A powerful tornado swept through the southern U.S. this weekend…” as they show a clip of a HURRICANE. A hurricane is NOT just a big Tornado!
Ever seen a tornado? Ever seen a hurricane? Are they the same thing? NO NO NO. Why is this so difficult for so many peopel to comprehend?
Tornado != Hurricane
A couple of months or so back one of the local weather guys got the idea of describing the differences between a hurricane and a tornado.
This is SOUTHERN LOUISIANA. People don’t know what a HURRICANE is??? Let alone the fact that it’s way the fuck bigger than a tornado, which often happen when hurricanes make landfall?
I think the problem started when they actually gave weather reporters the grand title of “meteorologist” in order to give the weather guy more air time. Why? Ferthaluvvagod, just tell us: rainy or sunny? If they can’t get that right, how can we possibly expect them to grasp a concept of “hurricane does not equal TORNADO!!”
There was a Tornado out here on the west coast last year. One (radio) reporter actually said: “I wonder if this is a sign of an incoming hurricane.” ::sigh:: I can only plead our location and lack of experience.
If you’ve lived your whole life in a desert community or setting, can you tell the difference between a monsoon and an afternoon rain shower? Both of 'em involve water coming out of the sky, but beyond that…
(After a monet’s thought, it occurs to me that a better analogy might be hail and freezing rain. They’re similar, but not identical.)
Of course, in this century, it’s a bit hard to forgive this kind of ignorance for most, but if you genuinely have never experienced either of the two, and aren’t likely to in the near future, I can see where it’d be a low priority for you to remember which is which.
OTOH, just looking at a weather map, the difference between a hurricane, covering half a state, and a tornado showing up as a little bitty dot, are pretty fucking obvious.
More likely because WWII was a long time ago and the both the Hurricane and the Tornado were overshadowed by sexier planes–the Hurricane by the less numerous but superior Spitfire and the Tornado by the Typhoon (which was a close variant of the Tornado, but with an engine that actually worked).
Of course, any confusion between a (Hawker) Hurricane and the current (BAe) Tornado is just silly, given all the photos of the more recent craft in the two Gulf Wars.
I think that I had rather have the threat of tornados than hurricanes. There is not too much you can do by the time you find out a tornado is coming. But with a hurricane, you have to make all sorts of decisions and board up the house and get caught in traffic.
In the movie The Manchurian Candidate, Frank Sinatra is seen holding a newspaper headline that says, Hurricane Sweeps the Midwest.
Skeezix, I’m not excusing the stupidity, just putting forth a theory. There’s obviously a huge difference and one is not an indicator of the other.
Most people who were born and raised around here WOULDN’T know the difference between freezing rain and hail, as we usually get both at the same time and then, only for short periods of time. That is, unless you live where the snow is SUPPOSED to be, in the Sierras. I’m a little surprised though, that people in whiterabbit’s area have trouble distinguishing the two…it’s like saying out here “I can’t tell the difference between an earthquake and an aftershock.”
Yes, an aftershock IS just a smaller earthquake. A tornado is NOT just a smaller hurricane. They are two completely different and unrelated weather phenomenon (though a hurricane can spawn tornados).
Yeah, there is a big difference. Although hurricanes have a way of spawning tornados in its path. Unlike Zoe, I would rather have the threat of a hurricane simply because they last longer, and you can more readily prepare for them if you choose. I remember living in Waco, about the southern edge of tornado alley, looking at the clouds, seeing two or three in the distance getting eerily low and funnel looking.
Speaking of tornados and Waco, this is the 50th anniversity of a devastating tornado that killed over 100 people in downtown Waco. Here is a link for the curios. Here are a couple of pics.
When you folks on the east coast get your crappy weather it effects us in the middle to an extent.
Maybe that is what Maureens weather man meant? Unless he thought that the west coast was really going to have a hurricane?
I mean it doesn’t always happen that we get a “backlash” (for lack of better term) from the easts crappy weather, but you can sure tell.
The west coast doesn’t get hurricanes does it? You guys have other issuse with the earth trying to come apart on you.
I might not know that but I at least I do know the difference between tornados and hurricanes.
Every hurricane I’ve been through (I live on the coast - and I mean a few blocks from the water - of South Carolina) has spawned tornadoes. So I can sort of see where a weather person might show a picture of a hurricane and mention the tornado that it created, although it really seems like the hurricane would be the leading story.
I have no idea why Maureen’s weather person thought a tornado might be a sign of an incoming hurricane. For one thing, they really don’t have to guess at these things - a hurricane isn’t hard to spot when it’s on its way to landfall.
I, too, live 2 blocks from the ocean in SC and a couple of gentlemen called Hugo and Floyd certainly left no doubt about what a hurricane is. I also called Grapevine, TX home for a while and have experienced some rather intimate proximity to a tornado or 2 as well. A tornado is like a laser beam and a hurricane is like an A-bomb. I’ll take my chances with the laser beam any day.
We have had a few hurricane warnings that I can remember, but for the most part, they don’t come this far up and they always get downgraded to “tropical storm warning” within a couple hours. We don’t get hit nearly as hard as the southeast coast.
I have no idea why the moron on the radio speculated why we’d have a hurricane, but I think the tornado freaked a lot of people out. Certainly it’s not something you’re used to seeing on your commute home. Oh, look. A tornado. Bumper to bumper traffic. This should be interesting.