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The devastation in northern Alabama seems to have affected our member Stanman who has not been onsite since early Thursday morning. Let us hope that it is just disruption of internet or electricity and that Stan is okay. There may be other BC members who are having connectivity problems in this extreme weather, remember them also.
Hugs to all,
Erin
Comments
My Power
My Power was out for several hours Thursday due to really strong winds...though not tornado bad, they left a lot of destruction in my area.
My heart goes out to all those affected in the South, I hope that any BC Members who live in those areas are safe and sound :)
EOF
The news report
on the BBC said 300 people were killed or injured in the storms and that Obama was visiting the area today. However one describes it, it's a tragedy of huge proportion and one feels for those who've lost family, friends ond property. Let's hope Stan will be back with us soon and any other reader/members in the affected areas.
Angharad
Angharad
Local reports here are
Local reports here are saying 280 in total at last count, an hour ago 2:50 a.m. CST. 200 in Alabama, Tuscaloosa area mostly. Watching it most of the day yesterday it seemed like she death rate was going up by ten every time I looked, so I stopped looking at 200 and woke up this morning to this. I expect it will only get worse today.
All they're showing on the news is the mile-wide tornado that ran through Tuscaloosa eating everything in its path, and finding the most disturbing stories imaginable of children being killed. It's all very... disturbing to know that I was driving through there not too long ago.
~Lili
Blog: http://lilithlangtree.tglibrary.com/
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~Lili
Write the story that you most desperately want to read.
My Prayers for them.
With the US Government hosting me, I lived for a short time in Augusta, GA and later in Lawton, OK and I must say that the weather they have down there felt insane to me. My prayers go out to anyone who lives there.
I will return, inshallah, to Oregon soon and feel fortunate that so far the worst the weather does is give me soggy clothing.
Much peace
Khadijah
Seen the damage a strong -- F5 -- tornado and straight line...
winds off the leading edge of a thunderstorm can do and these people suffered.
Although tornadoes are less common here in Wisconsin than in Tornado Alley -- IE East Texas/Arkansas/Oklahoma we do get the occasional F5 -- IE winds in excess of 230MPH or some such insane speed.
I have seen what and F5 or F4 can do. Trees sheared of like giant broken celery stalks. Houses like a bulldozer leveled them the spread the remains around. Not a pretty sight.
I hope no one we know or loved ones they know were hurt.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
From National Geographic:
Erin mentioned this to me last night, she was worried about those that haven't been on the site since the storm, and we both scoffed at the idea that a mile-wide tornado could be all that powerful.
See, we're both the products of "Tornado Alley" in the U.S. Midwest and big tornados are usually less powerful than the small ones. So... this is really extremely scary.
Tuscaloosa Tornado Shattered Record?
The mile-wide (1.6-kilometer-wide) Tuscaloosa tornado may have had winds exceeding 260 miles an hour (418 kilometers an hour), which would make it an F5 storm on the Fujita scale. The scale ranks tornadoes from F1 to F5 based on wind speeds and destructive potential.
(Learn what happens inside a twister.)
Investigators are trying to determine how long the tornado, which originated just southwest of Tuscaloosa, stayed on the ground.
Tornadoes usually touch the ground for only a few miles before they dissipate. But favorable meteorological conditions may have sustained the Tuscaloosa twister for a record-breaking trek of 300 miles (482 kilometers) across Alabama and Georgia. (See more tornado pictures.)
"There were no limitations," said tornado chaser Samaras. "It went absolutely crazy. It had nothing but hundreds of miles to grow and develop."
The current record for a tornado's ground time is three and a half hours, set in 1925 by a twister that killed 747 people as it moved 219 miles (352 kilometers) across Missouri and Illinois before falling apart in Indiana.
Wednesday night's tornado outburst was the worst since April 3, 1974, when 330 people were killed from Alabama to Indiana (see map), experts say. (Also see pictures: "Tornadoes Ravage U.S. South" [2008].)
The outbreak was also the second to strike the South in fewer than two weeks. On April 16, a similar system of violent thunderstorms spawned about 140 tornadoes, killing 22 people in North Carolina.
Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
The Infamous Intersex Transgender Asian Lesbian Atheist Chick of the Ozarks
Long Track & monster tornados
For examples of long-track f-5 tornadoes you need look no further than the May 3rd, 1999 supertwister that hit Oklahoma City. Honestly, while mile-wide and long-track tornadoes are not common, they shouldn't be considered impossible or even improbable. And it takes a whole lot more energy to form and sustain a wide funnel, so the strength of such a twister should be suspected. In fact when a tornado funnel thins out, we refer to it as "roping out" the final stage before dissipation.
I wish I had the links and resources available to me that I have at home, there is an excellent series of pictures showing the growth of this funnel. It was tracked for something like an hour or more before hitting the Oklahoma City area with wind speeds at the top of the Fujita scale. The devastation in Alabama may end up being more costly, but I'm not sure the actual tornado strength is as high.
But the damage in Alabama is real, and the death toll is much higher. I grieve for these people and mourn their losses and urge everybody to do what they can to help. As an American Red Cross Disaster Volunteer I wish I could be part of the "boots on the ground" efforts, but it's not the sort of thing you do 3 weeks after open heart surgery. So I've made my donation to the ARC disaster relief, and would urge everybody to likewise pick a group or organization involved in relief efforts and make a donation to assist them.
Karen J.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Speaking as someone that
Speaking as someone that grew up in Birmingham (Alabama, not it's UK namesake), I can say there are few things that are taken more seriously than a tornado, especially an F5. After making sure the family I have that still live there were okay, I'll admit I stopped watching/reading about it cause I knew the news would only get more disheartening as the death-toll rises. The weirdest and most disturbing thing I've heard (rumor, not substantiated) is that objects/property originating in Tuscaloosa have been found in or near Birmingham, which is about 50-60 miles away. It's frankly a miracle that anyone in the path of one of these monsters ever survives.
The worse part is that they often seem to hit the poor parts of communities, where the structures are closer together and less likely to withstand even a small tornado, never mind the mile-wide bastards that were involved this time. I pray that they keep finding people alive and basically unharmed.
I'm not surprised at all about
the debris from Tuscaloosa being found in Birmingham...
Here in NC, we've had numerous reports of personal items from the devastation in Sanford showing up 35 and 40 miles from their origination point. Yearbooks, 'boxes' of company receipts -still sealed, heavy metal construction signs...
Once airborne, the upper level winds in the supercell were more than strong enough to carry what was lifted a very very long way.
-sb
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I saw the terrible images on
I saw the terrible images on the news today of the damage caused and my heart goes out to all those people affected by this tragedy. I hope that all BC members and their families in the affected areas are okay.
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
stan
I have not heard from him since the storm hit either and I edit for him often. Most of the tornadoes were F-5 storms. All we can hope it is that he is without power.
Hugs,
Jenna From FL
Moderator/Editor
TopShelf BigCloset
Hugs,
Jenna From FL
Moderator/Editor
TopShelf BigCloset
It is a long road ahead but I will finally become who I should be.
WOW close to home
Wow that is to close to home I hope all is OK and pray for stanman and all others in that region .Last I heard there was over 340 deaths and they have now acounted for everyone yet OUR PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU ALL---RICHIE2
Power Outages
As of an hour ago, news media were reporting 212,000 customers without power in Alabama. That probably represents a half million or more people. As horrific as the number of deaths and injuries from the storms is, there are a thousand times more people than that who are off the 'net for less critical reasons. Many people are without homes, let alone computers, so it may be some time before life gets back to normal for those folks.
There is a high probability that Stan is physically okay. So, do keep him in your thoughts and hope for the best and hope there is someone with him that can help him cope with the difficulties that so many there are facing, but don't despair.
I Think, To Mitigate Future Devastation,
We should do everything we can, especially in the US, to promote action against global heating/climate change. Everywhere in the developed world, the leaders and the people of those countries accept what 99% of climate scientists studying this issue report. Most are doing everything they can to boost energy use efficiency and install renewable energy production. The US, however, is bogged down with propaganda from big oil and coal, bought and payed-for politicians and (probably a religious based) distrust of science and intellectualism.
I believe what was said about storms in the past being as powerful as these recent ones, but with continually increasing energy and moisture in the atmosphere, more of these killer storms are likely. They and the flooding, etc. will become more and more common. Like I've said many times and I realize I'm probably unrealistically pessimistic; this climate change/heating could lead to a mass extinction event like the Permian-Triassic. Humans and other primates might not survive.
There is something that rational people do when faced with an unlikely but tremendously expensive possible future event. That is to buy insurance. We can't go to the nearest ET alliance member, pay the gross national product of the world for a year, and get a new planet if this one stops functioning properly.
There is a real if tiny risk of being hit by a comet or asteroid big enough to cause planet or only continent wide devastation. The US and other advance nations have, however, spend large sums of money to detect such solar system objects. I believe a dual telescope for this purpose is being built in the Andes Mtns. Other telescopes and software systems are being developed and used. Ways of moving such an object are being researched.
We don't have to know that climate change will cause horrible losses of species, property and human populations. All we have to do is realize that this might happen. It is only rational to do everything we can to try and prevent such a negative outcome. "Conservatives" complain that the cost to fight climate change will push the economy back into recession. They fail to see what destruction climate change is already doing and will continue to do. This destruction is also very expensive. Just think; $5 billion in better levies around New Orleans before Katrina could have saved $300 or so billion in damages.
I'm sure you all know what climate activists say about developing renewable energy production and energy conservation industries and competing with foreign countries already developing such facilities. Future jobs and wealth could be ours or could be China's, etc.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Adapting to world weather.
Humans seem to expect to change their environment to their needs and that just seems silly to me. Dikes along rivers would be unnessesary if we did not build in flood prone areas, or if we put things on stilts, or made things waterproof. We build population centers in places that are prone to earthquakes. It is just sad that we expect the world to adapt to us, and view it as a tragedy when people die because we did dumb things.
Perhaps in Tornado Alley, buildings should be underground? They have vehicles that survive Tornadoes, I wonder if we could build buildings that would fend them off?
K
What?
I grew up around houses on stilts. They are built that way in many places.
Do you have any inkling of how _big_ the area called 'Tornado Alley' is? You couldn't build all the houses underground if you tried. Just the thought of it makes me cringe.
As for "Global Climate Change" (the new word for Global Warming, since more and more evidence has been showing up that it's not).. We CAN'T do anything about it. We're not big enough, compared to the Earth.
Mind you, we DO need to reduce pollution and find better power sources. Even with the problems in Japan, I still think nuclear power and thermal depolymerization are going to be the best way to reduce the usage of coal and oil. (TDP produces oil from organic waste)
Humans have also always built in flood prone areas. Look at the Nile River Valley, which used to be one of the most fertile areas in the world - because of the annual floods.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
This is not uncommon already
This is not uncommon and I have been thinking of doing such when I move down south in a few years, There are at least four such homes within twenty miles of where I live at present one at I94 and Putz road, one on Erie just north of four or is four and a half mile road, one in Zion off of hwy 173 and one by the Waukeagan airport. Frequently such homes are open for tour in the national tour of solar homes on in conjunction with other renewable energy promotions like Wisconsin's 22nd Annual Energy Fair June 17-19, 2011. The following link is from a Youtube by a builder of such homes in Texas.
Not a practical goal
Yes, there are few vehicles that have withstood weak tornados, but you wouldn't want one as a daily driver. It is also possible to build a reasonably tornado-proof home, but I suspect that not only is it not practical on the necessary scale, as was already pointed out; most people wouldn't live in them. No windows, thick pre-stress concrete walls and ceilings, think of a cross between fortified bunker and NASA blockhouse with a sq. ft. cost 10 to 15 times that of a more conventional house.
. . . .
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until they speak.
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
Oh contrar on the homes
Homes built to withstand 200 MPH are quite reasonable to live in, and not that uncommon in the islands, There are hover a lot of things that can be done to harden conventional homes, and you might check to see if there are youtubes of some. Just a quick look came up with the following links:
Torando Resistant Housing
Concrete Thinking
Build a Tornado Proof Home
Build a Tornado Proof Home youtube
I live in Alabama
fortunately in our area we missed any real severe weather. I have a newphew in his first year at the University of Alabama. There was a tremendous amount of damage all around the university but he was not in the path of the storm, thank goodness. I've seen my share of these storms in my life and the damage they can wreak is unbelievable.