Severe Weather thread.

Wow. Thanks for posting. I do love Severe weather but hate to hear of loss of life and see property damage like this.

 

You're welcome! He has stated his phone went off 10-15 seconds before it hit. The floor lifted on the MH and then the whole place exploded. For me personally, I was well aware 48 hours in advance that March 3rd had the possibility of being bad. I too love severe weather though. I follow it closely. So, that being said, how do we get the alerts to rural areas? How do we inform people that are weather newbs and just don't understand it? How? Had the possibility for strong tornado's been received by these folks the loss of life would have been lower IF they had taken it seriously. WSFA out of Montgomery covered this tornado a full 10 minutes before it hit the area. The people didn't receive it because their cable provider carried a Georgia station that wasn't covering it. At least not until it made it's way into GA. By then, 23 people in Alabama were already dead. Some kind of emergency alert system should take over all channels to warn people in my opinion.

 

Yeah. But then there's power outages that make TV useless. The only answer is if you're in a tornado prone area, is to get a weather radio capable of receiving severe weather warnings. Or at the very least, a decent smart phone and good weather app that'll give notifications for watches/warnings.

The cellphone alerts are nice but damn, only 10 to 15 seconds before? That definitely doesn't cut it.

I don't live in a tornado prone area and personally have 3 weather radios. 2 portable. So I guess the only answer is to be prepared. Sad

 

I remember visiting my grandparents in Missouri as a kid and they had big sirens on all of the street corners that would sound off if there was a tornado in the area.

They went off a couple times over the years and the sound of those sirens haunts me to this day

 

I took this photo the night of the tornado while doing search and rescue. I can't help but wonder if it was on. There were 3 fatalities in it's general area

 

. I have that radio. Damn. Also if it even had the back up batteries. Those are nice because you don't have to hear the loud warning noise but it will still flash a warning light and scroll the watch/warning. Of course it has to be within eyesight for it to be effective without the noise.

You would assume if it was on that the owner would have been informed of the watches/warnings.

 

Exactly. Which leads me to believe that it wasn't on and had no batteries. The trailer it was in, I believe, was this one in the woods.

 

See if you can find the video on YouTube with James Spann talking about those things. People have come to rely on them. One is down the road from us. You can barely hear it when they test it, much less during a thunderstorm. They don't help unless it's in your yard.

 

Crazy. Of all places to not be prepared in, in a trailer too.

I remember seeing the potential for severe weather for that area. So the info was out there way ahead of time. I guess you can only hope people pay attention. If so, some might have survived.

 

Strong storms possible today in Northern Alabama. Already been one tornado warning for extreme northwestern Lauderdale county





James Spann does the Extreme forecast here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcgFcPrPPhc

 

Ugh.

Said it before and I'll say it again, Blizzard > Tornado any day

 

Yeah. I've been watching the radar. Just constant tornado warnings

 

Truth.

 

Exact region they said there would be a chance for them. Another good forecast by the NWS.

 

Yep. I've been watching them because my niece lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And originally the storms producing tornados were tracking that way. Now they've moved just enough east to where I think she's good.

 

They're firing in Mississippi and Alabama now.

 

This is a good watch when you have 30 mins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBjr-nvA2Jg

 

Good short read from AlabamaWX
https://www.alabamawx.com/?p=186724

Article from link VVV



DISCUSSION: As many parts of North America and Europe begin to prepare and brace in earnest for the onset of the peak severe weather season during a typical calendar year, there a number of premiere issues which are worth understanding. That is, so everyone can have a better idea of how the atmosphere works and why various atmospheric phenomena evolve the way they do. One such example is understanding the different types of wind shear which can occur and their respective relevance.

To get started, wind shear is a naturally occurring aspect of the atmosphere which affects both atmospheric phenomena such as various types of convection as well as all aviation-related concerns. More specifically, wind shear comes in two primary forms which includes speed shear and directional shear. Speed shear is best characterized as any situation in which the wind shear changes in value from two given elevation points. Thus, when speed shear is present, this can often lead to situations in which there are convective storms which do not last for an overly long period as a result of core updrafts being tilted too much. Therefore, with too much speed shear, various thunderstorm forecasts can often end up being a bust in terms of forecast verification.

The other primary type of wind shear (as noted above) is known as directional shear. Directional shear is best characterized as any situation in which the direction of winds at two given points of elevation are different from one another. Often, when there happens to be rather large amounts of directional shear, there are frequent impacts to aviation safety in terms of crosswinds at any point during any flight (regardless of aircraft size) as well as to convective storm development. Impacts to convective storm development are quite often realized by way of there being a greater potential for the development of convective storms with rotating updrafts. Therefore, with greater amounts of directional shear, there can often be a greater threat for supercell thunderstorm assuming all other convective environmental conditions are conducive for supercell thunderstorm development.

Thus, this goes to show that whenever there is a substantial presence of speed and/or directional wind shear in the atmosphere, there a host of different considerations which always need to be made when it comes to both aviation and forecasting interests.

To learn more about other weather education topics, be sure to click here!

 

So this happened the other day. About 3:45p on Tuesday, 4/2, I get a weather alert from one of my weather apps saying severe weather OTW.

I am building a 5 story hotel, this is important.

I go out of the project trailer, and look to the North which is where it was coming from and I see one of the blackest clouds I have ever seen and it was shooting lightning. I immediately call my mason and tell him to tell his guys to drop the tools in place and get off the deck LIKE RIGHT FUCKING NOW!! 10-12 minutes later, the sky opens the fuck up in TORRENTS!!!

So I go run into my trailer because I thought it was just a T storm and I was just going to get on the computer and do office shit until it was over. Well, suddenly out of no where the wind picked up and I am looking out the window and I can't see shit its blowing so hard. The trailer is rocking back and forth, my admin girl is freaking the fuck out and I'm starting to think maybe we shouldnt be in the trailer. So I go back to the window and look out again and I see sheets of ply wood flying through the air, for us to mad dash it into the concrete building its about 100' through a gauntlet of flying debris, so......noooope, not doing that, guess we have to ride this thing out.

What I did not know at the time was we were under a tornado warning and I later learned that that's what it was, a small tornado. Powerlines went down, trees went over and my building suffered below.

Needless to say it was gnarly, I am just glad that the wind was blowing with the long way down my trailer and not hitting us broadside. I am positive the trailer would have rolled. Especially after you see the pics below.





This wall was empty cell CMU at the time. We just weren't ready to pour it yet.


This wall was filled full of concrete that morning and it still went over. Still to green to support it.




I have to say, these were paracord tied down to sand filled buckets, I cant believe they stayed in place and just got crushed from the wind.




This is #8 rebar that got bent over like nothing.


Not an experience I want to relive. I've never been in one before and I will say I could have gone through life with out it. Luckily I made the call when I did because the masonry crew rode it out on the 3rd floor and when they came out they were terrified, my iron workers rode it out on the same floor different area and I have to say that 4 pretty rough dudes were white as sheets. So I dont know who was more scared, us in the trailer or the guys in the concrete building with no windows.

 

Wow thanks for sharing! Definitely a life threatening situation there. Not really any safe spot in that situation. I think I'd go with the building, but with it being unfinished......that's a tough decision. Glad everybody was OK