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  1. #281
    Smells like Onions
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    I went down to Tuscaloosa, AL, last spring as part of a week-long thing for Habitat for Humanity. We were rebuilding some of the houses / constructing safe rooms for people in neighborhoods where their homes were destroyed by the tornadoes in '11.

    The head dude for disaster management (I'm not sure what the government term is for it) took us on a tour of the tornado's path, and it's insane. Even a year later there were neighborhoods that were just completely leveled. Churches, which I'm sure most people know are considered rather stable structures, were still, like... in-half. He brought us up on a hill in the tour bus and you could just look at rows and rows of concrete foundation. No house, no piping or utility structures, just foundation. We were driving through a grass field and he just matter-of-factly said, "There used to be a trailer park here." And there was seriously fucking nothing. It looked like an open field of grass, but there used to be a park there. Like, God damn. The tornado in Tuscaloosa was on the ground for all of 10~12 minutes and their best estimates for total recovery are at the least 10 years. One interesting thing that some of the cops were tellin' us about is that after the storm, so many dogs were homeless or misplaced that they started forming primal-ass hunting packs and the local police had to go out and put them down because they were attacking people / food distribution areas, etc. Also, since Alabama passed those fucked up immigration laws just before the storms hit in '11, they had a huge problem identifying bodies / locating missing persons because the Hispanic community was so reluctant to speak with authorities, and in some cases they had to actually force aid upon these people because they were afraid of themselves or having a loved one deported, etc.

    The safe rooms they have are interesting there, though. Although the soil and whatnot isn't really similar to Oklahoma's, a lot of people also just can't afford basements (the ones who had them somehow didn't get touched) so the new initiative is to implement safe rooms in structures. They're sorta like closets but they have enough space to hold 4-5 people, the usual size of a family. It's a normal wooden room but surrounded by sheet metal on all sides that's bolted directly into the wood, and the door for it is the same type of door they use on fucking commercial airplanes. The rooms are capable of sustaining winds and debris impacts (such as a 2x4) of up to 200 mph. Pretty crazy stuff. It was really cool to work on it, and hopefully people in Oklahoma will get a similar treatment from Habitat. Tornadoes are just seriously fucking scary.

    My brother and I used to live in Clarksville, TN, which is on the Eastern edge of Tornado Alley. A big-ass tornado came through there in 1999 (I was 6 or something) and demolished a bank downtown and some other stuff, and then my brother was on a field trip in Nashville, TN, in 1998 when that big one hit downtown. I remember being at t-ball practice one night and the sky went from sunshine-and-butterflies to a color as black as Satan's asshole in about 30 seconds and we had to book it home, and no shit the view was like those storm chasers'. Just debris and limbs and shit flying everywhere from the winds. A tornado touched down that day, but I didn't see it 'cause we hid in the bathroom when we got home. Another time I was at school in Clarksville and they rushed us into the hallway (like they're supposed to) and I could see the rotation in the backyard of our school, just, like... chillin' there. I really don't remember what happened afterward, but our school was untouched.

    Nature don't play around. Also for anyone who happens to be in the path or a tornado in the future, always wear shoes or have them near you when taking cover. Destroyed buildings and thrown cars tend to lend themselves to broken glass everywhere, and some people in Tuscaloosa were just trapped because they didn't have any shoes on.

  2. #282
    I trusted Zet and this is what happened
    Eleven owes me $40 bucks

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    I find that weather channel truck hilarious because all I can think is "Only in Oklahoma can you call the Weather Channel amateurs."

  3. #283
    Ridill
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kaslo View Post
    I find that weather channel truck hilarious because all I can think is "Only in Oklahoma can you call the Weather Channel amateurs."
    It's kind of unfair to label them amateurs there. While it is obviously something all chasers should be aware of that tornadoes can turn... they really don't very often, especially a hard turn to a southward direction like this one did.

    Yeah they should know, but their job is to find the safest spot to observe it from, and the vast majority of the time that's exactly where they were.

  4. #284
    I trusted Zet and this is what happened
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    It was a joke.

  5. #285
    Fuck It, I'm Goin Deep Fan Club President
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    From CNN this morning about 1130a EST:
    - 7 adults and 2 kids dead.
    - 17 reported tornadoes across the region.
    - 210,000 without power across MO, OK, IL, AR, KS, IN

  6. #286
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    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...ahoma-tornado/

    idk which link is best for that, but yeah...


    edit: http://www.spotternetwork.org/google.php a map thats showing it currently

  7. #287
    Ironing this Thread
    Sweaty Dick Punching Enthusiast

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  8. #288
    Ironing this Thread
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    The El Reno, Union City Tornado from May 31st is now the widest tornado ever recorded at 2.6 miles wide. The largest one previously was 2.5miles in Nebraska. This is double the width of the Moore, OK tornado.

    The National Weather Service upgraded the May 31, 2013 El Reno, Union City (Oklahoma) tornado to an EF-5 with a width of 2.6 miles wide, making it the widest tornado ever documented. EF-5 is the highest possible rating for tornadoes on the Enhanced Fujita scale. The upgrade was based on information from a University of Oklahoma RaxPol mobile radar that measured low level winds of 296 miles per hour as well as the width of the tornadic circulation.[18] This tornado is double the width of the May 20 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma. The F-4 Wilber-Hallam, Nebraska, tornado May 22, 2004 was the previous record holder for the widest tornado on record at 2.5 miles wide
    Used wiki for the numbers/records but it was said on Weather.com

    The Weather Service updated its estimate Tuesday of the tornado that struck El Reno Friday, determining it was an EF5, the strongest classification for a twister. It was a record 2.6 miles wide and tracked across 16.2 miles.

    Factors including the record width made it “super rare.”

    The increase in rating came not from damage estimates but from a study of Doppler radar information, said Rick Smith of the Weather Service's Norman Forecast Office.

    Damage indicators were sparse because the tornado struck mostly in rural areas of Canadian County. That led to the difficulty in determining maximum intensity and maximum width of the tornado based on the ground survey, Smith said.

    An initial estimate of EF3 was based on damage to several structures, but the inferred tornado intensity was an underestimate of the tornado strength because of the scarcity of damage indicators and “very small regions of extreme winds.”

    Smith said they used mobile Doppler radar velocity to estimate the path width.

    “In the rare EF5 category, this is in the super-rare category because we don't deal with things like this, this often,” Smith said.

    In 108 years, there have now been 14 F5/EF5 tornadoes recorded in Oklahoma, according to National Weather Service records.

    During Friday's storm, the University of Oklahoma RaXPol — a rapid-scan, polarimetric mobile Doppler radar — measured winds greater than 295 mph at several times and locations within 500 feet of the ground along the south side of subvortices on the south side of the tornado.

    A sub-vortex is a smaller tornado, although not necessarily a weak one, embedded in an overall large tornado circulation, said David Andra, meteorologist in charge with the National Weather Service in Norman.

  9. #289
    Ridill
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    14 in 108 years, 2 of them that were completely unrelated to each other being in a week.

    NOTHING TO SEE HERE MOVE ALONG

  10. #290
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    Quote Originally Posted by Plow View Post
    14 in 108 years, 2 of them that were completely unrelated to each other being in a week.

    NOTHING TO SEE HERE MOVE ALONG
    http://weknowgifs.com/wp-content/upl...d-this-gif.gif

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