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Oklahoma City Tornado

Cylinder

Philosopher
Cylinder
Joined
Jun 10, 2005
Messages
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Location
Arkansas
This system seems to be tracking directly toward downtown in a nearly easterly direction.
 
Crap NOT ANOTHER ONE. Go away, storm, shooo! Scram!
 
Cylinder said:
This system seems to be tracking directly toward downtown in a nearly easterly direction.
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It took a southerly dip before entering fabulous downtown OKC, possibly drawn by the attractions of the Oklahoma River.

I couldn't see it from my northerly downtown perch, but I could tell where it was from the direction it was sucking wind. It was sucking a lot of wind, almost hurricane force. I used a couple of flags to track it's progress.

I didn't bother to take shelter. I knew exactly where it was. Some of the streets are flooding, and the wind forced water through an invisible flaw in the bottom frame of my plexiglass kitchen window.

Just another day in paradise for most of us.
 
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Great to hear, Toontown. It looks like the El Reno wedge petered out before entering metro OKC. This whole system is staying well north of my area.
 
TWC Tornado chase car got flipped around pretty well. I guess all occupants are OK but the SUV is trashed. I can't seem to muster any sympathy for them though, as they've long since ended their practice of being newspeople. Now they're just glorified TMZ reporters gushing over blizzards and twisters as opposed to the Bieb and Nicki Manaj.

The only thing missing is the mind-numbing Q&A session while the subject waits in line for a cab.
 
*whew* Grew up in Ohio. Closest I got was looking up into one that hadn't hit the ground. That, ladies and boys, is close enough.
 
My car got caught in deep water. Now it's parked in the middle of nowhere as I figure out what to do. Stupid Warr Acres drainage systems.
 
For those of you who proposed central shelters--most of the injuries were caused when residents left their homes seeking shelter elsewhere, during rush hour, which added to the mess, and killed traffic movement.
Friday night's victims included a mother and a baby sucked out of their car as the EF3 hit near El Reno. A 4-year-old boy died after being swept into the Oklahoma River on the south side of Oklahoma City, said Oklahoma City police Lt. Jay Barnett. The boy and other family members had sought shelter in a drainage ditch.
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and
Friday night's storm formed out on the prairie west of Oklahoma City, giving residents plenty of advance notice. When told to seek shelter, many ventured out and snarled traffic across the metro area - perhaps remembering the damage from May 20."It was chaos. People were going southbound in the northbound lanes. Everybody was running for their lives," said Terri Black, 51, a teacher's assistant in Moore.
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Any other brilliant ideas?



 
Halfcentaur said:
My car got caught in deep water. Now it's parked in the middle of nowhere as I figure out what to do. Stupid Warr Acres drainage systems.
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I stayed in a hotel on North West Expressway in Warr Acres last month when in OKC for my kids graduation ceremonies. Relatively heavy rain and the streets seemed to drain well. Must have been one heck of a storm.
 
The El Reno tornado has been reclassified as EF-5. It has broken the all-time record for widest tornado at 2.6 miles.
 
rwguinn said:
Too Late. They do nor fly well
3 who knew what they were doing were lost
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I saw the yahoo story on this and it outrageously claimed these guys were above the thrill seekers and footage opportunists as they were "professionals" who had a higher purpose in collecting data from storms.

Apparently he was an "engineer" who sought to use this "data" to design more storm resistant homes. I had to point out the obvious, that if that were really his motivation he'd be in a materials testing lab with a wind tunnel.

The dead guy even had an interview last year talking about how he and his colleagues create traffic jams in OK because they all go there in such big numbers.

Surely the locals are amused when they just want to get away from a storm and all the adrenaline junkies following it. Oops, you're in our way we just want to go.
 
Actually the three particular chasers were weather scientists, not weather paparazzi or tourists. I think he deserves some little criticism for his work with some in the tornado tourism industry, but his team were among the very few the Storm Prediction Center would want out front.

Spotters are an important facet of the warn chain. Radar can show these storms forming and the new generation can even see large debris zones, but the first 50-100 feet AGL is still invisible to radar.
 
This guy [autoplay warning] was not the guy the storm center wants out front:

From his pickup, amateur storm chaser Richard Charles Henderson took a cellphone photo of the first tornado Friday and excitedly sent it to a friend.


Minutes later, that tornado would kill him.

“That was the end of his life right there,” said the friend, George “Sonny” Slay.

“He said, ‘I'm having fun,'” Slay recalled Monday. “He told me he was riding around … chasing the storms …. I said, ‘You better quit that!'
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batvette said:
I saw the yahoo story on this and it outrageously claimed these guys were above the thrill seekers and footage opportunists as they were "professionals" who had a higher purpose in collecting data from storms.

Apparently he was an "engineer" who sought to use this "data" to design more storm resistant homes. I had to point out the obvious, that if that were really his motivation he'd be in a materials testing lab with a wind tunnel.

The dead guy even had an interview last year talking about how he and his colleagues create traffic jams in OK because they all go there in such big numbers.

Surely the locals are amused when they just want to get away from a storm and all the adrenaline junkies following it. Oops, you're in our way we just want to go.
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Enjoy your ignorance and self-righteousness. Those 3 men saved more lives during their careers than most people ever even meet, and their work will continue to do so in the future..
Having watched the guy, and read his work, he was very safety conscious. In fact, his team was not chasing tornados at the time, but lightning. The fact that the tornado grew so fast (from 1 Mile wide to 2.6 miles wide in very few minutes) is what got them.
ETA--and as far as "if that were really his motivation he'd be in a materials testing lab with a wind tunnel"--you can't test what you don't know. He was a Scientist, not an engineer. Somebody has to gather the data so we engineers know what to test FOR!
 
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