The tornados in Oklahoma

[BleAivano]

Some really horrifying news from the areas around Oklahoma City and the suburb of Moore, that have be struck by a huge tornado.
According to CNN, there are 10 confirmed fatalities so far but many are either trapped or missing.

Basically the entire or at least a large part of the suburb have been turned into rubble.
Would anyone know if these schools have tornado shelters?
http://BBC News - Deadly tornado rips through Oklahoma City suburbs (http://BBC%20News%20-%20Deadly%20tornado%20rips%20through%20Oklahoma%20 City%20suburbs)According to the BBC; (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22604251)

The National Weather Service (NWS) said Monday's tornado generated winds of up to 200mph (321km/h).
"It's certainly the most powerful tornado that I've ever dealt with in my 20 years with the weather service,"
NWS meteorologist Rick Smith in Norman, Oklahoma, told the BBC.

The town of Moore was hit by a severe tornado in May 1999, which had the highest winds ever recorded on earth.



Two-mile-wide tornado slams Oklahoma City area, killing at least 10 - CNN.com (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/20/us/severe-weather/index.html?hpt=hp_t1)
Oklahoma City tornado: Latest developments - CNN.com (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/20/us/oklahoma-tornado-developments/index.html?hpt=hp_c1)
Oklahoma City Tornado 2013: Twister Makes Landfall Near Capital (LIVE UPDATES, PHOTOS, VIDEO) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/oklahoma-city-tornado-2013_n_3308384.html)
Oklahoma City tornado: Massive twister leaves trail of wreckage, dozens injured - chicagotribune.com (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oklahoma-city-tornado-20130520,0,7920720.story)

[race aficionado]

Since I've been in this country, "tornado alley" was a term I got familiar with quickly by watching the yearly stories on the news.
What always struck me was how one house would be devastated and the house besides it would be intact. It was not in the tornado's path.
Sad news indeed.

[Starter]

Estimates of the tornado's footprint range from a mile to two miles across. Whole sections of the city are essentially gone. Hope the death toll doesn't rise too much higher, though it almost certainly will go up. They don't call that part of the country "tornado alley" for nothing.

[mr nobody]

37 dead confirmed so far per officials. Efforts are now termed as search and recovery and not search and rescue. This is high F4 level damage and is being compared to the Moore, OK tornado of 1999 and Branson, MO of 2011 which were both F5 level destruction. This tornado has pulled sections of grass off of lawns where this tornado went through.

[henners88]

Sad stuff :(

[R.Lee]

I heard, on the radio, that very few homes or businesses have basements. They said that rock, just a few feet below the surface is so dense that it would require dynamite to blast out sections to make them. Appearently, the schools do not have shelters. I have a friend, that posts on another forum. He lieve in N.W. Okhaloma City. Haven't been able to get in contack with him. Praying that, that is not a bad sign.

[mr nobody]

I heard, on the radio, that very few homes or businesses have basements. They said that rock, just a few feet below the surface is so dense that it would require dynamite to blast out sections to make them. Appearently, the schools do not have shelters. I have a friend, that posts on another forum. He lieve in N.W. Okhaloma City. Haven't been able to get in contack with him. Praying that, that is not a bad sign. Unfortunately Lee, that is the sad truth in a lot of the older homes. There are some older homes and newer houses that have been fitted with "safe rooms" that are reinforced concrete cubes placed in the center of the homes that are designed to withstand winds up to 200 mph. There are companies that build storm rooms prefab and then installed in new and old construction. Anything that you can add to or put in your home to give you a fighting chance is worth it's weight in gold.

[D-Type]

You mentioned level F4 and F5 damage in an earlier post. What do the terms actually mean?

[BleAivano]

You mentioned level F4 and F5 damage in an earlier post. What do the terms actually mean?

There are a few different scale that is used to measure a tornado's strength.
On the enhanced Fujita Scale which is used in the USA an EF4 tornado have wind strengths between
166 and 200 mph (267–322km/h / 144-173 knots / 74-89.4 m/s) an EF5 have wind strengths greater then 201 mph.

Tornado intensity and damage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_intensity_and_damage)
Enhanced Fujita scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_scale)
Fujita scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujita_scale)
TORRO scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TORRO_scale)


*Edit could a mod or admin remove the e in Tornadoes please.

[mr nobody]

You mentioned level F4 and F5 damage in an earlier post. What do the terms actually mean? The Fujita scale (now known as Enhanced Fujita) is a wind scale that is based on the amount of damage and what is actually damaged in the path of a tornado. The amount of damage would be things like what type level of damage a building suffers such as windows blown out, shingles torn off, roof torn off, wall partially collapsed or the entire structure swept away. When that is noted, you look at what the building was made out of. Obviously a wood frame structure won't stand up to the winds that a concrete building will. The scale has little to nothing related to length of path and width of path of destruction. Example, there was a tornado in Illinois that was as small as 440 yards (400 meters) wide yet it was rated as an EF4 (next to the highest level on the EF scale) while one in Nebraska that was 2.5 miles wide (4 kilometers) with the same intensity. Tornadoes are rarely ever rated due to actual measured wind speed inside the tornado as that would need to be done with DOW's (Doppler On Wheels) right next to the tornado and that is a rare occurrence. Interestingly enough, one of those ultimate rare occurrences happened in (of all places) Moore, Oklahoma in 1999 when they were struck by an F5 tornado. Dr. Josh Wurman was in the DOW truck that day and recorded those wind speeds. His data that he captured that day is still being studied 14 years later.

[BleAivano]

A series of video clips of the tornado.

Disaster from the sky in Oklahoma - CNN.com Video (http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/05/21/ac-oklahoma-tornado-destruction.cnn.html)

[mr nobody]

Link is to the NWS latest public statement about the tornado in Oklahoma. It's now an EF5 rated tornado. It's nothing short of a miracle that more people weren't killed. Public Information Statements for the Tornado Outbreak of May 20, 2013 (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=events-20130520-pns)

[airshifter]

I've seen a couple small ones, glad I've never been near a large tornado.

It's hard to even imagine any natural disaster that will just level your house completely, even if you are lucky enough to not have any injuries or loss of life among family. Bad stuff.

[Knock-on]

I remember 3 funnels touching down a couple of miles away from Croft at a BTCC meeting once. I think per square mile, the UK has more twisters than any other country but thankfully minor ones.

[markabilly]

I heard, on the radio, that very few homes or businesses have basements. They said that rock, just a few feet below the surface is so dense that it would require dynamite to blast out sections to make them. Appearently, the schools do not have shelters. I have a friend, that posts on another forum. He lieve in N.W. Okhaloma City. Haven't been able to get in contack with him. Praying that, that is not a bad sign.

Unfortunately one of the schools had a small basement, where some of the kids and a teacher went for shelter. When the walls came down, it trapped some of the children who were in the basement and seven of the children drowned from the water from the rain collecting in the basement.

Otherwise none of the children at the school would have died

[Knock-on]

OMG Mark, that is terrible.

I'm no storm expert but even I know tht power, gas and water lines get broken buring a major Twister hit. Any shelter should be protected against this eventuality.

How very sad.

[mr nobody]

Here is a link to the Norman, Oklahoma National Weather Service office page providing details and some interesting radar loops and Google Earth maps of the tornado track in Moore, Oklahoma. The Tornado Outbreak of May 20, 2013 (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=events-20130520)

[BleAivano]

Google satellite images of the devastation: Google Crisis Map (http://google.org/crisismap/2013-oklahoma-tornado?hl=en&llbox=35.324705%2C35.318166%2C-97.513319%2C-97.527192&t=CUSTOM&layers=9%2C7%2C11%2C8%2Clayer2%2Clayer11%2C10%3A10 0)

[ndegroot89]

That devastation was unreal...it's terrible that children were among those lost in this horrible disaster.

[markabilly]

OMG Mark, that is terrible.

I'm no storm expert but even I know tht power, gas and water lines get broken buring a major Twister hit. Any shelter should be protected against this eventuality.

How very sad.

It had nothing to do with any of that. It was rain water coming into the school buiding from the damaged roof and walls

[ioan]

Unfortunately Lee, that is the sad truth in a lot of the older homes. There are some older homes and newer houses that have been fitted with "safe rooms" that are reinforced concrete cubes placed in the center of the homes that are designed to withstand winds up to 200 mph. There are companies that build storm rooms prefab and then installed in new and old construction. Anything that you can add to or put in your home to give you a fighting chance is worth it's weight in gold.


What about not building a home in a place called 'tornado alley'?

[ioan]

That devastation was unreal...it's terrible that children were among those lost in this horrible disaster.

It is terrible that such phenomena still results in human life losses, children or not.

[Starter]

What about not building a home in a place called 'tornado alley'?
Let's see, America's west coast = earthquakes; central = tornadoes; east & gulf coasts = hurricanes. Where would you have them locate?

[BleAivano]

Let's see, America's west coast = earthquakes; central = tornadoes; east & gulf coasts = hurricanes. Where would you have them locate?

North? Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan...? ;)

[R.Lee]

What about not building a home in a place called 'tornado alley'?

Move entire state populations? Not really realistic. Besides, as someone above pointed out, natural disasters can occur anywhere and so can tornados. We have had quite a few here in Georgia and in other parts of the South and we are not close to "tornado alley". It is a fact that you really are not safe from a Natural disaster anywhere. You just do what you can, to make yourself as safe as possible, wherever you live. Weather runs in cycles, it always has and always will. Some decades/years it will be more intense, other decades/years, less intense. That is nature, something man has not ever, does not now and will not ever be able to control.