Last week, I sent the local National Weather Service office a link to my Michigan City wind damage photos, which I described as a possible “smoking gun” proving that a tornado hit the area. I just got a reply from an NWS forecaster, who thanked me for the photos but begged to differ with my conclusion, basically concluding that lexicon was right. I quote from the forecaster’s e-mail:
Thanks for your time and energy in bringing this to our attention. We are always looking for photos and video of weather related damage and anything else weather related.
As a matter of fact, while we were on our damage survey, we did see the bleachers. They were rolled several times.
In other surveys I have done over the last dozen years in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio…I have seen many rolled into pretzels just like this set. The funny thing is, these type bleachers tend to get airborne in 90 to 100 mph winds…whether they are associated with a tornado or with damaging straight line winds.
One thing is for sure…the Michigan City to Westville areas experienced a horrific wind storm. This storm is a rarity. One the area will likely not see again in a lifetime (I hope!). Our job, at the NWS, now is to decide what caused the damage as best as humanly possible. You know, we had a Tornado Warning out for the storm…so us classifying it as wind damage gives us a miss on our statistics. This negatively effects our funding and reputation. Frankly, as a scientist, I don’t care about the verification statistics when we are doing damage surveys…we are trying to determine what caused the damage based on the facts and our knowledge.
When determining what caused wind damage we look at many things. We are looking for damage that converges (is a result of suction) or that which occurred with outflow (winds blowing out of the thunderstorm). To determine this we interview eye witnesses, meticulously examine surface at the damage, look at the damage from aircraft, also we review the radar signatures and examine the atmosphere at the time. We attempt to put all the clues together, like a crime scene, and figure out what happened.
All the clues continue to point to a widespread “straight line” wind event. This event was extremely uncommon and best relate it to a hurricane. There was 30 miles by 30 miles damage. The biggest tornado on record is near a mile wide…therefore all the damage that occurred could not have been caused by “a” tornado. There could have been small tornadoes embedded in the hurricane type winds, but we could not find sufficient evidence to substantiate them. By the way, we are still looking for any other damage information we can get, including still pictures and movies of the storm. (I would love to be able to give us a hit on the Tornado Warning!)
Interesting, very interesting.
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Categories: Indiana tornadoes 8/23/06
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August 29th, 2006 at 6:27:54 pm
Oh come on, quit beating around the bush. We all know that this was an accident involving Karl Roves weather control machine and the NWS is just helping the government cover it up :-/
August 29th, 2006 at 6:44:09 pm
A few downed trees and some bleachers throwin about just dont cut it anymore, maybe more extensive damamge would help, such as numerous destroyed homes and a decent body count, who knows.
August 29th, 2006 at 7:01:33 pm
I have to confess that I think this guy is right. Just looking at the storm damage, it seems like common sense that the winds were straight line winds. All of the trees we saw were knocked down in the same direction and if there was a tornado, I would think that the trees would fall in different directions.
August 29th, 2006 at 7:13:46 pm
Loy,
I said it once and I’ll say it again. It was not a Tornado. Listen to myself and the other experts.
August 29th, 2006 at 7:21:18 pm
Did you just get dissed by your wife?
August 29th, 2006 at 7:49:37 pm
Can i have an Expert Badge for myself too? Id even settle for a Certificate.
August 29th, 2006 at 8:46:52 pm
For a government agency, that’s a pretty nice reply…
August 29th, 2006 at 9:03:20 pm
Yeah, the damage in those photos didn’t look much different than when Hurricane Elvis in the form of straight line winds hit Memphis in July 2003.
August 30th, 2006 at 5:29:23 am
So, a tornado can not be embedded within a straight line wind event?
Perhaps you could impose upon the good weatherman to provide you with some aerial video/photography that shows the miles-long damage? It would be cool stuff to see just for the sake of seeing it.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:15:53 pm
If MSNBC calls, give them my contact info….
August 30th, 2006 at 7:16:17 pm
lol :)