...hour, rain pounded on the rooftops, flooding imminent as levees strained and gave way pouring into New Orleans. The Category 5 hurricane terrorizing all cities and states on its war path of destruction; Katrina is what they call her and her storm surge reached 20 feet high. 1,836 was the final death toll that Hurricane Katrina caused and her affects were impacted over approximately 90,000 square miles. 80% of New Orleans was underwater and some places were up to 20 feet under. (11 Facts About Hurricane Katrina) This destruction is unimaginable to most of us but for those that experienced it, it is something they never want to experience again. Along Katrina’s route of destruction, tornados were developed wreaking havoc in other states. In this paper I will discuss, in depth, hurricanes and tornados and the destruction they cause to our nation. The word hurricane was derived from the Spanish word “huracan” this word originated from a Mayan storm god. The word hurricane was used in the West Indies where they described any tropical cyclone. (Hurricane: What is a Hurricane?) The accurate definition of a hurricane is a “tropical cyclone with sustained winds that have reached speeds of 74 mph or higher” the storms are labeled as hurricanes when they gain their strength over days and weeks time. (Hurricane: What is a Hurricane?) Storms developing over the Atlantic Ocean or eastern Pacific Ocean are coined hurricanes. Regardless the name, all tropical cyclones develop the same...
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...radar can predict or see a tornado coming in the area. Doppler radar makes it easier to see the storm and to see if it is a tornado. If the radar shows up in orange and yellow in color, it’s a tornado. If there is tornado by one county, the radar can warn the people in the next county that there is a tornado coming. Doppler radar can tell you what direction the storm is headed, and tell you how fast the storm is approaching. The radar can predict a tornado before a storm as popped up. Once the tornado as popped up on the radar, they can watch the rotation of the storm to see which way the tornado is headed. A tornado watch means there could be a tornado coming to your area. Be prepared for a tornado to hit at any moment. There...
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...Storm Chasers Killed in Oklahoma Tornado Storm Chasers Killed in Oklahoma Tornado Growing up in “Tornado Alley” we know the risks that come along with the Oklahoma tornados. There are many people that put their lives on the line every time one of these storms decide to make an appearance. Most of these individuals do this job because they enjoy studying these storms and want to do their part in informing the people of the possible destruction heading their way. A majority of these men and women get to come home to their families and tell of their wild experiences “riding out the tornado”, but for others, they are not as fortunate. This would be the last storm for Tim Samaras, Paul Samaras and Carl Young. (Allen & Trotta, 2013). The purpose of this article is to make people aware of the dangers associated with chasing tornados. This article was also written to give remembrance to the brave men who put their lives on the line to research these deadly storms. Three brave men lost their lives doing what they loved to do. Unfortunately these are some of the risks that come with the job. One of the main problems that we often hear about with storm chasing is inexperience. A lot of people get severely injured or even die due to not seeking shelter, rather trying to get video and pictures of the twister. Even the most experienced sometimes suffer consequences when not fully prepared for an unpredictable tornado. These skilled storm chasers usually receive information...
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...Tornado Disaster Plan It is 1:30 pm in Indianapolis, Indiana on a Tuesday afternoon, and your boss has just learned that the National Weather Service has issued a Severe Thunderstorm Watch. Thunderstorms are building to the west and are expected to hit your building in less than an hour. He decides to cancel all meetings, make sure shelter areas are unlocked, and make an announcement to inform all the staff. At 2:05 pm, it begins to get very dark outside and there is a rumble of thunder. The designated spotter steps out to have a look. The sky appears as if it’s boiling and has taken on a green tinge. The wind picks up and the trees begin to sway. A cool blast hits him and a cloud of dust blows across the parking lot. "This storm doesn't look good." He reenters the building and hears the NOAA Weather Radio tone-alert, and is told the National Weather Service has just issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for their county. Suddenly, he hears a roar of wind and a crash. The storm has let loose a downburst - a sudden, strong rush of wind. He rushes toward the source of the noise. A branch from a nearby tree shattered a window in a room. A few staff was injured from the flying glass. Two will need stitches. He evacuates the rooms on the windward side and moves the staff into the conference room which has no windows. They will be safer in there. Hail begins to fall and grow larger in size. Large hail can impact at one hundred miles per hour (100 mph) (NSSL, n.d.). Suddenly, the...
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...weather does a tornado bring? How is a tornado formed Tornado Dangers Safety Conclusion Introduction Tornados are a type of extreme weather that are very dangerous. What is a tornado? How are they formed? Are they dangerous? Are there any safety precautions can people take? People around the world are asking questions like that. Are there answers? Defining A tornado is a funnel shaped storm that moves from one place to another. With it’s destructive rotating winds, the storm can...
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...some tornado safety tips. Usually tornadoes will form from thunderstorms. For a thunderstorm to spawn a tornado the storm must contain rotation. For this rotation to develop within a thunderstorm there must be warm, moist air and cool, dry air that meet which form the rotation. From this rotation a cone-shaped column of air coming from the thunderstorm is formed, which is known as a funnel cloud. But, when the funnel cloud touches the ground it becomes a tornado. Tornadoes are very unpredictable and could happen at any time of the day or anytime of year. For southern states, like us, tornado season is not only at its peak from March to May, but also in the fall. For the nothern states tornadoes usually occur during the summer. However, in the north and south of the United States the most likely time for a tornado to happen is between three o'clock and nine o'clock p.m. More than half of the nation's tornadoes occur in the central part of the United States, this area is known as the Great Plains. The Great Plains is made up of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and South and North Dakota. This area of the United States is also known as Tornado Alley. This area of flat land combines all of the elements needed to form tornadoes. The Fujita Tornado Intesity Scale was developed to measure the strength of a tornado by the damage it made. The Fujita Scale, also known as the F-Scale, was invented in 1971 by Ted Fujita. The National Weather Service uses the Fujita Tornado Intensity...
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...Tornado Tips and Safety Tornadoes cause major destruction across the nation. Some areas may seem to attract tornadoes more so than others but it doesn’t mean a tornado can’t strike an area just because of the geographical location. There is not a typical or specified season for Tornadoes to occur; however, if weather conditions are conducive, a tornado can possibly form. Tornadoes extend from severe thunderstorms and usually develop from the trailing end of a storm. It is possible and not uncommon for the sun to be visible or skies to be partially clear during a tornado. Some tornadoes are easily seen and detected, while others strike quickly with little or no warning. This is why it is so important to know what to do in case of a tornado occurs in your area. Tornados destruction depends on what categories they may fall into. The categories for tornados fall in categories between F0- F5. F0 means Gale Tornado Category between 40 - 72 mph--Light damage which could cause some damage to chimneys, breaks branches off trees, pushes over shallow-rooted trees, and damages sign boards. Or a tornado can be classified all the way to an F5 which means Incredible Tornado Category between 261 - 318 mph-Incredible damage which could cause strong frame houses lifted off foundations and carried a considerable distance and disintegrated, automobile sized missiles fly through the air in excess of 100 meters, and trees debarked. If strong winds and hail and debris start moving it may be...
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...When there is a tornado you should take action and stop what you are doing immediately. Tornados are extremely dangerous and should be taken very seriously. When a tornado touches down on the ground it produces extremely violent winds speeds, according to The National Severe Storms Laboratory tornado wind speeds can reach anywhere from 70-320 mph depending on the severity of the tornado. Even though tornados have varying levels of intensity all tornados should be treated very seriously and it is not something to kid about. When tornados touch down on the ground they can absolutely obliterate buildings in their way, destroy infrastructure, and throw debris in every direction. When there is a tornado warning or watch you should know what to do. The United States Department of Labor says that “To prepare for a tornado, businesses should develop an emergency plan. The...
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...running to my parent's car in the middle of the night. With the distinctive loud wail of a tornado siren, the wind howling, and lightening filling the dark sky, I have never been so afraid in my life. The loud tornado siren was not something new to me, even though it frightened me every time that it went off. Most times, though, it was just going off for a weekly test and was not in the middle of the night. That night it was no test. It was the real thing. We had to jump into the car for the short drive to my memaw's house, running over my dog Joe in the process. Even though my memaw only lived a mile away, the drive seemed to take forever. Would we ever reach her house and the safety of her cellar? I have never run so fast in my life as I ran that night, from the car to the ground cellar in the back yard. The wind was blowing so strongly that I felt as if I wasn't moving at all. The lightening filled the dark cloudy sky and, all I could see was the shadow of my silhouette on the ground in front of me. Loud thunder clapped in my ears and made me shudder, the ground shaking under my feet. Finally, I felt relief and fear at the same time as I reached the cellar door. I climbed quickly down the stairs into the dark and damp ground, not even thinking about what might be lurking in that dark cellar. As I climbed down into the ground, I realized that my family wasn't the only one seeking safety underground. We couldn't even reach the bottom step, as the cellar was filled with at least...
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...Antarctica but are most common in the United States. (Glickman) In the United States alone there is an average total of around 1,300 touchdowns and 60 fatalities caused by tornadoes every year. A tornado is a rotating column of air, in contact with the surface, pendant from a cumuliform...
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...(Edwards, 2013). Typically in the spring, the cool dry air from Canada meets with the warm humid air from the Gulf of Mexico. These mixtures of air meet in the mid-west to create super-cell storms, ultimately leading to the formation of tornadoes. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, tornados are responsible for numerous deaths each year. In 2011, there were reported over 500 fatalities in the Unites States due to tornados (NOAA, 2013). Scientists are unfortunately unable to prevent potentially deadly tornados to ensure public safety. Tornadogenesis “deals with the different processes and features that help create tornadoes” (Howard, 2013). Understanding how these super-cells form may help scientists to minimize casualty loss as well as property damage from these deadly twisters. Tornadogenesis can be classified into many different types based on their complex formation processes. Centered on the recorded data of circulations and wind speeds, the tornado is the most powerful type of circulation detectable in the atmosphere (Lin, 2007). Type I tornados produced by super cellular mesocyclones, are among the most common and intense type of tornados (Agee, 2009). A super mesocyclone is a long-lived thunderstorm containing a continuous updraft of air within it. These thunderstorms will have a low-lying cloud that rotates and causes this updraft. “Out of the 5322 individual mesocyclones detected by Doppler radars, only 26% were associated with tornadoes” (Lin...
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...TSUNAMIS * A tsunami is a very long ocean wave generated by sudden displacement of the sea floor or of the oceanic mass * The displacement of an equivalent volume of water generates the tsunami * A tsunami is harmless until it approaches the coastline * The most prone areas are those associated with earthquakes and volcanoes (mainly subduction zones) * Compared to normal ocean waves which may be about 100m, the wavelengths of large tsunami waves can exceed 200km * Tsunamis travel very quickly relative to normal ocean waves * Particularly the case in open water where velocities increase with water depth * Distant: As a wave propagates across the ocean, there is time to warn people * Local: But in a subduction zone where the tsunami is generated, there is very little warning time (15-30 minutes) * In shallow water, the tsunami waves pile up as a result velocities and wavelengths decrease, but at the same time, amplitudes can increase enormously * Due to its long wavelength, it may take a long time for a tsunami wave to crest * Wave runup – depends on several factors water depth, sea floor profile, shape of the coastline * Leads to wave heights which are highly variable (hard thing to predict) * To reduce tsunami impacts, planting of trees can be very useful * Causes of tsunamis – ALL involve displacement of water * Earthquakes * Mainly vertical crustal movements * In general, the...
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...Tornado warning forecasts in the 1880s and 1890s were more harmful than beneficial to the public (Coleman et al. 2011). The public was not aware of the safety procedures that prevented unnecessary fatuities and injuries due to reckless behavior. The impulsive, reckless behavior caused tornado warnings to be banned in 1887, however, the Civilian US Weather Bureau (USWB) lifted the ban in 1938 (Coleman et al. 2011). The USWB was the first warning system that informed the public of severe weather development information, and safety information. In the World War II era, storm spotting was only used to protect military bases from severe weather, and then became a public service in 1948 by the Air Force’s Fawbush and Miller (Doswell et al....
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...Tornadoes in Tornado Alley Introduction: Information on tornadoes: Tornadoes are one of the many natural disasters that occur and create challenges for people around the world. As the most deadly atmospheric storms of all time, tornadoes are narrow tunnels of air that rotate viciously at speeds up to 300 miles per hour and cause havoc to everything around them by destroying buildings and much more. Such as forests, lakes, habitats, and homes. Moreover, they are formed from extremely violent thunderstorms (see figure 1). Tornadoes form when cool air and warm air travel to the same area and create an instability in the atmosphere. That instability causes the air to rise and spin quickly to form a funnel like shape, which is the tornado. Some...
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...Response for “Storm Warning” by Adrienne Rich I chose the poem "Storm Warnings," by Adrienne Rich because I find her poems are sometimes personally relatable. Although, Rich tends to use many metaphors and literal meanings throughout her poems to convey her ideas it is easy to understand what it is she is trying to express. This poem is rather short and is written in four stanzas with twenty-eight lines in total it uses every line to convey the speaker’s thoughts. Although the speaker is talking about a “literal” storm, what she is really talking about are her internal and emotional struggles or conflicts. In the first stanza, the speaker is aware of the impending storm because of “the glass falling all afternoon” (Rich, Line 1) and she is preparing for a storm to approach when she states that she “leave the book upon a pillowed chair / And walk from window to closed window” (5-6). This stanza helps the reader understand how the speaker begins her comparisons of the literal storm to the “emotional” storm she herself is experiencing at that moment. Rich uses the second stanza to convey to the reader from where the storm is approaching and that it does not much matter because whether or not it was forecasted or predicted; the storm will still come even when unexpected. The speaker states, “And weather in the heart alike come on / Regardless of prediction” (13-14) which conveys to the reader that the speaker is referring the internal conflicts she is feeling. Just as weather...
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