Quote:
Originally Posted by rusnak
My Californian lack of knowledge of the Midwest thinks that Kansas and Oklahoma is "tornado country". In fact, corn flying around like in the movies along with pieces of people's homes and a giant flying propane tank are conjured up in the imagination.
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They call it tornado alley for a reason. The thing about a tornado is it is a
very localized phenomenon. Most of them are just a just a few hundred feet wide or LESS. The biggest tornado ever recorded on the planet was 2.6 miles wide, and killed mostly storm chasers.
https://www.weather.gov/oun/events-20130531-elreno
It actually was mostly in a rural area, and tore up wheat fields and trees. It had winds of 295 MPH and the reason the storm chasers were killed is it went in a very unusual direction, and was moving across the ground faster than they could drive.
My real point, the vast majority of tornadoes are small, and very localized. No flying cows, no massive damage. Moore, OK has had two monster tornadoes Full on F5 with the highest wind speeds on the earth over 300 MPH. Both hit a populated area. Bad as it gets, but just a few blocks away literally blocks away was help and full civilization. It wiped many homes down to nothing left but the concrete foundation. There was nothing good about it, but it was a little tiny part of the state. I live 20 miles away or so, and my electricity never even flickered.
The weather reports at our local stations is state of the art, best in the world. The Moore tornadoes were predicted to be very real threats over a week in advance. They could predict the conditions were going to be ripe for a major circulation. We watched non stop TV coverage, no commercials, as it formed in Lawton area, and they have live video of it coming up I-44 and all three TV stations tracked it block by block on live TV.
The entire metro area rushed to bring aid and help with the damage.
So yea, a tornado is possible. I have lived in Oklahoma 43 years and I have seen just one, and it was a F2 that tore up some cars in a parking-lot 1.5 miles from our house. My wife has lived in Oklahoma all her life. She has only seen the one wall cloud that tornado formed from that hit 1.5 miles away.