Paul Homewood advises of this report just up on the National Weather Service Dallas website: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/2012/20120403-summary.pdf
I’ve extracted and posted it below:
Summary:
A full assessment of the events of April 3, 2012 is not complete. However, we can review the NOAA/NWS/SPC historical tornado record for some insight into these recent tornado events in the DFW area.
Over the last 60 years (since 1952), a total of 172 tornadoes have been reported in either Tarrant or Dallas Counties, Texas. Of these, 42 have been rated at least EF2 (wind speeds over 110 mph). The strongest, rated EF4, hit Dallas on April 25, 1994, killing 3 people and injuring 48. Neither county has ever reported an EF5-rated tornado.
Monthly and EF-scale distribution:
Tornadoes have been reported in this densely populated twocounty area in every month of the year. Nearly 30% of all the tornadoes reported in this area have occurred during the month of April and over 30% of the EF2 and stronger tornadoes have occurred in April.
Month | All | EF2-3-4 Jan | 08 | 02 Feb | 03 | 00 Mar | 12 | 03 Apr | 47 | 14 May | 39 | 11 Jun | 10 | 02 Jul | 06 | 00 Aug | 02 | 01 Sep | 12 | 04 Oct | 16 | 02 Nov | 05 | 01 Dec | 12 | 02 Total |172 | 42
Killer tornado summary:
There have been 5 killer tornadoes that have claimed 17 lives over the past 60 years in these two counties. The date, number of fatalities, EF-rating, and county are as follows:
Date |Deaths| EF| County 02-April-1957 | 10 | 3 | Dallas 09-May-1993 | 01 | 2 | Dallas 25-April-1994 | 03 | 4 | Dallas 28-March-2000 | 02 | 3 | Tarrant 13-April-2007 | 01 | 1 | Tarrant
Bloviations about these being driven by “global warming” such as made by CNN meteorologist Alexandra Steele yesterday, and echoed by paid propagandist Joe Romm, aren’t even worth a mention in the NWS view of the event.
UPDATE: Meteorologist Mark Johnson of WEWS in Cleveland has a few things to say about yesterday’s bloviations here
Texas can be a great place and it can also be a rough place. It is a very pretty place in its own way but rough to scratch out a living in during the bad years. Say Anthony I always check out the ad under your top heading to see who is there and I see you are pushing mail order brides today. Just what the lonely, introverted scientist types need. I predict many hits!
Of course, CNN meteorologist Alexandra Steele did have to comment that “that’s kind of the climate change we are seeing” in response to the tornados. Wonder if she knows that tornado frequency in the US has been declining in the last few years.
I would imagine that there is less property damage in this tornado event than in the hail storms that hit DFW back in the 90’s.
back in the fifties Analog Science Fiction, in their Science Fact column published a piece about building houmoungas chimnies to move warm air at ground level to an extreme altitude ~30,000 feet??? the theory being that that would suppress tornadoes for hundreds of mile around. there was speculation that two of them placed strategically would “protect” everything east of the misssissssisssssippi and then some. the artical ended with the speculation that the litigation from people that were not protected once the project was in operation and got hit by tornadic winds would be extreme and so they killed the project.
the illustrations looked like the “cooling towers” currently in use at generation stations, and they did speculate that placing “wind turbines” around the bottom of the things would generate electricity………..
anybody seen or heard anything about this.
C
I believe the headlines missed the biggest story: No deaths due to the warning system. More on that subject here: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2012/04/headline-we-should-have-seen-but-didnt.html
pk says: April 4, 2012 at 12:57 pm
“… speculation that two of them placed strategically would “protect” everything east of the misssissssisssssippi and then some. the artical ended with the speculation that the litigation from people that were not protected once the project was in operation and got hit by tornadic winds would be extreme and so they killed the project.”
Spelling note – There are only 4 i’s in “misssissssisssssippi”
Mike Smith says:
April 4, 2012 at 1:04 pm
I believe the headlines missed the biggest story: No deaths due to the warning system. More on that subject here: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2012/04/headline-we-should-have-seen-but-didnt.html
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I agree.
I suppose it won’t be too long before everyone can carry a GPS enabled device, if only to receive warnings affecting their current location.
I.E. the “phone” rings when you are in a warned area.
(I know, I’m way behind the times).
Is their an app for that yet ?
Mike Smith,
Yes, for the iPhone, WeatherRadio.
Figuring we had several Tornadic thunderstorms occurring simultaneously within not even thirty-five miles, this concept might have some merit were it not for some side inevitable effects … when ‘conditions’ were right, as they were yesterday and the ‘cap’ (capping inhibition or CIN) was broken there was literally little one could do exc take shelter … whereas if one could stay below that ‘cap’ by routing some of that warm humid air ‘away’ one would effectively never experience that sudden, explosive T-storm growth …
Now, the side effects: what do you do about the needed rain such thunderstorms precipitate? With a constant ‘bleed’ of heated ostensibly moist boundary-layer air fed up a chimney to 30,000 feet, I think one would end up with some moisture being precipitated out at some altitude … basically ‘clouds’ forming in your chimney and eventually ‘rain’ … but not distributed geographically over an area that needs the rain!
.
Just think of how much wealth would have been generated since 1970
if trillions of wasted Federal ‘welfare’ dollars
had been devoted to space infrastructure.
Beyond a Lunar base such as in 2001, Space Odyssey,
we’d have Space-Based Solar Power for Weather Modification. (Google viz)
Microwave beams heat atmospheric water vapor at the right place
to prevent tornado formation.
Every tornado death for the last decade
can be laid at the doorstep of the Welfare State,
which instinctively seeks to kill any space program, as it has ours.
Re the update above – “UPDATE: Meteorologist Mark Johnson of WEWS in Cleveland has a few things to say…”. Looks like Mark is getting John Hartz and Glenn Tamblyn (skeptical science team) tag teaming him.
I live in Midlothian, about 20 miles south of Dallas-Ft Worth. My wife’s boss took a picture of a tornado outside of Midlothian High School. I thought it was strange not to see one close to Midlothian.
http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/525959_10150770608210400_658890399_12099301_665809865_n.jpg
I think you would have more ‘effect’ if you could ‘seed’ a thunderstorm (even a small tornadic thunderstorm) down-wind in order to capture and divert the warm-moist feedstock airmass thereby robbing the upstream T-storm of ‘energy’ with which to work … we have theorized that a circular array of used, high-bypass turbofan jet engines could to this, suitably arranged to create a ‘vortex’ in an airmass that can cohesively impart enough vertical kinetic ascent energy and ‘force’ up into and through a capping layer in order to start a convective thunderstorm …
Such an array of engines during an engine run-up test burning collected restaurant veggie oil, used motor oil and an amount of kerosene spawned a lone tornadic cell east of US-75 up near FM-121 in the area of Van Alstyne in a highly capped atmosphere a few years back … all except this last part about testing the engines and causing a twister is true; but it sure makes for a good ‘story’ to tell late at night around a campfire …
.