'They were screaming, "We're going to die, we're going to die,"' she recalled to USA Today. Heres why each season begins twice. But what I would really like to ask is this. There are places in this country that I have almost no tornados This law would only allow people who "***work***" for the government to be there. These things will always be unpredicable and its good to hid under the basement steps! Discovery Channel said it will honor the three veteran storm chasers, who regularly appeared on its show Stormchasers, with a special airing this week. In some but not all cases, this advice was qualified; If you know several hours in advance that there is a high probability that a tornado will come through your area, then it is a good idea to just go away and be somewhere else. Your argument that talking about a way to address a situation in which people lose their lives is inappropriate because the situation is an emotional tragedy is actually the misguided reaction. I dont think there has been a single case (correct me if im wrong) of external injury or property damage due to a chasers car getting picked up by a tornado. Gone. 'We're scrambling around,' said Lara O'Leary, a spokeswoman for the local ambulance agency. I don't know all that much about chasing so I recognize that there could be some logistical problems with my above statements. To make this point, here are photographs from major media of a handful of examples of cars that got hit with the vortex, most but not all from this latest tornado: I admit that a flattened house may look pretty bad, may even look worse than a mushed up car, but generally speaking the interior lower floor room in a house that is badly messed up by a tornado is a survivable shelter, while there is no such shelter in your car. Thankfully, I got out of it with just a few minor injuries and broken windows, but if a monster tornado happens people will not be as lucky as I was. Then we get the micro information they are hunting, reliably and in a timely manner. More than 210,000 customers lost electricity in the areas affected by the storm. At least six semis on their side at a weight station on I-40 near Oklahoma City, photographer Jim Beckel reported. In many cases, a law is unenforceable at face value, but when something goes wrong it suddenly becomes part of the equation. Nine were confirmed dead in the Oklahoma City area on Friday evening, though the death toll has since risen, and flash floods in Arkansas caused additional fatalities, including a sheriff trying to rescue people from rising waters. This probe registered a world-record 100-millibar drop in pressure inside the twister. The tragic circumstances that caused the deaths of Tim and Paul Samaras and Carl Young has been well documented. So maybe take the time to authorize a few specialists that take recreational tours storm chasing, and keep the rest of them off of the roads. There is only so much space to get away and so many roads to use, many in poor repair. My humble opinions: please note that I did not claim in my post what you claim I claimed. Flood waters up to 4ft deep hampered rescue attempts and frequent lightning roiled the skies well after the main threat had passed to the east. The reason that is bad advice is very simple. Damage from Friday night's severe weather was concentrated a few miles north of Moore, the Oklahoma City suburb pounded by an EF5 tornado on May 20 that killed 24 people. This is an . It made all the difference that it was out in the country.'. This storm was erratic and there will be more storms just like it in the future. ', Danger: A series of violent storms and tornadoes have killed nine people as they swept through Oklahoma City and its suburbs on Friday, Damage: People survey the damage at the Canadian Valley Technology Center's El Reno Campus after it was hit by a powerful tornado on Friday, Crash: An airplane from the Aviation Technology department lies upside down on the lawn at Canadian Valley Technology Center in El Reno. Are they going to fire that weather reporter who told listeners to drive into the tornado? Meteorologists had warned about particularly nasty weather Friday but said the storm's fury didn't match that of the tornado that struck Moore. Why not outlaw sky diving too? With all due respect, the citizens of tornado alley, especially Oklahoma, need to better educate themselves on severe weather. I think it's exactly as you said; these are bona fide emergencies and thus are precisely the situations that they should already be empowered to act in. Often scores, even hundreds of chasers would converge on the same cell by late afternoon. I don't think people realized how deep and strong the water was.'. The morning after: Wilburn Shaw looks for personal items in the remains of his kitchen the morning after Friday night's storm that passed through St. Charles, Mo, Power outages: Tornado-damaged power lines hang separated from its pole after tornadoes that swept through central Oklahoma on Friday, Shattered dreams: A couple in St. Charles embrace as they look over their destroyed home after a violent burst of thunderstorms and tornadoes swept across the Midwest, Together: A mother holds her three children after fans at the Barons game were evacuated to the parking garage under the Cox Convention Center due to severe storms in Oklahoma City on Friday. Vented to the atmosphere, it eventually makes its way to the exosphere and is light enough to escape to space. Like wadded up,' he told the Washington Post. The result, even in dry, acronym-heavy academic language, manages to serve as both an enlightening and horrifying account of storm chasing's worst day. After a large and violent tornado went through Moore Oklahoma a few days ago, several people in various media outlets including CNN mentioned that given the (seemingly enigmatic) lack of good shelter in homes and public buildings in Oklahoma, that a good option to protect yourself in case a tornado comes your way is to drive away. 2006-2020 Science 2.0. Though the state's transportation authorities strongly advised citizens not to drive, some interstate highways in Oklahoma were jammed with stalled traffic, as heavy rains drenched roadways and flooded low-lying areas. Joel Taylor starred . I've had several police hop in my car to look at radar and ask for opinions while chasing because they are not equipt with it. >>> I support this 100%. Run them through the DMV and send out those tickets. Their car was found. October 1, 2013 Though we sometimes take it for granted, Tim's death is a stark reminder of the risks encountered regularly by the men and women who work for us.

Storm chaser Tim Samaras doing the work that made him so well-known: following tornadoes. Their car was found upright in a ditch with its wheels blown off and the engine a quarter-mile away. I will not comment at all in regardess to the death of Tim, Carl, or Paul, as they were close personal friends of mine and I am not reading to speak on that subject currently. Very few professional storm chasers "work for the government" really, none. Television images showed downed power lines and tossed cars as the storm systems dumped at least three inches of rain, stranding motorists in flood water. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. This kind of movement is nearly unheard of in a tornado and that paired with the fact that the tornado was 2.6 miles wide, moving at an accelerating speed, turning 45 degrees suddenly, and had recorded winds of up to 295mph in it created the perfect scenario that no one could have predicted. Discovery says it has been updated with 'Stormchasers' footage of the researchers. What this weather forecaster just did was to advice a couple/few tens of thousands of people in the path of a tornado to get in their cars and drive in the same direction. If you are directly hit by a strong tornado, ending up in the vortex, and you are in the bathtub of your home on the lower floor, youve got a pretty good chance of survival. However, people are not immortal and sometimes die doing the very thing live for, you simply can't legislate that human desire for adventure out of existence, nor should you try to. 'The trees were leaning literally to the ground. They did not discuss the details but I would suspect you would want a helmet that comes down to the jaw line, which sort of eliminates a lot of bicycle helmets, although likely the bike helmet is better than a bare head. It truly is sad that we lost my great brother Tim and his great son, Paul. In the area of voting, the main problem seems to be the expenditure of great amounts of outrage and, which I've posted on before there are new developments, summarized at Inside Climate News: The scale is based on observable destruction, and little was damaged as it tracked through the remote, relatively featureless farm country. I recently found the article on the el Reno tornado you wrote several years ago and I was struck by the naivety of your arguments on laws banning chasing. Saying "Stay out of moore" wold just turn the would-be chasers in another direction that a storm or twister could emerge from. The season usually starts in March and then ramps up for the next couple of months. That was the sound of nuance rushing by your libertarian ear. Storm chasers being killed by storms isn't even a problem. Join the Observer community and help support Oklahoma schools are not properly educated on how to shelter children. I also heard mention of a storm chaser who, attempting a U-turn to avoid a flooded stretch of road, went off a hidden embankment and was lucky to avoid drowning. Tens of thousands were without power, and only eight minor injuries were reported. The news comes as the death toll from Friday's tornadoes and storms in Oklahoma has risen to 18 people, including six children and 12 adults, the Oklahoma chief medical examiner said on Monday. I was streaming the weather warnings at work throughout that afternoon, and the KOCO weather forecasters distinctly advised driving home if you could make it by 4pm and if you had a sturdy shelter at home. Tornado warnings were also posted Friday night near Tulsa and near St. Louis. (Though I'm not so sure that restrictive law re tornadoes is the first or best strategy - simply ensuring that emergency personnel of all kinds have the authority to control traffic might be OK so long as they are adequately trained and backed up with good links to forecasters.) So, I think this particular weather caster did come up short in his responsibilities to provide good safety information but I'm not sure that his comments in and of themselves constituted explicit instructions to leave one's house, get in a car, and drive. In the case of the El Reno tornado, traffic in combination with road bottlenecks (over a river) did in fact cause a number of storm chasers (and go watch the video to get an idea of how many storm chasers there were!) Nooooooooooo!!! Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group. 'If you live in downtown Oklahoma City, please go below ground. Having grown up in Wichita, Ks., I'm well aware of the unpredictability of tornadoes; though technology has greatly improved forcasting, tornadoes will remain highly unpredictable. The authors are Joshua Wurman, Karen Kosiba and Paul Robinson with the Center for Severe Weather Research, and Timothy Marshall of Haag Engineering, a damage-path surveyor from Flower Mound whom I interviewed for our cover story on the tornado. 'Everyone acted differently in this storm, and as a result, it created an extremely dangerous situation,' said Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett. There is a large university team with a NASA/NOAA grant that I know of, and a number of professional chasers are grad students at a university, but that is not the same thing. Lighting up the sky: The storm chasers work was featured on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel as they tracked violent weather systems, 'Tim's research included creation of a special probe he would place in the path of a twister to measure data from inside the tornado; his pioneering work on lightning was featured in the August 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine. Academic Postmortem of Tornado that Killed Tim Samaras Is Chilling Brantley Hargrove October 1, 2013 1:50PM The American Meteorological Society has released a preliminary version of its. I suggest that law makers in tornado alley states consider legislation making it a violation to intentionally drive into or near the path of known or likely tornados. Tim's death is a stark reminder of the risks encountered regularly by the men and women who work for us. But, I suspect I know why you proposed that idea. Actually, to get my point all you really have to do is read the post but to restate the idea: Jamming a county road or a state or federal highway during an emergency is a public danger. A man's body was found about 1 p.m. on Saturday in a creek just east of Dobbs Road in Harrah, said Mark Myers, a spokesman with the Oklahoma County Sheriff's office. More than 100 people were injured by swirling debris, most with puncture wounds and lacerations, authorities said. Three storm chasers died in that storm. 'We were very concerned this would move into downtown. But the agency upgraded the ranking after surveying damage from the twister, which along with subsequent flooding killed 18 people. Here is what the tornado did: It grew from a big tornado to a bigger tornado, to what might be the largest tornado ever observed with instruments, in a matter of seconds, and it made a fast jog to the right, not an unusual thing for a tornado to do, but unanticipated by the storm chasers. -Benoit Mandelbrot Samaras acknowledged the dangerous weather conditions Friday in his final tweet before his death: Individuals and institutions across the fields of storm-chasing, meteorology, and media expressed their sorrow and condolences to the victims' families Sunday. The latter group tend to get in the way. It airs at 10 p.m. EDT Wednesday. In closing it should be important to note that Tim and crew did not get killed because of the traffic that was present on that day. We have many many laws that are more or less unenforceable. A two-and-a-half mile wide tornado would not look like a tornado to a lot of people, Smith said.