Wed., Apr. 18 notes

Wednesday Apr. 18, 2012
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We'll be covering tornadoes in class today and on Friday. It's worth keeping in mind that while they are a fascinating phenomenon and fun to watch on video, tornadoes have brought sudden and complete devestation to many parts of the country already this year. So a little Irish music, which often deals with misfortune and sorrow, seemed appropriate. You heard "Black is the Color" from Gaelic Storm.

Quiz #4 is Wednesday next week. Two weeks from today is the last day of classes. Please check the following list of graded reports. Some of these reports can be revised but the deadline is Wed., Apr. 25.

The Bonus 1S1P Assignment reports on Foucault's Pendulum and Regional Winds were collected today. Several people are very close enough to the maximum number of 1S1P pts allowed. Reports turned in today will probably get them there. I'll have a quick look through the reports and try to update the list of people having earned 45 1S1P pts. soon.

The United States has roughly 1000 tornadoes in an average year. That is more than any other country in the world .

Part of the reason why is that the central US has just the right mix of meteorological conditions. Note the author T.T. Fujita "Mr. Tornado."

I got a little carried away with the colored pencils on this picture. Without any mountains in the way, cold dry air can move in the spring all the way from Canada to the Gulf Coast. There it collides with warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to form strong cold fronts and thunderstorms. There are some other meteorological conditions that come into play that make these storms capable of producing tornadoes.

Tornadoes have been observed in every state in the US, but tornadoes are most frequent in the Central Plains, a region referred to as "Tornado Alley" (highlighted in red, orange, and yellow above). You'll find this map on p. 161 in the photocopied ClassNotes.

Here are some basic tornado characteristics (the figure above is also on p. 161)

1. About 2/3rds of tornadoes are F0 or F1 tornadoes (we'll learn moare about the Fujita scale used to rate tornado intensity later today and on Friday) and have spinning winds of about 100 MPH or less. Microburst winds can also reach 100 MPH. Microbursts are much more common in Tucson in the summer than tornadoes and can inflict the same level of damage.

2. A very strong inwardly directed pressure gradient force is needed to keep winds spinning in a circular path. The pressure in the center core of a tornado can be 100 mb less than the pressure in the air outside the tornado. This is a very large pressure difference in such a short distance. The PGF is much stronger than the Coriolis Force (CF) and the CF can be neglected.

3. Because the Coriolis force doesn't play a role, tornadoes can spin clockwise or counterclockwise, though counterclockwise rotation is more common. This might be because larger scale motions in the cloud (where the CF is important, might determine the direction of spin in a tornado).

4, 5, 6. Tornadoes usually last only a few minutes, leave a path on the ground that is a few miles long, and move at a few 10s of MPH. There are exceptions, we'll look at one shortly.

7, 8. Most tornadoes move from the SW toward the NE. This is because tornado-producing thunderstorms are often found just ahead of a cold front where winds often blow from the SW. Most tornadoes have diameters of tens to a few hundred yards but tornadoes with diameters over a mile have been observed.

9, 10. Tornadoes are most frequent in the Spring. The strongest tornadoes also occur at that time of year. Tornadoes are most common in the late afternoon when the atmosphere is most unstable.

At the present time about 75 people are killed every year in the United States. This is about a factor of ten less than a century ago due to improved methods of detecting tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. Modern day communications also make easier to warm people of dangerous weather situations. Lightning and flash floods (floods are the most serious severe weather hazard) kill slightly more people than tornadoes. Hurricanes kill fewer people on average than tornadoes. The increase in the number of tornadoes observed per year is probably more due to there being more people in locations that are able to observe and report a tornado rather than a true increase in tornado activity.

This figure traces out the path of the 1925 "Tri-State Tornado" . The tornado path (note the SW to NE orientation) was 219 miles long, the tornado lasted about 3.5 hours and killed 695 people. The tornado was traveling over 60 MPH over much of its path. It is still today the deadliest single tornado ever in the United States. The Joplin Missouri tornado last year (May 22, 2011) killed 162 people making it the deadliest since 1947 and the 7th deadliest tornado in US history.

Tornadoes often occur in "outbreaks." The paths of 148 tornadoes during the April 3-4, 1974 "Jumbo Tornado Outbreak" are shown above. Note the first tornadoes were located in the upper left corner of the map. The tornadoes were produced by thunderstorms forming along a cold front (see the weather map below). During this two day period the front moved from the NW part toward the SE part of the figure. Note that all the tornado paths have a SE toward NE orientation.

The April 25-28, 2011 outbreak is now apparently the largest tornado outbreak in US history (358 tornadoes, 346 people killed)

As we learn more about tornadoes I'm hoping you'll look at video with a more critical eye than you would have otherwise. So we took a moment, at this point, to have a look at some tornadoes caught on video. I have found the same or similar video online for several of these.

54a	F3	Grand Isle, NE	Mar. 13, 1990	tornado cloud is pretty thick and vertical
61f	F3	McConnell AFB KS	Apr. 26, 1991	this is about as close to a tornado as you're ever likely to get. Try to judge the diameter of the tornado cloud. What direction are the tornado winds spinning?
52	F5	Hesston KS	Mar. 13, 1990	Watch closely, you may see a tree or two uprooted by the tornado winds
51	F3	North Platte NE	Jun. 25, 1989	Trees uprooted and buildings lifted by the tornado winds
65	F1	Brainard MN	Jul. 5, 1991	It's a good thing this was only an F1 tornado
57	F2	Darlington IN	Jun. 1, 1990	Tornado cloud without much dust
62b	F2	Kansas Turnpike	Apr. 26, 1991	It's sometimes hard to run away from a tornado. Watch closely you'll see a van blown off the road and rolled by the tornado. The driver of the van was killed!
47	F2	Minneapolis MN	Jul. 18, 1986	Tornado cloud appears and disappears.

The Kansas turnpike video also has a warning that a highway underpass is actually a very dangerous place to take shelter from a tornado. Here is some additional information from the Norman OK office of the National Weather Service. Slide 6 lists some of the reasons why underpasses are so dangerous.

The figure below (p. 162 in the ClassNotes) illustrates the life cycle of a tornado. Have a close look at the next tornado you see on video and see if you can determine whether it is in one of the early or late stages of its development.

Tornadoes begin in and descend from a thunderstorm. You would usually see a funnel cloud dropping from the base of the thunderstorm. Spinning winds will probably be present between the cloud and ground before the tornado cloud becomes visible. The spinning winds can stir up dust at ground level. The spinning winds might also be strong enough at this point to produce some minor damage. Here is video of the Laverne Oklahoma tornado that was shown in class and that shows the initial dust swirl stage very well. We'll watch some more of this tape in class on Friday because there are some good photos of a thunderstorm wall cloud (beginning at about 1:07 and 1:46 minutes into the tape).

In Stage 2, moist air moves horizontally toward the low pressure in the core of the tornado. This sideways moving air will expand and cool just as rising air does (see figure below). Once the air cools enough (to the dew point temperature) a cloud will form.

Tornadoes can go from Stage 2 to Stage 3 (this is what the strongest tornadoes do) or directly from stage 2 to stage 5. Note a strong tornado is usually vertical and thick as shown in Stage 3. "Wedge tornadoes" actually appear wider than they are tall.

The thunderstorm and the top of the tornado will move faster than the surface winds and the bottom of the tornado. This will tilt and stretch the tornado. The rope like appearance in Stage 5 is usually a sign of a weakening (though still a dangerous) tornado.

A tornado cloud forms is mostly the same way that ordinary clouds do. In an ordinary cloud (left figure above) rising air moves into lower pressure surroundings and expands. Expansion cools the air. When the air cools to its dew point a cloud forms. In a tornado air moves horizontally into lower pressure at the core of the tornado. The air expands and cools just like rising air does. If the air cools enough a true cloud apears.

Next we need to look at some of the conditions that can lead to severe thunderstorm formation and some of the characteristics of these storms. Severe thunderstorms last longer, grow bigger, and become stronger than ordinary air mass thunderstorms. They can also produce tornadoes.

Severe storms are more likely to form when there is vertical wind shear (the picture above is on p. 154a in the ClassNotes). Wind shear (pt 1) is changing wind direction and/or wind speed with distance. In the case shown above, the wind speed is increasing with increasing altitude, this is vertical wind shear.

A thunderstorm that forms in this kind of an environment will move at an average of the speeds at the top and bottom of the cloud (pt. 2). The thunderstorm will move to the right more rapidly than the air at the ground which is where the updraft begins. Rising air that is situated at the front bottom edge of the thunderstorm will find itself at the back edge of the storm when it reaches the top of the cloud.

This produces a tilted updraft (pt. 3). The downdraft is situated at the back of the ground. The updraft is continually moving to the right and staying away from the downdraft. The updraft and downdraft coexist and do not "get in each others way." If you remember in air mass thunderstorms, the downdraft gets in the way of the updraft and leads to dissipation of the storm.

Sometimes the tilted updraft will begin to rotate. A rotating updraft is called a mesocyclone (pt. 4). Meso refers to medium size (thunderstorm size) and cyclone means winds spinning around low pressure (tornadoes are sometimes called cyclones). Low pressure in the core of the mesocyclone creates an inward pointing pressure gradient force needed to keep the updraft winds spinning in circular path.

The cloud that extends below the cloud base and surrounds the mesocyclone is called a wall cloud (pt. 5). The largest and strongest tornadoes will generally come from the wall cloud. We'll see some pretty dramatic videos of wall clouds on Friday when we finish this section on tornadoes.

Note (pt. 6) that a tilted updraft also provides a way of keeping growing hailstones inside the cloud. Hailstones get carried up toward the top of the cloud where they begin to fall. But they then fall back into the strong core of the updraft and get carried back up toward the top of the cloud.

A wall cloud can form a little bit below the rest of the base of the thunderstorm. Clouds normally form when air rises, expands, and cools as shown above at left. The rising air expands because it is moving into lower pressure surroundings at higher altitude.

At right the air doesn't have to rise to as high an altitude to experience the same amount of expansion and cooling. This is because it is moving into the core of the rotating updraft where the pressure is a little lower than normal for this altitude. Cloud forms a little bit closer to the ground.

Finally here's a photograph of the base of a thunderstorm showing part of the wall cloud and what looks like a small and weak tornado. (from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research).

On Friday we'll look at the structure of supercell thunderstorms and watch a computer simulation of a supercell thunderstorm. Thunderstorms with rotating updrafts and supercells produce a unique signature on radar, a hook echo, that allows meteorologists to warn of a thunderstorm that is capable of and might be producing tornadoes. We'll also look at the Fujita Scale used to rate tornado strength and intensity and look at some of the kinds of damage that tornadoes can produce.

Then we'll just get started onlightning which is the last section we cover before Quiz #4.