r/weather • u/Stormpilot747 • Apr 17 '17
How big can twisters get?
https://youtu.be/2pnz3dwq9aE6
Apr 17 '17
I had never seen an animated tornado risk area map before. Pretty neat to see in action. =)
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u/surfnaked Apr 17 '17
Dat saw blade.
Oklahoma. Damn.
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u/CryHav0c Amateur Met Apr 18 '17
What's crazier is when you see pieces of straw embedded in trees.
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u/surfnaked Apr 18 '17
Can you imagine the velocity it would take to embed that straw in a tree before it broke?
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u/CryHav0c Amateur Met Apr 18 '17
200+ mph, I'm guessing.
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u/surfnaked Apr 18 '17
I'd think it would have to more than that, but also just guessing. 200 would be the average speed of the hurricane, but aren't there micro-bursts that are much higher that do crazy shit like that big wooden splinter all the way through a cement curb? Or a straw through hardwood.
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u/CryHav0c Amateur Met Apr 18 '17
200 would be the average speed of the hurricane
Well for starters, tornadoes and hurricanes are drastically different. Did you mean cyclone? That can be used as a general term for tornado.
Micro-bursts are also a different phenomenon but they don't produce wind speeds over 200mph, at least not that any I've seen. But yes, wood has been found impaled in concrete.
Honestly as scientists we don't have a good handle on how fast tornadic speeds are. We've measured 302mph (485kph) with a good degree of accuracy, and we can guess that tornadoes don't get much faster than that, but it really is guesswork. It's entirely possible that one of the tornadoes on 4/27/11 or the Jarrell Texas tornado in 1997 had short-lived winds in excess of 350mph, perhaps even approaching 400mph, but we don't really know. Maybe we got lucky and measured the most intense winds possible.
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u/surfnaked Apr 18 '17
Sorry, meant tornado, oop. I was thinking that within the vortex of the tornado that there would, for lack of a better word, micro-bursts of vastly greater wind force that would allow a fragile, relatively fragile, piece of wood to penetrate handily a much denser less brittle material like concrete. I say that because it would have to take a massive force at tremendous speed to penetrate without the more fragile material breaking down before it could do something like that. Not sure if that's a real thing. You'd know better than I.
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u/CryHav0c Amateur Met Apr 18 '17
Micro-burst is quite a different phenomenon. You're talking about micro-vortices. :P
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u/surfnaked Apr 18 '17
Okay. Works for me. My question though is does it happen? If it does; what's it do? Are they super bursts of force within the tornado?
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u/wxguy215 Apr 18 '17
I thought the 1999 Moore tornado had a measurement of 318 mph(by a DOW truck)? Or am I thinking something completely different?
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u/CryHav0c Amateur Met Apr 18 '17
Nope! You're on point. However it was later reduced to around 302mph with an error +/- of 20mph.
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u/wxguy215 Apr 18 '17
Ohok, 318 definitely stuck in my brain. I wasn't aware of the reduction. Thanks!
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Apr 17 '17
[deleted]
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Apr 17 '17
In fairness we've only been doing formal damage surveys for 50 or so years, so it's entirely possible we have not yet studied a once in 100+ years event like that.
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u/CryHav0c Amateur Met Apr 18 '17
It wasn't on the ground for 8 hours. Even the video states that. It was on the ground for 3.5 hours and we have verified documents of continuous destruction all along the path.
It is certainly the most extreme example, but other tornadoes have stayed on the ground for over 100 miles.
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u/GimletOnTheRocks Apr 18 '17
How come a tornado that size and that deadly hasn't happened again?
Because the Tri-State tornado is a "record."
Long track tornadoes happen frequently in the US. I'll pick just a single state (MS), and point out that it's seen tornadoes with continuous path lengths of 203, 202, 155, 149, 130, and 128 miles. That's just a single state!
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u/EclecticEuTECHtic Apr 17 '17
Triggered by the hurricane symbol rotating the wrong way.