6:00: … All quiet. All’s well that ends well. A hearty thanks to all of our weather folks and EDM professionals that have dedicated themselves to keeping us safe. Unless something changes, I’m signing off.
5:00: All tornado threat appears to be gone. Possible significant hail on the way. Some flash flood warnings in the area.
4:00: Manhattan removed from warning area.
3:45: Tornado warning issued. Should pass to the east of town. Some four-inch hail in the area.
3:35: Thunder very close. Some dime-sized hail falling. College students scattering in all directions. It would be funny, except … no, never mind. It’s funny.
3:15: Severe thunderstorm warning issued.
2:15: First tornado watch issued. Small chain of clouds to the west. Wind and trees becoming restless. As a reminder, a ‘watch’ is when conditions are favorable. A ‘warning’ is when the event has formed.
11:50: No change in the forecast, yet 80 degrees and bright sunshine in all directions. The perfect day to go out and enjoy the springtime, and thereby be far away from shelter when all hell breaks loose. Thanks, Mother Nature.
10:20: Interesting factoid I didn’t know: the I-35 highway system between Wichita and Kansas City is peppered with tornado shelters all along the route. Concerning factoid: I don’t live anywhere near I-35.
10:05: Ever wonder why tornadoes spin counterclockwise in the U.S.? It’s due to a concept called “vertical shear,” which essentially means that ground-level winds come from the south, and as one moves up the air column to the jet stream, winds come from the west. South + West = counterclockwise. If the ground level winds came from the north, or jet stream winds came from the east, the tornadoes would spin the opposite direction, in theory. Fun to think about.
09:30: Sunday night reflection. As the tornado siren was going off, I watched three girls dressed up for the evening, walking down the street without a care in the world. It’s an open question in my mind whether or not this is a sign of immaturity or apathy. Either way, it’s problematic in our society.
08:47: I live in Manhattan, KS — the heart of tornado alley. Today is one of those days that storm chasers and weather nerds live for. We awoke this morning to a TORCON index of seven–meaning that there is a 70 percentchance that a tornado will materialize within a 50-mile radius before the weather moves out or calms down.
Practice run, TORCON negligible
We had a practice run on Sunday. The TORCON was negligible, but still one touched down briefly about 25 miles from here. It was a good wake-up call. We found out the city siren still works. We found out that when the siren goes off, I still go out on the roof to see what’s happening rather than taking shelter in the basement.
So I thought I’d do something a little different today. After giving an overview of the situation, I’ll be live-blogging events as they occur throughout the day by making updates to this blog posting. The threat extends into the evening, so if at any time I stop blogging without signing off, then you can assume I’m probably in Oz.
Not that I’m trying to make light of this situation. As EDM professionals know, but don’t say aloud very often, there is a very high likelihood that folks will lose their lives today. That will be a tragedy, not only for the individual and their families, but also for our society overall–because it indicates that we will have not done all that we COULD do to protect our citizens. This missive is provided partially as motivation for us to do a better job.
So this is the situation as of this time/date this morning: Weather models have been indicating that this is going to be a very bad day for a week or so now. They’ve been very consistent. The awesome folks at the Weather Channel aren’t letting us forget it, and are continuously, if repetitively, urging us to pay attention in order to be safe. In the local area, rain and thunderstorms have been circling through the area since shortly after midnight, although none has transited through here. The projection is that early afternoon warming applied to the collision of cold dry air from the north and warm wet air from the south will initiate severe thunderstorms that will likely produce large hail and dangerous “long-track” tornadoes that may stay on the ground for hundreds of miles.
But for now, it’s the calm before the storm. More later.
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