Tornado Watch on WIWS Home Page Home 1st, 2011

WEST ISLAND: By now we all know what happened in Springfield and it’s surrounding towns. This once in a lifetime severe weather outbreak of 3 tornadoes in Massachusetts, one of which left an astounding half mile wide path of destruction 39 miles long brought back memories of the deadly Worcester tornado outbreak of 1953. Debris fell from that storm fell from the sky dozens of miles away, including a frozen mattress and some books found floating in Boston Harbor. In last week's tornado some debris were tossed upwards 30000 ft before falling back to earth. A gas station slip from Brimfield was found 80 miles away in Weymouth. Locally, down bursts or sudden blasts of destructive strong wind are often misreported as a tornado. Although they may appear similar at first- both have a different damage pattern left by the wind. A down burst in general tends to have a central "crater" with debris jutting out from it's center, versus a tornado having a defined swirling path into it's center Both typically evolve from intense thunderstorms. Most weather instruments, especially anemometers (that measure wind speed) do not survive the extreme wind speeds created by tornadoes. That's were SDA or Storm Damage Assessment comes to play. It's sort of the CSI for meteorologists who examine where and how structures failed, width of tree trunks snapped and the impact of building materials, vehicles, and common household items that become missiles. After all the data is collected the wind speed ...

Channel: YouTube Video Length: 26s Date Found: Mon, Jun 06 2011 5:29 PM Category: Technology Date Produced: Mon, Jun 06 2011 12:08 PM View Count: 0