Tornado in Springfield, MA
No part of the US is immune to tornadoes, although the well-known “Tornado Alley” in the midwest has by far the largest number in this country and the world. But New England has some, too, and yesterday Springfield, Massachusetts—a large town on the banks of the Connecticut River just east of where the Berkshires begin—had its turn.
If you want to feel insignificant and vulnerable, or if you just want to see the force of a very powerful medium-sized tornado, take a look at this video (hat tip, commenter “rickl;” for best viewing, watch full screen). Note what happens to the river:
Somehow, it reminds me of this scene:
If you want to feel insignificant and vulnerable
Ah, but neo, we can’t be insignificant – we cause global warming!
Sure.
I did a rough calculation once and (IIRC) humans would each have to be about 100 m tall to be to the Earth as bacteria are to a billiard ball. Kinda puts talk of a man-made apocalypse into perspective, doesn’t it?
I bet an F5 tornado in this situation might give a glimpse of muddy river bottom. Now that would be surreal.
OB i’ve always been intrigued by similar calculations. I recall once figuring out if the earth was the size of a bowling ball (8 inches), then the 6 mile wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
That is exactly what I expected: air is sucked into the vortex from all directions. Aerial nuclear blast will do roughly the same, only on bigger scale.
But tsunami in Japan was more impressive. And more realistic description of what happened to Pharaon and his army.
I was born in Springfield and my parents still live in the area. My brother was actually driving to my parents house yesterday afternoon, and if he didn’t leave Boston an hour later than planned, he would have been on I-91 south around the time the tornado crossed the road, a frightening thought (go to masslive.com to see a video from someone actually stopped on the highway as it passed).
Other than a tiny tornado uprooting a few trees in northern Connecticut when I was really small, nothing like this has happened in Western Mass my entire life, and compounded with the recent devastating Midwest tornados and the Japan earthquake, it makes one wonder if something is actually amiss other than normal weather variability.
It took John Kerry, of all people, to point out that a devastating tornado similar to the recent Joplin, MO one devastated Worcester (in central Mass) in the 1950’s, so these things do happen in our neck of the woods, and can be bad. (Of course, Kerry will be blaming this on global warming before too long).
“”it makes one wonder if something is actually amiss other than normal weather variability.””
Jack
I’d say the answer can be found in people confusing average weather with normal weather. Because the average is compiled of some very wild swings, making a massive tornado outbreak season, or one with oddly few tornados fall in the category of normal.
Early this morning, as I was looking for information about yesterday’s tornadoes, I stumbled across the 1953 Worcester tornado. I had never heard of it before.
That was a major tornado by any standard.
StevenH: off the subject but reference the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. That theory is junk science, a result of too much ego and too little of data and logic. The closest a dinosaur bone was found to the iridium layer in the Hell’s Creek formation (the major area where the K-T boundary is observable) was ten feet. It’s like saying a traffic accident in Jersey caused a facility in Chicago a month later or a month earlier.
We have numerous tornado warning all across Iowa from April through September. I’ve lived nearly all my days in Iowa so tornadoes are just an expected part of life. My town was hit by an F2 in 2005. To have a tornado pass by (about 4 blocks from my house) is nerve wracking and a bit awe inspiring. Tornadoes are a beautifully destructive force of nature.
http://www.tornadochaser.net/images/frequency.jpg
That dark green circle where NY, CN, and MA meet stands out from the rest of new England.
Parker:
That is quite an anomaly. Note also that much of Missouri is low risk.