Tornados hit USA - 54 of them!

Eric Frei

Anatomy of a Super-Tornado | StarTribune.com



Mississippi Assessing Damage by Tornado - NYTimes.com



10 Killed as Tornado Strikes Miss.; Others Injured - ABC News

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sueann

That's horrific.

I don't think we get tornados do we? I've heard of hurricanes, I know we get them.

Eric Frei

Tornados = twisters

Yes, we get them, but not as frequent as the USA

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3MOZA_en-GBAU355AU355&q=tornado+in+australia&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryAU&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

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sueann

Oh right! there you go, seems I don't know everything after all dammit!

Our town was nearly wiped out in 2007 with a hurricane and floods and whatever else! As far down as Newy. We had no power for 2 days and had to wash with cold water and fire up the barbie to eat. The shops ran out of candles.

It was pretty bad. I've got pics somewhere.

Eric Frei

They get hammered in the USA, that area cops hurricanes, tornados, floods etc.

Then the more northern gets wild winters, ice storms etc.

In fact, it has been found that the urban forest in USA is making a net carbon loss.

Yes, it's something the tree huggers and global warming freaks don't like everyone to know.

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sueann

I think the global warming thing is a bit of rot really, but I think I might be a bit of a tree hugger! I love my trees.

I guess the storms bring you guys lots of work though. That's a good thing, but it's sad when people die. I don't think anyone died in that last huge storm we had.

Storm is a dirty word around here atm, everyone is saying the Melbourne Storm are the biggest NRL cheats ever.

windthrown

Tornadoes (they are also called twisters or cyclones here) are a central US to midwest thing from the Rocky Mountains across the great plains to the Appalachian Mountains. They are driven mainly by cold air from the north, and warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. But they occur far less frequently all over. I have seen them here in the western US. One day when I was in the SF Bay Area in my office, a guy comes in and says that there is a tornado touching down outside. Sure enough, we get to the large picture window and there is a tornado touching down about a mile south of us. Then the geek behind me starts blathering on about how tornados are impossible in the Silicon Valley, because of land mass and the mountains. I tapped the window and said, "Well, that thar is a twister buddy, and I'll bet you a case of beer on that." My manager chimed in with me and said, "Yep, you would lose that bet," to the geek. He was from eastern Nebraska, part of "Tornado Alley" as they call it there. He had seen dozens of tornadoes personally. We watched two of them set down, wide cones, and the air was filled with weird counter air currents and there was debris. It was eerie. Next day it was front page news, and the geek called in sick. I left the paper on his desk just in case he missed it. The twisters took out a church and several houses, as well as a lot of trees and roofs. Class EF 1-2 tornados, small compared to the ones in the midwest, but a small tornado is still a large force.

windthrown

Global warming is real, as is global cooling. In actuality the rising of the Himalayan Mountains is causing a huge sink in CO2 from rock errosion on the faces of the mountain sides. New stuff for sure, but the rising and errosion of the Himalayas is the driving force of the ice ages over the past 2.5 million years. Within that cycle is the recent release of CO2 by human activity. There is a 1:1 correlation of C02 in the air, the burning of fossil fuel, and the rise in average global temperatures. There has always been a 1:1 correlation of higher CO2 and higher temperatires in the Earth's atmosphere, and long before we were around. Now, that does not mean that everything is heating up uniformly; in fact it is skewed. At the equator, temperatures have risen about one degree in the past 100 years. However, at the ice caps, temperatures are up about 4 degrees for the same time period. That 4 degrees is causing a lot of ice cap melting, and the melting is accelerating. During my lifetime I have seen the Cascade glaciers melt. I have also seen some massive galciers in British Columbia and Alaska melt as well. Not BS. Real melt.

Now the effects of all this is highly debatable, as is the casue. The overwhelming force is the Hymalayan Mountain range though, and we will again see glaciers expanding from the poles at some time in the future, maybe in 20,000 years or so? Hard to pinpoint exactly when. In fact we would be in a deeper chill phase right now if it were not for the Industrial Revolution and the release of large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere over the past 200 years or so. However, we are about half way though the stores of coal, oil and natural gas, so our CO2 dumping will eventually stop and be reversed by the sequestering of CO2 by the Himalayan mountains. Geology is not going to stop, no matter what we humans believe or not.

We have only had a warming period here for about 20,000 years. Before that it was ice, and more ice, for 40,000 years or so. Then before that a warming period, and another ice period, and it cycled back and forth for 2 million years. All driven by the rise of the great mountains in Asia.

Apocalypsse

Mother nature has declared war.

Fairfield

This year is perdicted to be a bad hurricane year too.......great

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windthrown

Actually I read someplace that the Gulf of Mexico was cooler this year and the number of tornadoes is down a lot this year because of it. So the hurricanes should be fewer this year as well, with less heat energy available. At least the ones formed in the Gulf. The Atlantic hurricanes are spawned by a different system off of west Africa.

Fairfield

I hope, I like the south but going down there for hurrican rescue deployments can be a killer with the heat and humindity. Plus lets not forget the Love bugs.....

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Eric Frei

Love bugs? what are they ... leaches or something?

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Fairfield

naa, they are bugs that were genetically made by humans to help with the sugar cane crop (I belive). Now they are so freaking out of control during the summer. All they do is fly around shaging with each other. Picture going outside and everything has little flying bugs on them..... After awhile you dont even notice them crawling on you.

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windthrown

The south is like that. Florida has over 12,500 insect species. Lift the toilet bowl and LOOK inside before sitting down. O/w there is apt to be some red translucent thing in there with 4 inch whip antenna trying to crawl up your bum. We lived in Daytona Beach, FL when I was in first grade, and the neighbor's yard was being taken over by land crabs. Their yard came alive at night. The ants there bored right into the concrete sidewalks. They also had chiggers, these mites that crawl into you skin and eat it, and cause severe itching and welts. Biting midges were also bad there, and you cannot see them they are so small. Since living in Florida, they now have red fire ants from Costa Rica that will eat you alive if you dare walk across lawns. I was attacked by them the last time I was in Alabama. And they have the walking catfish that walk on their fins from pond to pond.

Lovebugs look a lot like Boxelder bugs. We call them Phuck-bugs. They are always doing it, either in pairs, or even in three-ways. They live off of most types of Maples and they cake up in masses in window sills and crevices on the outside of houses here in winter, and they did the same at my house in California. I would suck them all up with a shop vac one weekend and there would be as many there the next. Wads of them huddled together.

jmcg.insight.gardens

we have a version of those love-bugs here, they swarm to mate. I wonder if they are the same.

Plague Soldier Beetle - Chauliognathus lugubris or Chauliognathus pulchellus
FAMILY CANTHARIDAE.

Plague Soldier Beetle - Chauliognathus lugubris or Chauliognathus pulchellus

Julie

windthrown

Different species... Plecia nearctica. Similar theme though.

Love Bugs (Plecia nearctica)

sueann

I don't really mean global warming is total rot, but, as you said WT, the earth has always changed. Maybe it's never had this much pollution before, but I did read that it was on fire for a long time way back, so you would think that would have been very polluting. Smoke is polluting.

Anyway, in 5 million years or so, the sun is going to explode and we will need a lot of 30+ cream to survive that one!

windthrown

The sun has about 4 or 5 billion years left in it. It will not explode though. The last star in this area did, and that Super Nova is what formed the sun, the planets, and the moons that we have in the solar system now. When this sun dies, it will turn into a giant red star and engulf the earth. But long before that happens the earth's core will cool, and the magnetic field that is generated by the molton core of iron and nickle moving around will be shut down. Once the shields are down, the sun's radiation will greatly intensify and essentially kill everything on this planet, and slowly boil off the oceans. The Earth will become like Mars. Even SPF 30 will fail. Even living underground will fail. But that is also far off in the distant future, and we are likely to be an extinct species by then. The earth has been a burning inferno, as well as coverd in a complete sheet of ice in the past. At both times all forms of life were nearly wiped out. Humans were not around then, and we would not survive either event.

Eric Frei

I went to the planetarium here, you know, one of those lay back and view above 360 degree screen things.

I saw the recent documentary narrated by Tom Hanks about the universe, talk about put things into perspective. Earth is like a single drop of water in the ocean, there's billions of planets, stars etc .... mind boggling.

Even stranger is we know what we don't know .... there's stuff out there we aint got a clue about.

I think by the time the sun is ready to go out, or Earth self destructs we would have found suitable alternative locations and figured out how to get there .... we have seen what evolution has done here in a few thousand years .... imagine in millions of years what can be done.

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sueann

Dammit! I won't be around to see all that fascinating stuff. But I was reading, if they ever do find another planet to live on, it would be light years away and we'd be dead before we got there.

In this article, it said there is no planet in our galaxy that could sustain us. Air, water and all that.

windthrown

Interstellar space travel is highly unlikely. The distances are too vast (many light years in length), and the time to travel them are too long for survival. To get a single grain of sand going at the speed of light is more energy than there is in the universe. Space is also a very alien place for humans. Colonizing Mars is unlikely for the same reason that trees do not grow above the timberline here. Microbes do not survive in the soil up there above about 6,000 feet on Mt Hood. There is pleanty of sun, water, and an 80% atmosphere at that level. Yet you just cannot farm up there.

sueann

We're doomed!

So what's god doing about all this I wonder.

WT, I was reading about that terrible oil spill off your coast, so bad. an oil rig caught fire and sunk and oil has spread 250 ks so far and still moving. The biggest oil spill ever they are saying.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/env...-disaster.html

windthrown

We are doomed, really. There are 7 billion people now, or close to it. I look at China and India and I just shake my head. We cannot keep growing at this rate! I think that Oz is the only place on earth that has anywhere near a sustainable population.

God? Sorry, I cannot help you there.

Big big oil spill, yes. All over the news here. Though that is several thousand miles from here, in the Gulf of Mexico.

jmcg.insight.gardens

Maybe the Mexicans brought them with them.............

Nice summation of Global Warming Windthrown, glad somebody believes in it.

Coal, especially brown coal. That's what they use in Melbourne here. A major factor. We have lots of mines round here, and so does the Hunter Valley. Dirty stuff that, in micron particles gives us cancer, god knows what is doing to the Vegetation Communities around here. All that fine dust. We only have underground here, but they are projecting large increases to the amount hauled soon. Something like a truck per minute on the arterial road that leads to our town. All going up to Newcastle. Mostly going to Korea. Then I'm out of here.

What about your way Sueann, open cut up your way, or is it just around Singleton? I've been thinking of buying some where Lower Hunter. Still reasonable prices.

Well if we're all doomed as a race that will make Prince Charlie happy heh.

I hope they get around that oil spill soon Windthrown, last I heard they were estimating a million gallons per minute. Not good.




Julie

windthrown

Yah, the global warming thread here on TW is typical and just a bashing thread calling it pseudo science. Funny that. All my friends at Scripps and Wood Hole (Oceanography institutions) are so past that and into the scinece of the process its silly. But the conspiracy theorists prevail. Which is another reason humans are doomed; even when presented with a pile of obviously blatant facts, it just does not register. Its CNN reporters making statements with guns to their heads. In actuality the opposite was more correct; NOAA was restricted from reporting any GW findings by the previous US administration. But it is already too late. The effects of GW are snowballing now from existing CO2 levels now. For anyone living in an area with galciers, its as obvious as your hand in front of your face. The ice is melting, and melting fast.

Coal is nasty stuff for other reasons as well. The dirty secret is that burning it releases of a LOT of uranium and other fissionable materials into the air. Never mind the CO2. China burns coal like there is no tomorrow. The USA is the Saudi Arabia of coal. The whole west slope of the Rocky Mountains has heaps and heaps of coal. The mother load. The flip side to all of this is that we are at or near peak availability of energy, so the price of energy with India and China ramping up their standards of living is going to be sky high, and very soon. Peak energy will force the reduction of CO2, regardless of the lack of human intelligence. It will be too expensive to burn at the current rate, and there is simply not enough of it to burn in endlessly increasing rates. And if you look at the other resources, not just energy, the population is due to exceed several critical resources within the next 20 years. In our lifetimes.

May you live in interesting times.

jmcg.insight.gardens

Hadn't thought of the heavy metal side of it, Windthrown, food for thought. Also some research.

Yes, born into interesting times, But..... my father bought me up well enough, on his own, super-bright he was.

I have friends that are Environmental scientists, Zoologists, their worried.

Too late,............ probably,............. but I refuse to take that lying down, I put in a lot of time into helping the Environment, as much as I can, shame everyone is so caught up in the media hype. Which is just what it is,............ Bullshite.

Hightrax

Yes we do. I know two farmers who have been wiped out by them in the New England region. Destroy everything in their path. Called Willy Willys but not as mega as the US ones, but big enough. Just dont get in front of abig one.

sueann

I know coal is the worst stuff ever, I guess they will have to go nuclear one day, but the radiation things is massive, they have to vault it and bury it, wherever that will end up leaving us one day down the track I have no idea really.

Without coal pretty much my whole family would be unemployed, but I guess that's only part of the problem and a small part I guess, but not for us! boo hoo!

We have both all around here Julie, underground and open cut, my husband has always been underground.

At the moment coal seems to be the only viable choice for our electricity on a major scale. I guess we need to go solar or buy a windmill or something.

It's all too much I tell you!! too too much!

jmcg.insight.gardens

you come out from behind that lounge Sueann.........

I live in an area that is dependent on the mines too. Lot's of people I know work or have worked there.

I guess the real way to start to fix things, is in your own backyard and then work outwards. Reducing power usage is a start, it's not hard really to address our habits, like stand-by power, turning off the light when we leave a room. Cut down our usage, get the rebates going at the moment and retrofit our homes, small retrofit's can do major adjustments to our energy consumption. And our bills.

Solar is a real go at the moment with the feed-in Tariff's currently offered, 64 cents a Kw, I know someone who just got their first bill after putting up Solar panels, he had made $192.00, for his first Quarter, and for once didn't have to pay a big bill.

You've already started, growing food, looking at helping your land, retrofitting is,nt hard it can be just little things like sealing your doors and windows properly, changing habits is easy.

Through just changing habits my daughter and I have halved our consumption, I have a teenager, if she can do it anyone can.

If everyone starts, then we are all working towards.........

Here's another good book for you Sueann ; Making Your Home Sustainable, A Guide to Retrofitting by Derek F. Wrigly (Scribe Publications, 2005)

Like even something simple as a grape covered pergola on the western side can really cut down on power consumption in summer, it can all be done so it's pleasing as well. Wine and grapes in the evening, what a thought huh.

Julie