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Every year, WGN meteorologist Tom Skilling puts together a roster of speakers for a severe storms seminar at Fermilab (the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, IL). The topics are usually pretty interesting. I decided to take notes this year now that I have an LJ, so naturally this year was the year they decided to turn the lights off to make the PowerPoint presentations more visible. They usually just turn the lights down for the video footage, then turn them back up again. I was attempting to scribble notes in movie theater darkness the whole time.
I was really looking forward to this year's seminar because it was going to cover two storms that I personally experienced.
Tom Skilling -- A Tornado Disaster Can Happen Here
Tom Skilling gave the opening remarks. Much of the theme of this year's seminar was that nowhere is safe from tornadoes. The general public has the misconception that skyscrapers somehow break up the winds that form tornadoes so that tornadoes can't hit big cities. The general public in Chicago also has the misconception that Lake Michigan somehow protects us. The only protection that Lake Michigan gives us is that it prevented the city from growing to the east, so there's a vast open area right next to downtown for a tornado to hit and not cause any damage. Skilling's talk included footage of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta surviving a brush with a tornado during a basketball game two weeks ago.
Ed Fenelon -- Loyola Twister: How Close Much of the Chicago Area Came to a Disaster
The first speaker was Ed Fenelon of the National Weather Service Office in Chicago. His talk was on the storm that hit this area on Sept. 22, 2006 and ended in a tornado that touched down on the campus of Loyola University in Chicago (footage of which can be seen here), then immediately moved out over the lake. I didn't have a blog then, but if I'd had one, I definitely would've written about this storm. I got home from work just as it started raining. The clouds looked pretty dark, so I turned on the TV to check the weather radar. You know how the TV weathermen give general areas of severe weather and they usually name someplace near you, like the other side of town, or maybe the next town? They were practically giving my address on this one. The radar said it was passing literally overhead, then had passed. I looked out the window and disagreed, because there was some pretty scary looking stuff headed my way. Then suddenly the thunderstorm stopped. I mean dead stopped. There wasn't a drop of rain or a breath of wind, and it was dead silent outside. Then in a split second, the wind kicked up so strongly you could see it and the skies opened up. Between the high wind and rain, I couldn't even see the railing on my balcony. I'm on the top floor of my building, which is the last place you want to be in case the roof comes off, but there was no safe place to go downstairs (all the hallways are perfectly straight and end in doors to the outside), so I stuck it out in my apartment. Then I heard a roaring noise and did the only thing I could think of: laid down next to my bed on the far side from the windows, yanked the mattress off my bed and made a little tent out of it, and barricaded myself in with pillows. According to Fenelon, there was a tornado vortex signature directly over where I live but no tornado. One of the other speakers also said that straight line winds at sufficient speed can make the same roaring sound associated with tornadoes. Anyway, enough about me. Back to Ed Fenelon.
Fenelon opened up with a video montage proving that big cities are not safe from tornadoes: Miami (1997), Nashville (1998), Salt Lake City (1999), Ft. Worth (2000), Brooklyn (2007), and Atlanta (two weeks ago). The most interesting part of his talk traced the length of the tornado vortex signature (TVS) produced by this storm through the Chicago area by superimposing the TVS on a satellite picture of Greater Chicagoland. The storm could've produced a tornado anywhere along this track. If it had dropped a tornado at the beginning of the track and it had stayed on the ground the whole time (which it easily could've), the resulting tornado would've hit Fermilab, Glen Oaks Hospital, six major highways at rush hour on a Friday afternoon, two terminals at O'Hare, and All State Arena (a major concert and sports venue).
Fenelon concluded with the story of tornado safety done right that was covered more in-depth in a previous seminar. The owner of a manufacturing plant in Roanoke, Illinois, insisted on the extra expense of building three concrete reinforced rooms inside his plant that could double as tornado shelters. He also had a weather radio, and he and several of his employees were trained as weather spotters. A couple of years ago, the plant was hit by a tornado. The trained weather spotters were set on watch as soon as the weather radio went off. As a result, they saw the early signs of a tornado and were able to herd all the employees into the shelters before the town's tornado siren went off. The facility took a direct hit from an F4 tornado and was completely destroyed, but all 140 employees survived with not a single injury among them. I wish I could get my employers to pay attention to this case. The severe weather plan that was implemented during the storm last August was...inadequate.
Jim Allsopp -- Rare January 7 Mid-Winter Tornadoes
Not only is nowhere safe from tornadoes, no time of year is safe either. Jim Allsopp of the National Weather Service Office in Chicago gave a talk on the rarity of January tornadoes in this area and the conditions that can produce them. Three tornadoes hit northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin last January 7th. It was unseasonably warm (65°F!) that day. In fact, it warmed up so fast that not all the snow had time to melt, so Allsopp showed some photographs of tornado debris lying on piles of snow.
Gino Izzi -- The Damaging Derecho
Gino Izzi of the National Weather Service Office in Springfield, MO gave a talk on the severe storm that hit here last August 23rd. I wrote about it in my blog at the time. It was a specific type of storm called a 'derecho,' which is a long-lived, violent line of thunderstorms that produce widespread wind damage. Derechos can produce wind damage equivalent to an EF2 tornado (skip to the bottom for an overview of the new Enhanced Fujita Scale). Izzi said that one of his colleagues likes to say that "it doesn't have to spin to kill." There was EF1 damage recorded in Wrigleyville (home of Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs baseball team) and tens of thousands of trees were blown down in the Greater Chicagoland area. It turns out that a tornado touched down about ten minutes south of where I live that I hadn't heard about. Izzi also showed pictures of the damage, including a semi that had blown over on Rt. 53 on the route I normally take home from work (I took surface streets home that afternoon hoping that traffic would be less of a nightmare--it wasn't). Wind gauges in the area recorded sustained wind speeds of 75 mph, which is the speed at which tropical storms are upgraded to hurricanes. Now you know why I was a little tense at the forest preserve.
Larry Ruthi -- Greensburg, Kansas, Tornado, May 2007
Larry Ruthi of the National Weather Service Office in Dodge City, Kansas, gave an account of the EF5 tornado that hit Greensburg, Kansas, after dark on May 4, 2007, and destroyed 95% of the town. The tornado was 1.7 miles wide at its peak (the same storm produced a second tornado to the northeast of Greensburg that was 2.2 miles wide).
One of the pictures Ruthi showed was an excellent example of why going down to the basement isn't enough to be safe from tornadoes--you need to get under something sturdy. The photo was of debris from a house that had collapsed entirely into the basement. The space under the stairwell and the space under a workbench were both clear of debris. There was also a picture of a car that had been picked up, slammed into the third story of the courthouse, then dropped on the courthouse lawn.
Ruthi also mentioned something I hadn't heard before. Windows that break during tornadoes don't just shatter, they explode into dust-sized particles that can then become embedded in walls or furniture or people who happen to be in the way. So stay away from windows during severe weather. Tornadoes look really cool, but they're not worth being the last thing you ever see.
Chad Cowan -- The Storms of 2007: Greensburg Rebuilding
Chad Cowan is a storm chaser who came to promote the charity DVD he'd put together. Around one hundred storm chasers donated footage to the DVD, which chronicles the major tornado events of 2007. Proceeds from the sale of the DVD are being donated to Greensburg, Kansas, to help finance the rebuilding efforts. Cowan then showed the Greensburg chapter of the DVD. One of the saddest parts showed two storm chasers talking to a police officer whose squad car was struck by a tornado minutes later as he raced to warn a town of the danger. He died from his injuries a few days later.
Dr. Joe Schaeffer -- Hail: Size Really Does Matter
Dr. Joe Schaeffer of NOAA's Storm Prediction Center comes every year and is a crowd favorite. His talk included a lot of statistics on hail size and velocity (a baseball-sized hailstone has a terminal velocity of about 90 mph, which is the equivalent of getting hit with a pitch from a major league baseball player). He had a lot of video footage of storm chasers having their cars totaled by hail and a picture of the damage swath from a hail storm taken from space (seriously, it could be seen from space). He also had a picture of the largest hailstone on record. It was 7 inches in diameter and weighed 1.67 pounds. The scary thing was that there was a straight edge to it where a chunk had broken off when it hit, so it had originally been even bigger.
John Jensenius -- Lightning: One of Nature's Most Underrated Killers
John Jensenius of the National Weather Service Office in Gray, Maine, gave a great talk about lightning, how it works, and the damage it does. He had a great series of pictures of a lightning strike event (I think it was in Maine, but I don't remember). It was winter, so the ground was frozen. Two houses were connected to the same power line. The lightning struck a tree, conducted into the power line, blew a four foot wide ditch in the ground along the line between the two houses, entered the houses (destroying the wiring systems in both), blew the cabinets off the walls, and blew out all the windows. A frozen chunk of ground from the ditch also flew into the air and crashed through the roof of one of the houses, landing in the living room. There was another picture of an entire herd of cows in a perfect row along a fence that had all been electrocuted when the fence had been struck.
The National Weather Service has a lightning safety page that has plenty of information for adults, along with a kids page and teacher tools for teaching lightning safety to kids here.
Dr. Mary Ann Cooper -- Lightning Strikes and Their Life Altering Effects
Dr. Mary Ann Cooper of the University of Illinois at Chicago is an emergency medicine physician and one of the world's leading experts on lightning strike injuries. One of the most common misconceptions about being struck by lightning is that if it doesn't kill you instantly, you'll be burned, then make a full recovery. That's not the case. According to Cooper, the lightning strike doesn't last long enough to result in significant burns, but it does cause extensive neurological damage, resulting in chronic pain, short-term memory problems similar to learning disabilities, irritability, personality changes, and insomnia. She said that the effects can be especially devastating because the person looks the same on the outside--there're no casts or bruises or stitches to tell the rest of the world that the victim has an injury--yet they're forever changed on the inside.
She said nowhere outdoors is safe during a thunderstorm, so the best thing to do is avoid the threat. Go indoors into a sturdy structure (not a tent or a bus shelter), or a car if there's no structure nearby, as soon as you hear thunder (lightning can strike up to ten miles away from the storm clouds that produce them) and don't go out again until thirty minutes after the last rumble of thunder. When indoors, avoid touching anything conductive that's connected to the structure (stay out of the bathtub and shower; don't use corded phones, video game controllers, keyboards, mice, or headphones plugged into the computer jack--cordless versions and cell phones are okay because they're not connected to anything by wires).
Brian Smith -- The New Enhanced Fujita Scale
The last speaker was Brian Smith of the National Weather Service Office in Omaha, Nebraska, who came to explain the new Enhanced Fujita Scale. For years, tornado strength has been measured on a scale developed by Dr. Ted Fujita at the University of Chicago and was roughly based on the damage done to a well-built frame house by a tornado:
F0 - a few shingles are blown off the roof, but the roof remains intact
F1 - part of the roof is gone
F2 - the whole roof is gone, but the outer walls remain
F3 - the roof and outer walls are gone, but some inner walls remain
F4 - the entire house is destroyed, but the debris remains on the slab
F5 - the entire house is destroyed and the slab is scoured clean
The problem with that scale is that tornadoes don't only hit well-built houses. Meteorologists studying tornado damage have to make adjustments for structure types (it takes less wind to destroy a mobile home than a concrete building, and what about antennas and water towers?). The new Enhanced Fujita Scale consists of damage done to various types of structures and the range of wind speed necessary to produce that damage. Once a probable wind speed is determined, it's applied to the following scale:
EF0 - 65-85 mph
EF1 - 86-110 mph
EF2 - 111-135 mph
EF3 - 136-165 mph
EF4 - 166-200 mph
EF5 - >200 mph
The new scale should provide a more accurate estimate of a tornado's wind speed.
Smith concluded with another scale he came up with that I remember him presenting, probably back in 1997. The first Severe Storms Seminar held after Twister came out featured a lot of mocking of that movie from the meteorologists. Smith was especially taken with the flying cow scene and came up with his own scale for it--the Moo-jita Scale. He had the whole scale back then, but he only brought pictures of M0 (a cow in a field) and M5 (a steak in a frying pan) this time. I think M1 had the cow turning into the wind, and M4 was the flying cow scene from Twister, but it's been about eleven years since I saw that presentation, so I could be wrong. (Gads, have I been going to this seminar that long?!)
The seminar ran for five hours, but I can't say I was ever bored. It was a really good program this year.
I was really looking forward to this year's seminar because it was going to cover two storms that I personally experienced.
Tom Skilling -- A Tornado Disaster Can Happen Here
Tom Skilling gave the opening remarks. Much of the theme of this year's seminar was that nowhere is safe from tornadoes. The general public has the misconception that skyscrapers somehow break up the winds that form tornadoes so that tornadoes can't hit big cities. The general public in Chicago also has the misconception that Lake Michigan somehow protects us. The only protection that Lake Michigan gives us is that it prevented the city from growing to the east, so there's a vast open area right next to downtown for a tornado to hit and not cause any damage. Skilling's talk included footage of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta surviving a brush with a tornado during a basketball game two weeks ago.
Ed Fenelon -- Loyola Twister: How Close Much of the Chicago Area Came to a Disaster
The first speaker was Ed Fenelon of the National Weather Service Office in Chicago. His talk was on the storm that hit this area on Sept. 22, 2006 and ended in a tornado that touched down on the campus of Loyola University in Chicago (footage of which can be seen here), then immediately moved out over the lake. I didn't have a blog then, but if I'd had one, I definitely would've written about this storm. I got home from work just as it started raining. The clouds looked pretty dark, so I turned on the TV to check the weather radar. You know how the TV weathermen give general areas of severe weather and they usually name someplace near you, like the other side of town, or maybe the next town? They were practically giving my address on this one. The radar said it was passing literally overhead, then had passed. I looked out the window and disagreed, because there was some pretty scary looking stuff headed my way. Then suddenly the thunderstorm stopped. I mean dead stopped. There wasn't a drop of rain or a breath of wind, and it was dead silent outside. Then in a split second, the wind kicked up so strongly you could see it and the skies opened up. Between the high wind and rain, I couldn't even see the railing on my balcony. I'm on the top floor of my building, which is the last place you want to be in case the roof comes off, but there was no safe place to go downstairs (all the hallways are perfectly straight and end in doors to the outside), so I stuck it out in my apartment. Then I heard a roaring noise and did the only thing I could think of: laid down next to my bed on the far side from the windows, yanked the mattress off my bed and made a little tent out of it, and barricaded myself in with pillows. According to Fenelon, there was a tornado vortex signature directly over where I live but no tornado. One of the other speakers also said that straight line winds at sufficient speed can make the same roaring sound associated with tornadoes. Anyway, enough about me. Back to Ed Fenelon.
Fenelon opened up with a video montage proving that big cities are not safe from tornadoes: Miami (1997), Nashville (1998), Salt Lake City (1999), Ft. Worth (2000), Brooklyn (2007), and Atlanta (two weeks ago). The most interesting part of his talk traced the length of the tornado vortex signature (TVS) produced by this storm through the Chicago area by superimposing the TVS on a satellite picture of Greater Chicagoland. The storm could've produced a tornado anywhere along this track. If it had dropped a tornado at the beginning of the track and it had stayed on the ground the whole time (which it easily could've), the resulting tornado would've hit Fermilab, Glen Oaks Hospital, six major highways at rush hour on a Friday afternoon, two terminals at O'Hare, and All State Arena (a major concert and sports venue).
Fenelon concluded with the story of tornado safety done right that was covered more in-depth in a previous seminar. The owner of a manufacturing plant in Roanoke, Illinois, insisted on the extra expense of building three concrete reinforced rooms inside his plant that could double as tornado shelters. He also had a weather radio, and he and several of his employees were trained as weather spotters. A couple of years ago, the plant was hit by a tornado. The trained weather spotters were set on watch as soon as the weather radio went off. As a result, they saw the early signs of a tornado and were able to herd all the employees into the shelters before the town's tornado siren went off. The facility took a direct hit from an F4 tornado and was completely destroyed, but all 140 employees survived with not a single injury among them. I wish I could get my employers to pay attention to this case. The severe weather plan that was implemented during the storm last August was...inadequate.
Jim Allsopp -- Rare January 7 Mid-Winter Tornadoes
Not only is nowhere safe from tornadoes, no time of year is safe either. Jim Allsopp of the National Weather Service Office in Chicago gave a talk on the rarity of January tornadoes in this area and the conditions that can produce them. Three tornadoes hit northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin last January 7th. It was unseasonably warm (65°F!) that day. In fact, it warmed up so fast that not all the snow had time to melt, so Allsopp showed some photographs of tornado debris lying on piles of snow.
Gino Izzi -- The Damaging Derecho
Gino Izzi of the National Weather Service Office in Springfield, MO gave a talk on the severe storm that hit here last August 23rd. I wrote about it in my blog at the time. It was a specific type of storm called a 'derecho,' which is a long-lived, violent line of thunderstorms that produce widespread wind damage. Derechos can produce wind damage equivalent to an EF2 tornado (skip to the bottom for an overview of the new Enhanced Fujita Scale). Izzi said that one of his colleagues likes to say that "it doesn't have to spin to kill." There was EF1 damage recorded in Wrigleyville (home of Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs baseball team) and tens of thousands of trees were blown down in the Greater Chicagoland area. It turns out that a tornado touched down about ten minutes south of where I live that I hadn't heard about. Izzi also showed pictures of the damage, including a semi that had blown over on Rt. 53 on the route I normally take home from work (I took surface streets home that afternoon hoping that traffic would be less of a nightmare--it wasn't). Wind gauges in the area recorded sustained wind speeds of 75 mph, which is the speed at which tropical storms are upgraded to hurricanes. Now you know why I was a little tense at the forest preserve.
Larry Ruthi -- Greensburg, Kansas, Tornado, May 2007
Larry Ruthi of the National Weather Service Office in Dodge City, Kansas, gave an account of the EF5 tornado that hit Greensburg, Kansas, after dark on May 4, 2007, and destroyed 95% of the town. The tornado was 1.7 miles wide at its peak (the same storm produced a second tornado to the northeast of Greensburg that was 2.2 miles wide).
One of the pictures Ruthi showed was an excellent example of why going down to the basement isn't enough to be safe from tornadoes--you need to get under something sturdy. The photo was of debris from a house that had collapsed entirely into the basement. The space under the stairwell and the space under a workbench were both clear of debris. There was also a picture of a car that had been picked up, slammed into the third story of the courthouse, then dropped on the courthouse lawn.
Ruthi also mentioned something I hadn't heard before. Windows that break during tornadoes don't just shatter, they explode into dust-sized particles that can then become embedded in walls or furniture or people who happen to be in the way. So stay away from windows during severe weather. Tornadoes look really cool, but they're not worth being the last thing you ever see.
Chad Cowan -- The Storms of 2007: Greensburg Rebuilding
Chad Cowan is a storm chaser who came to promote the charity DVD he'd put together. Around one hundred storm chasers donated footage to the DVD, which chronicles the major tornado events of 2007. Proceeds from the sale of the DVD are being donated to Greensburg, Kansas, to help finance the rebuilding efforts. Cowan then showed the Greensburg chapter of the DVD. One of the saddest parts showed two storm chasers talking to a police officer whose squad car was struck by a tornado minutes later as he raced to warn a town of the danger. He died from his injuries a few days later.
Dr. Joe Schaeffer -- Hail: Size Really Does Matter
Dr. Joe Schaeffer of NOAA's Storm Prediction Center comes every year and is a crowd favorite. His talk included a lot of statistics on hail size and velocity (a baseball-sized hailstone has a terminal velocity of about 90 mph, which is the equivalent of getting hit with a pitch from a major league baseball player). He had a lot of video footage of storm chasers having their cars totaled by hail and a picture of the damage swath from a hail storm taken from space (seriously, it could be seen from space). He also had a picture of the largest hailstone on record. It was 7 inches in diameter and weighed 1.67 pounds. The scary thing was that there was a straight edge to it where a chunk had broken off when it hit, so it had originally been even bigger.
John Jensenius -- Lightning: One of Nature's Most Underrated Killers
John Jensenius of the National Weather Service Office in Gray, Maine, gave a great talk about lightning, how it works, and the damage it does. He had a great series of pictures of a lightning strike event (I think it was in Maine, but I don't remember). It was winter, so the ground was frozen. Two houses were connected to the same power line. The lightning struck a tree, conducted into the power line, blew a four foot wide ditch in the ground along the line between the two houses, entered the houses (destroying the wiring systems in both), blew the cabinets off the walls, and blew out all the windows. A frozen chunk of ground from the ditch also flew into the air and crashed through the roof of one of the houses, landing in the living room. There was another picture of an entire herd of cows in a perfect row along a fence that had all been electrocuted when the fence had been struck.
The National Weather Service has a lightning safety page that has plenty of information for adults, along with a kids page and teacher tools for teaching lightning safety to kids here.
Dr. Mary Ann Cooper -- Lightning Strikes and Their Life Altering Effects
Dr. Mary Ann Cooper of the University of Illinois at Chicago is an emergency medicine physician and one of the world's leading experts on lightning strike injuries. One of the most common misconceptions about being struck by lightning is that if it doesn't kill you instantly, you'll be burned, then make a full recovery. That's not the case. According to Cooper, the lightning strike doesn't last long enough to result in significant burns, but it does cause extensive neurological damage, resulting in chronic pain, short-term memory problems similar to learning disabilities, irritability, personality changes, and insomnia. She said that the effects can be especially devastating because the person looks the same on the outside--there're no casts or bruises or stitches to tell the rest of the world that the victim has an injury--yet they're forever changed on the inside.
She said nowhere outdoors is safe during a thunderstorm, so the best thing to do is avoid the threat. Go indoors into a sturdy structure (not a tent or a bus shelter), or a car if there's no structure nearby, as soon as you hear thunder (lightning can strike up to ten miles away from the storm clouds that produce them) and don't go out again until thirty minutes after the last rumble of thunder. When indoors, avoid touching anything conductive that's connected to the structure (stay out of the bathtub and shower; don't use corded phones, video game controllers, keyboards, mice, or headphones plugged into the computer jack--cordless versions and cell phones are okay because they're not connected to anything by wires).
Brian Smith -- The New Enhanced Fujita Scale
The last speaker was Brian Smith of the National Weather Service Office in Omaha, Nebraska, who came to explain the new Enhanced Fujita Scale. For years, tornado strength has been measured on a scale developed by Dr. Ted Fujita at the University of Chicago and was roughly based on the damage done to a well-built frame house by a tornado:
F0 - a few shingles are blown off the roof, but the roof remains intact
F1 - part of the roof is gone
F2 - the whole roof is gone, but the outer walls remain
F3 - the roof and outer walls are gone, but some inner walls remain
F4 - the entire house is destroyed, but the debris remains on the slab
F5 - the entire house is destroyed and the slab is scoured clean
The problem with that scale is that tornadoes don't only hit well-built houses. Meteorologists studying tornado damage have to make adjustments for structure types (it takes less wind to destroy a mobile home than a concrete building, and what about antennas and water towers?). The new Enhanced Fujita Scale consists of damage done to various types of structures and the range of wind speed necessary to produce that damage. Once a probable wind speed is determined, it's applied to the following scale:
EF0 - 65-85 mph
EF1 - 86-110 mph
EF2 - 111-135 mph
EF3 - 136-165 mph
EF4 - 166-200 mph
EF5 - >200 mph
The new scale should provide a more accurate estimate of a tornado's wind speed.
Smith concluded with another scale he came up with that I remember him presenting, probably back in 1997. The first Severe Storms Seminar held after Twister came out featured a lot of mocking of that movie from the meteorologists. Smith was especially taken with the flying cow scene and came up with his own scale for it--the Moo-jita Scale. He had the whole scale back then, but he only brought pictures of M0 (a cow in a field) and M5 (a steak in a frying pan) this time. I think M1 had the cow turning into the wind, and M4 was the flying cow scene from Twister, but it's been about eleven years since I saw that presentation, so I could be wrong. (Gads, have I been going to this seminar that long?!)
The seminar ran for five hours, but I can't say I was ever bored. It was a really good program this year.
