Re: Tornado Alley 2011 Bd Rip Vs 1080p
Deandra Schikora
Tornado Alley is a loosely defined location of the central United States and Canada where tornadoes are most frequent.[1] The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project to study severe weather in areas of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. Tornado climatologists distinguish peaks in activity in certain areas[2] and storm chasers have long recognized the Great Plains tornado belt.[3]
As a colloquial term there are no definitively set boundaries of Tornado Alley, but the area common to most definitions extends from Texas, through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, North Dakota, Montana, Ohio, and eastern portions of Colorado and Wyoming.[4] Research suggests that the main alley may be shifting eastward away from the Great Plains,[5][6] and that tornadoes are also becoming more frequent in the northern and eastern parts of Tornado Alley where it reaches the Canadian Prairies, Ohio, Michigan, and Southern Ontario.[7][8]
Over the years, the location(s) of Tornado Alley have not been clearly defined. No definition of tornado alley has ever been officially designated by the National Weather Service (NWS).[9] Thus, differences in location are the result of the different criteria used.[9][10]
Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan, and western Ohio are sometimes included in Tornado Alley.[4] Some research suggests that tornadoes are becoming more frequent in the northern parts of Tornado Alley where it reaches the Canadian Prairies.[7]
No place on earth is entirely free of tornadoes, however, they occur much more frequently in the United States, particularly in the Central states, between the Rocky Mountains to the west and Appalachian Mountains to the east.[9] Texas has the most overall number of tornadoes of any state. Per data collected through 2007, Kansas and Oklahoma ranked first and second respectively in the number of tornadoes per area. However, in 2013 statistics from the National Climatic Data Center reported Florida ranked first in tornadoes per area, although Florida is not a part of Tornado Alley.[12] Florida's high ranking on the tornado list also has to do with the fact that the state sees a high number of waterspouts, small tornadoes that form over water. Although strong land-tornadoes have hit Florida and reports show Florida has a very high number of overall tornadoes, the tornadoes in the state seldom reach the velocity of those that may occur in the Southern Plains.[12] In the United States, tornadoes typically occur in late spring and early summer during the changing season patterns as a warm air mass typically collides with a cold air mass resulting in tornadoes.[12]
Some researchers argue that there are several Tornado Alleys.[4] In addition to the Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas core, such other areas include the Upper Midwest, the lower Ohio Valley, the Tennessee Valley, and the lower Mississippi valley, which may have respective distinguishing characteristics.[4] A coherent conception considers that there is a single Tornado Alley in the United States and Canada, and that this can simply be subdivided into smaller areas based on regional attributes.[2]
In Tornado Alley, warm, humid air from the equator meets cool to cold, dry air from Canada and the Rocky Mountains. This creates an ideal environment for tornadoes to form within developed thunderstorms and supercell.[16]
Despite the elevated frequency of destructive tornadoes, building codes, such as requiring strengthened roofs and more secure connections between the building and its foundation, are not necessarily stricter compared to other areas of the United States and are markedly weaker than some hurricane prone areas, such as south Florida. One particular tornado-afflicted town, Moore, Oklahoma, managed to increase its building requirements in 2014.[21] Other common precautionary measures include the construction of storm cellars and the installation of tornado sirens. Tornado awareness, preparedness, and media weather coverage are also high.
The southeastern United States is particularly prone to violent, long track tornadoes. Much of the housing in this region is less robust compared to other areas in the United States, and many people live in mobile homes. As a result, tornado-related casualties in the southern United States are higher. Significant tornadoes occur less frequently than in the traditionally recognized tornado alley; however, very severe and expansive outbreaks occur every few years.[citation needed]
These figures, reported by the National Climatic Data Center for the period between 1991 and 2010, show the seventeen U.S. states with the highest average number of EF0-EF5 tornadoes per 10,000 square miles (25,899.9 km2) per year.[22]
Canada records the second most tornadoes in the world after the United States.[citation needed] The average number of tornadoes per equal area of land is highest in the southern parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.
Roughly half of all Canadian tornadoes strike the Canadian Prairies and Northern Ontario as far east as Lake Superior. Together, these regions make up the northernmost border of the U.S. Tornado Alley. Tornadoes up to F5 in strength have been documented in this region.[23]
Another third of Canadian tornadoes strike Southern Ontario and Quebec, especially in the region between the Great Lakes and the nation's capital city, Ottawa. Tornadoes do not often hit lake shadow regions,[24] although they are not unknown, and some, such as the 2011 Goderich tornado, have been violent. However, most Ontario tornadoes are concentrated in a narrow corridor from Windsor to Ottawa[24][25] as well as through portions of Central Quebec.[26][27] Tornadoes up to F4 in strength have been documented in this region.
In more recent years, an emerging trend has suggested that the Ottawa Valley is seeing an increasing number of frequent and violent tornadoes. The 2018 National Capital Region Outbreak spawned a high-end EF3 and high-end EF2 which caused catastrophic damage to areas in both Ottawa and Gatineau. 2023 saw 5 tornadoes of varying intensities strike the region, including two EF1 tornadoes which touched down in the Barrhaven suburb within minutes of one another. This phenomenon, while still in the preliminary stages of study, has led some to name this hotspot "Tornado Valley".[citation needed]
Southwestern Ontario weather is strongly influenced by its peninsular position between the Great Lakes. As a result, increases in temperature in this region are likely to increase the amount of precipitation in storms due to lake evaporation. Increased temperature contrasts may also increase the violence and possibly the number of tornadoes.[28]
Northern Ontario between the Manitoba border and Lake Superior is also prone to severe tornadoes, but tornadoes in this area are believed to be underestimated due to the extremely low population in this region.[24][29]
Until, of course, it gets scary. How do you know that will happen? No one has quite figured it out yet. Tornado Watches, the meteorology term for "Hey, watch out a bad storm might come," is akin to saying "It is a spring day," in Tornado Alley, which sits, of course, right over Oklahoma. It doesn't register as danger, really-just another rotation around the sun. In the Ozarks of northern Arkansas, we get fewer tornadoes, but 'fewer' is still plenty. Bad weather brings a little map to the bottom right corner of the TV screen on local networks, and when I was growing up the piece of map representing each county would change from yellow to red to signal a change from a Tornado Watch to a Warning, the term for, "Hey, a Tornado is probably going to happen." Technically, you're supposed to take cover, but most still wait for more specificity. The Warnings are issued for huge swaths of land, and span hours. Usually, the storms just get a little worse. If I was home, I'd grab my little white dog, Puppy, and a golf club to kill snakes with in case I had to crawl into the tiny, dirty space beneath my house. I was lucky enough to have a foundation. If you've ever been in a mobile home during a storm, and felt it sway and bend, you know what kind of luck those poor souls are going to have. And I've yet to see a structure that could withstand a two-mile-wide EF5 tornado like the one that hit Moore.
We don't have a basement, because the water table is too high on our land to build one. It's a common problem here and along with the shifty red clay in the soil, the land here makes basements expensive to construct. Building anything is expensive and people are poor: Hence the double-wides posing as bungalows everywhere. There are special storm shelters we could buy, white fiberglass structures that look like igloos, but anyone who wants to donate the $7,000 they can cost is welcome to criticize people for not owning one. Everyone knows which neighbors have basements or cellars. The first tornado I remember hit nearby when I was almost four. Mom says I am too young to remember, but I swear I can recall being pelted by the golf-ball-sized hail as we ran to our neighbor's cellar. I remember Mr. Carl's broad, open face and the smell of the snickerdoodles he brought, and how we spent the night making shadow puppets with the camping lamp in the damp, muddy room.
Why didn't those kids stay home from school? If you canceled school every day there might be a tornado there would never be school. If they evacuated, where were they going to go? A Tornado Emergency is announced when funnel clouds have already touched down, and their paths are unpredictable. They travel fast. Plus, have you seen what tornadoes do to cars? Better to stay inside. In school, we had tornado drills regularly, lining up against the cinder block hallway wall and bending down on our knees, holding our heads beneath our hands, keeping our backs broad. Teachers said our backs would work together, like a scaffolding, to hold up a heavy weight if the roof fell. Our eight-year-old brains contemplated our eight-year-old backs and thought, "Yeah, ok." It's hard to think of children in a school, scared, as the earth tore itself up around them. They would have felt that terror anywhere, and the destruction could have found them at home just as easily. The necessary construction of safe rooms is a decades-long project, but even those won't be damage-proof in the worst storms.
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