Open Thread on Moore, Oklahoma

This little working class residential town is halfway betwee Norman and Oklahoma City.  pl 

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

This EF4 tornado on the revised Fujita Scale covered 20 miles in 40 minutes with 2 mile wide sweep. Looks like over 100 dead at this point in time!

Sympathy to all involved and impacted and their survivors and families.

Wondering if it could be documented how many military engagements of the USA where 100 or more dead in less than 1/2 hour?

[William R. Cumming]

A new Iran blog at [email protected] housed in Brookings!

[John Minnerath]

The number of dead has been revised down to 24 last I read. That number will no doubt rise some as work continues.
100 US KIA in 30 minutes? Don't know off the top of my head, but I'm sure there were actions during WWII with such rates.

[turcopolier]

John Minnerath and WRC

Such losses were commonplace in the Civil War, WW 1 and WW 2. The worst I ever saw was 54 KIA and 79+ WIA in one US rifle company. Losses at places like LZ Albany were also very high. pl

[Richard Armstrong]

Before moving to Kansas City in the late '90s, I lived very near to the neighborhoods stuck by Monday's tornado. I know the area and the people intimately.

Oklahomans are in their very nature a quite resilient people. Communities were created overnight out of nothing as land runs opened areas of Indian Territory to settlers. The devastation of the Dust Bowl forced some to relocate, but many came back and most toughed it out. In 1995, the bombing of the Murrah building in OKC and the way that Oklahomans responded showed the rest of the country what Oklahomans were made of.

In May 1999 Moore was struck by a very large tornado on the east side of I-35. A few years ago on the same part of I-35 Monday's tornado crossed, a fuel truck wreck caused an inferno that engulfed cars over a half mile stretch. Moore certainly seems to have more than it's fair share of trouble.

In the '70s Moore was famous for it's water tower located next to I-35 near the path of the tornado. In the midst of Vietnam, Watergate, riots and rampant inflation the mayor of Moore had the city works department paint an extremely large, bright yellow "Happy Face" with the single word "Smile" below it on that tower.

I think of Moore every time someone sends me the most common emoticon - :)

[ISL]

The geekiness in me cant resist coming out.

According to:

http://zidbits.com/2011/08/how-much-energy-does-a-tornado-have/

an EF4 has about 40000 kWatt energy.

That translates into 35 Tons of TNT.

If we assume 10 minutes, that is a saturation bombing rate of 3.4 tons of TNT per minute along its path.

Not sure if in WW2 such rates were ever achieve.

Perhaps we should be glad the destruction was not worse and that tornado shelters do work!

[MikeB]

I keep hearing comments Like "if you where not below ground you would not survive" or some such. It does not seem that the building codes in those areas where such storms are common require any such below ground level rooms. I wonder why?

[Richard Armstrong]

The simple answer to your question is cost. While tornados are more common on Oklahoma than in many place the probability of any particular home being destroyed by one is very low.

Oklahoma is flat. Very flat. It's rarely possible to build a home with a "walk out" basement so construction costs for a "full" basement can add 1/3 or more to the cost of a home.

My brother (who is in Moore today helping a friend dig out) is a builder who constructs reinforced concrete and steel above ground safety rooms in each of his homes.

As to why local governments don't require such safety features in their building codes I believe that to be a function of the extremely conservative nature of Oklahoma politics. Oklahoma may be the reddest of all the red states as all 77 counties were won by Romney in 2012.

[Mongoose]

I'm about 65 miles southeast from yesterday's storm wreckage. We have no choice but to live with the threat of killer storms (they can occur at any time of year, not just spring and early summer) and we've learned to live with the threat. Keep your eye on the sky and go about your daily grind. For newbies to this part of the country tornado watches can lead to unwarranted jumpiness; for vets of this type of weather tornado warnings cause one to perk up their ears but you still go about your business. When I stepped outside yesterday morning you could feel the threat in the air--we knew it was coming--it was simply a question of where.

I'm interested to see what our two numbskull Senators, Coburn and Inhofe, will do about disaster relief funding, given the grief that they and their Oklahoma congressional colleagues visited upon the victims of Hurricane Sandy with their petty complaints about spending off-sets before approval of disaster relief. I know Coburn says he'll demand cuts to the federal budget before voting for relief to the people of Moore and Shawnee (hit two days ago) but I have my doubts. For the sake of the people of Moore I hope that Senators and Representatives from the northeastern states show more maturity and empathy for the people of the Southern Plains than our Oklahoma politicians showed for the people of NYC and Jersey. We shall see.

[optimax]

The tornado was stronger than the Hiroshima bomb. Moore looks as flattened as photos show Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the attacks.

A video of children congregating outside their destroyed elementary school shows them to be remarkably calm.

[Mongoose]

It's not easy to build below ground in Oklahoma--red clay soil that constantly shifts, etc. We're a state with a few extraordinarily wealthy families and concentrated pockets of upper middle class wealth but the vast majority of Oklahomans are hard working, lower middle class types (I had a good chuckle from the Colonel's description of Moore as a working class town--it's a bedroom suburb for those who work in OKC to the north and Norman to the south.)

Back to your question--extraordinarily high construction costs would preclude building basements--more cost effective to have a storm shelter buried in your backyard but even that's probably out of financial reach for many who live here. No doubt many but clearly not all residences in Moore have storm shelters. As far as kids in school--the cuts to public school funding precludes building storm shelters at public schools, especially when students share books because monies aren't available for multiple copies of textbooks for each student.

The chances of being subject to a direct hit are small; moreover, people know what to do--you just have to hope that you receive adequate warning about where the greatest danger is (which happened the last two days) and then get the hell out of the way.

[Mark Logan]

My favorite book on meteorology. Somehow, Dennis Newton makes it as "easy" as it gets.

"Severe Weather Flying"

http://technical-ref.free-books.biz/Severe-Weather-Flying-General-Aviation-Reading-series-PDF-947.html

[Tyler]

Talked about this at lunch today with a colleague, trying to visualize a two mile twister. Very hard to do. Can't imagine the sight of that thing bearing down on you.

[Babak Makkinejad]

All:

Could the effects of these tornados been mitigated by building houses with brick & mortar?

Altyernatively, used reinforced concrete for residential building?

Why insist on building wooden structures?

[no one]

My own geekery is causing me to ponder the insurance situation. Will insurance pay out on these property losses? I'd think that lenders would require tornado insurance on mortgaged properties in that area. But, with this being the second major tornado to follow the same path within 14 years, what is it going to cost to insure if rebuild is at current code standards? Will the fed.s step in with some sort of insurance bailout or regulation?

[Alba Etie]

First our hearts are broken to see our neighbors in
Moore ,Ok once again enduring a monster tornado .We pray for ya'll. It looks like first responders and follow on relief is in place and doing good. There appears to be no lack of resources . Thank God your Governor is Fallon & not Blanco .
Next its high time we go and fetch some of the gazillion of taxable dollars Google & Apple & others multinationals cartels have stashed in Cayman Islands, Ireland & Elsewhere overseas, and give tax breaks to all of the residents in Tornado Alley to build underground storm cellars . Right now in Central Texas we are under tornado watch from the same super cell that struck Moore . At the very least next time pirates hijack a container ship full of Iphones & Goggle tablets off the Horn of Africa - Schimdt and them should be made to call the Somali Navy to rescue their crew , & product .
Again we are Praying & Pulling for Moore. Sooners are tough , tough folks - it will get better .

[Mongoose]

The vast majority of homes and buildings were brick and mortar or reinforced concrete structures (Moore Hospital for example); little in the way of wood-frame only construction. Unless you've experienced one, it is difficult to imagine the power of a small to medium size tornado; it is literally impossible to conceive of the power of yesterday's.

Concerning insurance: homeowner's insurance here as far as I know includes coverage for tornadoes as well as straight line wind damage.

[optimax]

This tornado was strong enough to tear apart brick houses. Don't know about concrete, though it would still tear-off the roof and demolish everything inside.

[ISL]

Babak:

Yes, reinforced concrete and brick houses help, unless you have an EF4 or EF5 tornado. So in this case, the only solution is as Mongoose notes, get out of the way (preferably underground).

Hiroshima was quite a bit larger 16 kTons or 450 times larger; however, I dont think the damage scales linearly... although if you imagine 500 of those tornadoes swirling through....

[Kyle Pearson]

All climate change models predict much larger tornadoes throughout the central Midwest. If climate change continues as predicted, storms like this will likely become relatively commonplace, soon, and much larger ones may yet be seen.

As i remember, Oklahoma and far North Texas are the two places that tend to get the worst of them. They're midway between the Mexican desert and the sub-arctic Canadian regions. I don't remember if there have ever been any big ones like this in Kansas, but our family had close churchgoing friends in Wichita Falls for the big one in 1979.

[Medicine Man]

I read comments from a local who said he felt the ground rumbling from half a mile away.

I imagine a twister that size to look like the Wrath of God. Or the finger of unimaginable colossus.

[Tyler]

And I was told back in 1994 that climate models said Miami would be under 12 feet of water by 2002 if we didn't shut down 90% of our carbon output.

In the 1970s it was global cooling, in the 1990s it was global warming. Now its 'climate change'. Weather happens, regardless of how much people want to tie it to their ideological agendas.

[Tyler]

To see it coming towards you would be bad enough, but to watch it miss you would result in a number of ephiphanies, I imagine.

[Richard Armstrong]

Kyle,

On April 25, 1991 Wichita and Andover were hit with a pretty bad one. NEXRAD (the WSR-88D) had only two operational sites, both in Oklahoma. The Wichita WFO was still using a WSR-57. We were able to see and track the tornado from the NEXRAD Operational Support Facility in Norman, OK and called the Wichita WFO long before they could detect the twister with their equipment.

Here's a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_SRimynSSs

The tornado was rated F3 when it went across McConnell AFB and was an F5 when it hit Andover.

There were 55 visually confirmed tornados from Texas to Iowa that day.

A very exciting day to be working at the NWS with the newest (at the time) weather radar technology.

[Babak Makkinejad]

OK, thanks - the pictures showed wood.