ALERT NEWSLETTER – March 2016

Published 03/02/2016 | By KV4S

Hi Everyone,

The Birmingham Hamfest http://birminghamfest.org/ is at the end of this week, March 4 & 5 at the Zamora Shrine Temple.

This will be a Friday & Saturday affair, Friday 4 – 7 PM and Saturday 8:30 AM to 4 PM.

ALERT will have a table Saturday and an ALERT forum 12 – 1 PM Saturday in the mystical Knights Of Mecca Room.

This month’s ALERT meeting on March 8th will feature the selection of the two person Nominating Committee for the upcoming elections in May.

Please plan on attending this meeting & don’t be shy about volunteering to serve on the Committee or to make yourself available for a leadership role. We need some of our newer members to step up and become active members of ALERT’s leadership. All it takes is a willing heart and once elected a commitment to faithfully fulfill your duties of office to the best of your abilities.

We need you to be actively involved in ALERT’s leadership and to help us build a strong ALERT organization for the future.

Your time has arrived.

Your ALERT needs you.

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10 Popular Tornado Myths

1. “A mountain will protect you from a tornado.”

This is a common myth in the Jefferson / Shelby County areas, as most major tornadoes do seem to prefer the areas northwest of the foothills of Appalachians, of which Red Mountain and Shades Mountain are. But, this is a false assumption.

The tornado will go up the side of a mountain, shorten and widen, and then go down the other side and lengthen and tighten in size, often with a higher wind speed, similar to an ice skater increasing her speed by pulling her arms in. This is called “vortex stretching.”

Why does Jefferson County get visited by more severe tornadoes and Shelby County seems to have been largely spared?

The best theory is that the Jefferson County is closer to the core of the Dixie Tornado alley, while Shelby on the eastern edge. The other theory is Shelby County has plain “lucked out” and that that lucky streak will end, either due to odds or the Dixie Alley shifting eastward.

2. “A river will protect you from a tornado.”

On May 7, 1840, a tornado touched down in Louisiana 20 miles Southwest of Natchez Mississippi, which lay on the opposite shore. The storm moved on an odd path paralleling the Mississippi, defoliating trees on both shores. The three to four hundred yard wide funnel followed the Mississippi, reached Natchez and Vidalia Louisiana, destroying the central and norther portions of Natchez.

A contemporary report stated “the air was black with whirling eddies of walls, roofs, chimneys and huge timbers from distant ruins…all shot through the air as if thrown from a mighty catapult.” “Reports have come in from plantations 20 miles distant in Louisiana, and the rage of the tempest was terrible. Hundreds of (slaves) killed, dwellings swept like chaff from their foundations, the forest uprooted, and the crops beaten down and destroyed. Never, never, never, was there such desolation and ruin.”[

The “official” death toll was 317, with 269 being killed on 60 flatboats on the Mississippi. But, the unofficial toll was believed to be much higher.

If the Mississippi could not deflect a (post review) F5 tornado, the Warrior River won’t either.

3. “A Tornado is more likely to hit a mobile home park.”

It isn’t that mobile homes magnetically attract tornadoes. It is the same tornado hitting the same neighborhoods would find that fixed structures are anchored better and are more
aerodynamically stable that their mobile counterparts. So the houses, may survive while the tumble trailers tumble away.

One oddity I saw with the damage from 2004’s Hurricane Charley was that it flattened a well-constructed subdivision, but, left the trailer park next door untouched.

4. “You should open a window to balance the pressure inside your house so it won’t explode due to the low pressure.”

Tornadoes are quite adept at opening the windows on their own, with limbs and 2×4’s, forget the windows, and take shelter instead.

Houses are not air tight, and don’t explode, rather are blown away from the outside.

One oddity with the Pratt City 1998 F5 tornado is that there were two houses sitting a couple of dozen feet apart. The house one the left had roof and walls blown away, but, the dishes and napkins on the dining room table were untouched. The house on the right had the roof and walls undamaged, but, every stick of furniture was sucked out of the barred windows.

5. “Tornadoes never strike the same place twice.”

McDonalds Chapel was struck by an F4 tornado April 15, 1956 & and an F5 April 8, 1998.
Smithfield was struck by an F5 tornado April 4, 1977 and by an F4 tornado April 27, 2011.
Cordell Kansas was hit three times on May 20 three years in a row in 1916, 1917 & 1918.
Guy Arkansas had the same church hit by three tornadoes in the same day.

6. “Overpasses are safe tornado shelters.”

The wind flow under an overpass is much greater than the open field. There is a wind tunnel effect, which concentrates the wind, and one can be easily blown away like a pea being shot from a straw, on impaled by debris as small as a pine straw.

A far safer move is to lay in a depression or ditch, assuming it doesn’t flash flood.

Another idea that makes sense is something my Mom’s Grandma told her when she was a little girl in the 1930’s. “If you are caught in a cyclone, grab hold of a small bush like a hedge bush. A cyclone will knock over trees, but, they won’t rip up bushes.”

Based on damage I’ve seen in tornado debris fields, there is some basis for this.

Though it has nothing to do with tornadoes, she also said “If a bear gets after you don’t climb a tree, it can out climb you. Don’t run uphill, it can outrun you. Run downhill at an angle, the bear’s short legs will cause it to stumble and roll downhill and you can escape.”

7. “A tornado always has a visible funnel.”

A visible tornado vortex is composed of two parts, the “condensation funnel” cause by water droplets condensing near the base of the parent cloud and a “dust or debris funnel” caused by dust being stirred up carried by the wind circulation on the ground. If there is no dust available to to be picked up, for instance in a parking lot, there will be no visible funnel touching the ground, even though the wind circulation is in full contact with the ground. This is why concentrated “green lightning” or power flashes are a valuable clue which should be reported to the NWS. They indicate a circulation on the ground.

8. “You can outrun a tornado.”

In the panhandle of Texas perhaps this is true, but not in a metropolitan area or an area with few road options.

On May 20, 2013, Oklahoma City’s KFOR Meteorologist Mike Morgan told his viewers at least eight times to get in their cars and drive south of the city as a large rain wrapped EF5 tornado rapidly bore down on the city. Though admitting that the interstate was already a “parking lot”, since it was rush hour, he later advised people twice to “abandon your cars” as the storm reached the city.

This proved to be terrible advice.

“Unfortunately there are hundreds and hundreds of cars on the road……a lot of people are panicking trying to leave their house…..you really can’t move very much.” – Chase Thomason KFOR.

24 people were killed. If the tornado had turned to the right, even just a little bit, it would have struck the gridlocked interstate, the death toll would have been unbelievably higher.

9. “Tornadoes don’t strike cities.”

One mistaken theory I have heard is that perhaps the heat island effect of the city deflects the storms circulation somehow. But, that is not true

Downtown St. Louis has taken a direct hit four times in less than a century.
Brooklyn New York was hit by an EF2 in 2001.
Atlanta was hit by an EF2 in 2008
Fort Worth was hit by an EF3 in 2000
Nashville was hit by an EF3 in 1998

My grandfather always said “the day will come when a big tornado will go right up Jones Valley into downtown Birmingham.” Though it hasn’t happened yet, there really in no reason to think it won’t happen someday.

10. “The news media always seek out Bubba Jo, Donnie Ray or Cooter for interviews.”

Invariably you will see this interview or something similar:

“Ah was sittin on the porch getting burrs out of Old Duke’s fur an I seed it. I hollered ‘Doreen,
DOREEN thars a cyclone in tha thar cloud.’ I grabbed the goat an Doreen grabbed some cheekens an we went to the root cellar. When we wuz come out, one of the cheekins was nekkid as a Jay Bird, with no feathers, the trailer was gone and old man Johnsons trailer wuz sittin whar ours was sposed to be sittin. I told the old fool he had 24 hours to get his junk off mah propity, but, he didn say much too, being in a amboolance an all. Ah told him time and agin pullin’ fer the Volunteers would git him in trouble, but, listen, no, no, no…”

I’m sure the news media doesn’t purposely seek out the Bubba Joes and Cooters of the world, and it’s just a coincidence.

Or it it?

I’l just have to ask Old Duke some time….

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Mark’s Almanac

Originally called Martius, March is the third month & first month of the Roman calendar. March is named for Mars, the god of war, and was the start of the military campaign season.
The beginning of “Meteorological Spring”, which is based on changes in temperature and precipitation, not the solar angle, is March 1
March is a wet month. Most floods occur in March and rainfall averages around 6 inches.
Tornadic activity sharply increases in March with there being an increase of 2.2 times the number of tornadoes over the February amount. The focal point for this tornadic activity is the Gulf States.
March is the hail maximum for the Deep South. This is due both to the number of thunderstorms & due to the freezing level still being near the surface. This allows hail to form at lower altitudes and reach the ground intact, as opposed to summer months, when the near surface level temperatures are higher and melts the hail into liquid before impact.
Killing frosts are gone and the last average frost is on March 16.
March is a snow month for Alabama & there is a 45% chance of snow up to one inch, and an 8% chance of one inch or more.
The good news is that there is hope on the horizon as Spring will arrive at Vernal Equinox on March 19 at 4:30 UTC or 10:30 P.M. CDT.
Remember to get the eggs out, as it is said that you can stand eggs on their ends at the hour of equinox.
Daylight Savings Time begins at 2 AM on March 13. So remember to “spring forward” one hour. This, of course means I will lose one hour of “beauty sleep”, which is something I desperately need.
Saint Patrick’s Day is March 17, and you better participate by wearing a Touch O’ The Green or you will be plagued by leprechauns and gnomes. Not a pleasant experience, I can assure you.
Looking towards the sky, Mercury is disappearing into the glow of sunrise..

Brilliant Venus, shining at magnitude -3.9, is just above the east-southeast horizon 20 to 30 minutes before sunrise, 7 to 9 degrees upper right of Mercury.

Mars lies in Libra, shining at magnitude +0.03 rises about midnight and glows yellow orange in the south before dawn..

Jupiter, behind the hind foot of Leo the Lion rises in the east at twilight and shines highest in the south at magnitude -2.5 at midnight. He will make his closest approach to Earth on March 8.

Saturn shining at magnitude +0.5 in the feet of Ophiuchus around 1 or 2 A.M., and is in the east-southeast at dawn.

Uranus shines at magnitude +5.9, and sinks in the West in Pisces soon after dark.

Neptune is hidden behind the Sun

Planet Nine, if it exists, is shining dimly at a magnitude fainter than 22 and at an oblique 30 degree angle to the ecliptical plane of the solar system where the other eight planets orbit.

New Moon will occur March 8 at 1:54 UTC or 7:54 PM CDT. This is the best time of the month to observe faint objects such as galaxies and star clusters because there is no moonlight to interfere.

There will be a Total Solar Eclipse March 9, if you want to go to Australia or Vietnam to watch it. It will be in the middle of the night and totally invisible to North America.
Be assured you will see someone posting about it happening in Alabama on social media, but, unless you want to go to Brisbane, you are bloomin’ out of luck.

Full Moon will occur on March 23 at 12:02 UTC or 6:02 AM CST. This full moon was known by early Native American tribes “Worm Moon”. So called because the rains disturb the earthworms & they are seen wiggling around after the rains.

They are edible by the way, but I think I’ll let you have my share. Incidentally slugs are edible also. Just think of them as snails without the shell

There will be a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse; an eclipse where the moon is only slightly darkened by the fringes of Earth’s shadow, on March 23. This will be visible from Eastern Australia eastward to the West Coast of North America.

Elsewhere, 1955 planets beyond our solar system have now been confirmed as of February 25, per NASA’s Exoplanet Archive http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/

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This month’s meeting will be on March 8 at 7PM at the National Weather Service Forecast office at the Shelby County Airport.

If for some reason you cannot attend the meeting in person, you can still participate via telephone. The teleconference number is 1-877-951-0997 & and the participant code is 741083.

ALERT NEWSLETTER – March 2016

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