The power of a little bitty tornadoPosted Jul03, 2008 at 06:18 PMA month ago this evening, on June 3 , a small and relatively weak tornado skipped through South Roanoke, doing a lot of damage to trees, including uprooting some very large ones, but very little damage to houses except where it knocked trees or limbs onto about 10 houses. Damage from the EF-0 tornado, with winds of 70-80 mph, was estimated at $350,000. The National Weather Service estimated the June 3 tornado to be no wider than 60 yards. Some video of a tornado in Sweden, of all places, linked here, might yield a little light on how a small tornado can do so much damage to trees, yet touch little else. Scroll ahead to the 1:25 mark on the video to see the tiny white funnel, which appears to be only 10 feet or so wide, as it moves a few feet in front of a car without blowing it off the road, then takes the tops out of several trees. It doesn't appear to so much blow the treetops out as twist them off, slicing them. And then, there's this widely shown surveillance video of another small tornado, probably no bigger than 20 yards wide, tossing cars in a parking lot in Alabama this past May. This is obviously a more intense tornado than the ones in Roanoke or Sweden. Size isn't everything where tornadoes are concerned. |
About this blog
Kevin Myatt works on the copy desk for The Roanoke Times and is its principal weather geek, writing a weekly weather column and advising the newsroom on weather topics. He helps guide students on a storm chasing trip to the central U.S. each May and was an editor for "Hurricanes and the Middle Atlantic States." .....Advertisement.....
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Comments
[July 4, 2008 12:11 AM]
Daniel OwensKevin I've been keeping up with news and weather in the Roanoke area while working in another part of Virginia and South Carolina. What an amazing video of the tornado in Sweden. This gives some perspective to the damage that can be done by any tornado regardless of rating. Keep up the great work and thanks for the links to the videos.