Last Friday night, ten people died in one of the worst tornadoes in United States history. The EF5 tornado formed from what was very nearly a “perfect storm,†as it formed in conditions of intense helicity that allowed it to develop violent rotation. Doppler radar indications showed that the mesocyclone developed incredible gate to gate shear values.
The tragedy is that ten people died and ninety five percent of a proud town of 1,600 people was destroyed in way that has happened very few times in our history. But that is not the real story. The real story is that only ten people died. The real story is that the Manager of the Best Western Hotel had enough time to evacuate his ENTIRE hotel to a shelter in plenty of time before it was COMPLETELY DESTROYED.
The real story started nearly fifty years ago on June 10, 1958, when researchers studied a tornado that struck El Dorado, Arkansas with a continuous wave radar, a precursor to today’s Doppler radar. The story made scientific headlines on May 24, 1973 when an armada of researchers studied a tornadic thunderstorm that struck Union City, Oklahoma using a National Severe Storms Laboratory Doppler radar. The network of WSR-88D Doppler radars began to be installed in the late 1980s. Then, last Friday night, a town of 1,600 people had nearly an hour to get ready for one of the worst tornadoes of all time.
Today, very few tornadoes go undetected, thanks to Doppler radar and an army of storm chasers and trained storm spotters across much of the country. Today, towns like Greensburg get hut by EF5 tornadoes, but hundreds of people don’t have to die.
This story would not have been possible without a continuous flow of money for weather research. Not the American Association for the Advancement of Science is warning that cutbacks in budgets at NASA and NOAA threaten the future of weather forecasting, severe weather prediction and hurricane warning. They urge Congress to take steps to reverse recent trends that are already weakening funding for important new satellites.
