The weather

It sure looks like we've had a big change in the weather. Tornadoes in February in the deep south is unusual. I live near the west shore of Galveston Bay about 20 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. I see the heavy moisture laden clouds stream NE about every three days. Unusual this time of year.

Tornado season generally begins with the February storms in the SE US, then Texas and up through the Southern Plains, then into the upper Midwest, and rolls back into the SE US later in the Fall. El Nino does affect this, but the overall pattern remains roughly the same.

Far as Oklahoma goes, we get them 12 months out of the year. For example, last December, we had six. The December prior, just two. Last May, we had 57.
 
Sure has been mild in western Pa so far.. 60 degrees Weds.. 40s the next week ahead. El Nino!! beats the -18 we had all last Feb
 
i feel sorry for folks in tornado zones. i've seen the aftermath of one decent tornado in brimfield, ma. it really looked like a WWI battlefield. i wonder with so many tornadoes how anything is intact out there. eastern ct has the most boring weather in north america. thank you God. SG
 
The thing about tornadoes is that they do destruction in a NARROW, relatively linear area. My Uncle in Omaha had a tornado come right down his street, take out every house across the street, come over and destroy the neighbor's homes on either side of him, plus the guy behind him, and press on down the street. His house received no direct damage, but had plenty of stuff land on and around his house. Didn't even break a window!

In May '03, a tornado rated at an F4 took out my shop and severely damaged my house, with me, the wife and kids in it at the time! We were in the downstairs bathroom - the only room undamaged in the house. Pretty freaky day, that was! No "freight train" sound - it was more of a big shop-vac picking up rocks and marbles. Took 20 seconds to destroy everything, and it was on the way down the road.

I'll take the risk of a tornado over a hurricane any day, any way! Hurricanes take out whole STATES, plus you get the fun of flooding and tornadoes going along with that. No, thanks. I'll stick with tornadoes, wildfires and earthquakes.
 
Highlands...... LOL what are you 32 feet above sea level
Yep. We're the highest point on the Peninsula. You can ride a single speed bicycle to anwhere on the Gulf and Atlantic coast from here.
We are The Rockies of Florida.
 
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on a personal level, other than with the loss of a loved one, i can't imagine a worse natural disaster than to have everything destroyed in twenty seconds with no warning. that just doesn't happen here. i'll have to say it again, a little stronger this time, THANK YOU GOD! SG
 
on a personal level, other than with the loss of a loved one, i can't imagine a worse natural disaster than to have everything destroyed in twenty seconds with no warning. that just doesn't happen here. i'll have to say it again, a little stronger this time, THANK YOU GOD! SG
You do know that we are due for a meteor hit, right?
 
You do know that we are due for a meteor hit, right?
that's what i was thinking. but even with that there'd likely be a warning. also there's nuclear exchnge, but again that's man made and there'd still be warning. still though, i'm glad his family's okay. i won't say it again. you know how i feel. SG
 
Sure has been mild in western Pa so far.. 60 degrees Weds.. 40s the next week ahead. El Nino!! beats the -18 we had all last Feb

The forecast here is calling for 2" of the white stuff on Tuesday.
 
I've experienced some scary weather. I was at work in a body shop in Buffalo NY when the blizzard of '77 hit. I was caught off guard clothing wise. My boss took me and another employee to his home because he had a 4x4 snow plow. The wind was blowing so hard and the drifts piled up so fast that the mile or so drive took about an hour. We had to scrape the frost from the inside of the windshield with the defroster on high just to see. Old homes were not well insulated and his home heating system wasn't able to keep up. That was one cold *** night. I moved to Houston about 90 days after that.

I've been through a couple of bad Hurricanes here. Alicia hit 8 days after I married my wife Alicia. Alicia had very high winds and did a lot of wind related damage. Knocked down lots of power lines and being August, it was pretty dang miserable without air conditioning. Hurricane Ike however was a game changer for us. Our home and the MIL's home were in Seabrook, elevation 11 feet. Both had 2 feet of water in them from the storm surge and we were upland of the sewage treatment plant. Practically nothing was saved. We now live on our property where our business is located, off the same highway, about 10 miles south but at elevation 25'. The only damage was one roof turbine vent. After the storm, we drove down to Galveston bay to survey the damage here in Bacliff and I was shocked to see alive but stunned Pelicans lining the bay roads and yards. ZZ Top's Dusty Hill had a compound on the bay between Bacliff and San Leon and he has since sold it. San Leon got wiped out with over 10 feet of storm surge and an elevation of about a foot.
 
We have snow here and a lot of it. We can deal with it though and the road crews are really good at cleaning up the mess.

Snow aside... No hurricanes, no earthquakes etc. Once in a while there might be a small tornado that pulls some loose shingles off a random house or knocks a couple tree limbs down. I gotta say, I don't like it, but I can put up with the snow and cold.
 
The only thing that scares me is tornados.
I have a map that shows a tornado, in 1959, with a path that eventually become the neighborhood of where my house is now.
I am no longer worried about being in one. What are the odds.
 
What are the odds?

ask anyone from Moore, Oklahoma.

Moore is an interesting town. There are very, very few mature trees there. Most of the rest of the OKC Metro area has a lot of large, older trees. Moore has very few. There are few older buildings in Moore, for the same reason. Yet, people rebuild! I know a guy that has been wiped out THREE times, and he rebuilds in the same spot each time. He is on house number four at that same address, and it is NOT a mobile home! The way the weather patterns move through here is why Moore is a big tornado magnet. By the time huge supercells mature and get to be strong enough to produce a large tornado, Moore is in the way. Cells tend to follow I-44 like a roadmap, from Lawton to Chickasha to Moore. They develop southwest of OKC and move right up the turnpike. We are the best-informed and best-prepared of all places for tornadoes and notification of sever weather. People come here all the time to see how it's done and done right.
 
I'll stay up here in MI thank you very much!
 
I'll stay up here in MI thank you very much!

Im with ya man...i grew up in "tornado alley" and as a lad lived through the F5 that ravaged Topeka KS June 8, 1966.

MI gets a fraction of tornadic activity of the plains states/se states of course...but my beef is we MI'ers tend to be "cavalier" when sirens wail.

People scoff at me to this day for looking for shelter options when its "green" outside and "dead calm".

LIKELY nothing bad will happen...but maybe the worst thing you can imagine is about to hit you ...ill leave it at that.

Its like we (the general MI populace) forgot (probably) the F5 that tore through Flint MI June 8, 1953. It can happen here too...just a matter of frequency of occurrence/severity each time, etc..

Interesting map and related data for anybody interested:

Monthly tornado averages by state and region

Tornadoes-1991_2010.gif
 
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tend to be "cavalier" when sirens wail.

I was sitting in my '78 Doba downtown Edmonton July 31 1987 when they announced that a tornado had hit the southside of town. I said bulchit we dont get tornadoes this far north... I was wrong. F4 destroyed a mobile home park in the southeast skipped over town then destroyed a mobile home park on the northside. Dont know what it had against mobile homes but it sure hated them. Now we get them regularly.

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