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del.icio.usRadar gives researchers fodder
Officials say learning more about how tornadoes form can help prevent false warnings.
BY STAN FINGER
The Wichita Eagle
The Greensburg tornado may prove to be a defining moment for understanding how large tornadoes develop, officials said.
A portable Doppler radar used by the University of Oklahoma near Protection in Comanche County captured high-resolution imagery and data of the 1 ¾-mile wide tornado as it formed, strengthened and bore down on Greensburg in May.
The data and imagery captures the strongest supercell thunderstorm complex to develop in nearly a decade.
"It's just incredible looking at that data," said Greg Carbin, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. "This is as bad as it gets.... It doesn't surprise me that you're seeing things you haven't seen before.
"Every time I've looked at this case, it's hard for me to figure out how the atmosphere can do that. It's almost unnatural."
Learning more about what triggers tornadoes and how large tornadoes develop can help meteorologists deliver more accurate and detailed warnings and reduce the number of false alarms, officials say.
"The precursors and the dynamics of a tornado like that -- all those things we can learn from," said Larry Ruthi, meteorologist in charge at the Dodge City office of the National Weather Service.
The May 4 data is so significant because "you will rarely see a more volatile environment for tornado supercells," Carbin said.
Similar conditions hadn't been seen since May 3, 1999, when several tornadoes struck Oklahoma City and its suburbs. Until Greensburg, the tornado that struck Moore, Okla., was the last EF-5 tornado recorded in the country, Carbin said.
Carbin and Mike Smith, founder and chief executive of WeatherData Services Inc., a Wichita subsidiary of AccuWeather, say the Greensburg supercell complex may have been stronger than the 1999 outbreak.
The night of the Greensburg tornado, two EF-3 tornadoes were on the ground at the same time for nearly a half-hour. One of them was more than 2 miles wide, the other at least a mile wide.
Both tornadoes stayed in sparsely populated areas, although the smaller tornado killed an 84-year-old World War II veteran at his farm near Hopewell.
The tornadoes that night ignored typical twister patterns, meteorologists said. Many of them went almost straight north, rather than the usual southwest-to-northeast track.
And while most supercell thunderstorms weaken after sunset because they feed on the instability created by the sun's heat, the May 4 tornadoes didn't form until well after dark.
Carbin said Greensburg has joined the list of large, deadly tornadoes known simply by the towns they tore apart: Udall, Andover, Moore, Wichita Falls.
"It becomes an event that is remembered for a long time and looked at in terms of trying to learn something from it," he said.
Greensburg, he said, "will be reviewed for quite a while."
Reach Stan Finger at 316-268-6437.
