Was chatting to a friend of mine who lives Oklahoma City last night.
He said this girl he was friends with was stuck at work the whole day unable to leave because of the tornados. When she finally did get home she found her whole house had been flattened.

Actually,

President Obama signed Oklahoma disaster declaration due to deadly tornadoes. Republicans say he did it too slow and calls it the next Benghazi. "He should've acted sooner," said one prominent Republican, "Had he intervened and stopped the tornado, maybe 24 people wouldn't have tragically lost their lives."

I had to sig this. Great comment.

LOL, why? o.O

Not this one but I do not have to like him or. the. way. he. talks.

I can't help but feel like they're being picked on for some reason. A saying I live by is 'everything happens for a reason'.

OMG that is awful, I'm so sorry to hear about this.

RIP to those dead and I am sending love to the families affected.

I can't even imagine losing my entire home to a tornado.

At least your friend is safe and unhurt by the disaster itself ;), Thank God for that. It is a constant threat and worry with concern for a lot of citizens here in the States especially in the deep south and Mid Western States as well. Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and so on, with hurricanes to contend with as well every year. I guess it might seem like just a way of life for some. An everyday day thing. :(

Well, I'm not sure if you mean Obama, Republicans, or Oklahomans are being picked on, but I can state without any hesitation at all that there is no reason beyond that we happen to occupy a planet that is it's own living (if you will) entity, and part of that living planet means that when hot air meets cool air in a certain way, tornados develop, and nowhere in the world does this happen more frequently than the stretch along Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas. Northern Alabama and Mississippi. This is so prevalent in this area that it's known as Tornado Alley. In a similar fashion, when Mt St Helens erupted so violently almost exactly 33 years ago, there were some that pointed to this as God bing angry with us or mother earth or whatever they wanted to call it, either unaware or ignoring the fact that Volcanoes abound here in the northwest, that St Helens got there in the same way, as did Rainier and Hood and Shasta and Crater Lake in particular. That is why, because compared to the planet we live on we are tiny specks of matter.

It is pretty magnificent.




Depends on what you mean by a reason. This is nature, it is unpredictable. If you think the reason applies to this particular community then I have to disagree strongly, nature doesn't pick a group of people and say "I'm gonna tornado all over them today". Are you somehow trying to say that they might have deserved this?

With tornadoes, we know the conditions that can produce them, but we can't ever tell when or exactly how a tornado is going to hit a certain area. We do know that the "tornado belt" in the midwest is most likely to produce a tornado, and that it's based on pressure fronts, but there's still no exact science as to when or how significantly a tornado is going to touch ground.

The best we can do is identify conditions which have previously produced tornadoes in the past, and posting warnings from this. Supercells are a big indicator of possible tornado activity, but one never knows. A supercell isn't even necessary for a tornado, although, history indicates that it certainly helps.

I am certainly devastated for the Oklahoma victims of this violent storm, but I'd like to be able to chase and discern more precise patterns for the storms, to better predict where they're going to hit, and, ideally, when. I have observed two tornadoes in my life, one in NC (an F0) and one in rural KY (an EF1) but have been fascinated as long as I can imagine.

If there was something I could do to make it more predictable, less traumatic and sudden for people in affected communities, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Last summer, there was a severe tornado in West Liberty, KY, and my best friend has family there. They were all okay physically, but all of them lost property and peace of mind. I'd like to find a way to - not prevent property damage, because that is inevitable - but predict the storm, the path of the storm, and make it so people could go to safety or evacuate in a timely manner.

We personally had a durecho, and I seriously thought I was going to die. I was at my mom's, and she lives in a double-wide, with my, at the time, fourteen-year-old sister. She was crying and freaking out, and the trailer was shaking, but I stayed calm, directed her to the bathroom with no windows, and said, "I promise, we're fine in here. We just don't want glass to hit us if the windows shatter, but nothing is going to happen to us in here."

I got both of the dogs and all three of the cats in there as well, but I really thought we were going to die. The trailer was tipping, and I was convinced it was a tornado. I just knew I had to stay calm to reassure her, so that she wouldn't be in a panic. I'm an agnostic, but personally was praying to God, Abraham, Alllah, Cthulu, and any other deity that popped into my head.

Our power was knocked out, and the temperature dropped over thirty degrees in fifteen minutes. I was convinced we were dead at that point.

^^^ I honestly think part of the problem is overuse of the emergency system. Tornado warnings occur with such frequency that they lose meaning and import. Stopping everything in the middle of your day, turning off all the electric, and huddling in a small room in the basement for half an hour isn't fun. It's downright ****ty when it happens at night.

If we use Joplin as an example, they predicted that the storm system would produce Tornadoes a full twenty four hours in advanced. But, the people had been so inundated with meaningless warnings that a large swathe of the population just up and ignored all the warnings.