Taxing Day 2011: Tornado II in the Annex

April 15, 2011, tax day, was taxing to the max. And it’s not like we weren’t warned well in advance that it would be a bad day.

As much as a week or more before April 15, my weather guru James Spann of abc33/40 Weather Blog in Birmingham said that the predicted storm would be worse than the April 11 severe storm I covered in the previous post.

Tax day was a set-up: warm, horribly muggy, winds from the Gulf, with a real cold front headed for the state to mate with the warm front and produce its horrible offspring – spring tornadoes.

I was getting an e-mail off to a friend. Right in mid-type, I inserted with “Sirens going off. Later.” I grabbed my video camera and headed to my front porch, which faces southwest, where these storms come from. Spann was tracking it on the radar via a Tuscaloosa Sky cam south of town. I knew it was headed in my direction.

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James Spann tracking the Tuscaloosa tornado via Sky Cam, April 15, 2011

This soon-to-be close call wasn’t the first one, and I hoped I would know when to run for the utility room.

Here’s what I saw through the video’s eye:

Video shot from my front porch, April 15, 2011

It missed, but only by 0.5 miles or so. It hit the neighborhood where my husband grew up: Fairmont and Lakeshore. Clichés abound. A friend and his wife who live two houses up from my husband’s old house lost all their trees and fencing. They said it was the old “freight train” coming over the house.

When it left there, it jumped over 15^th Street East and took out a couple of houses up on the hill by the railroad track. Someone in the large condo/apartment complex next to those houses took video of it:

 

The tornado forming, April 15, 2011

My house is about half a mile from where they are videoing the sight.

The next day, I went through the Lakeshore neighborhood as best I could, weaving in and out of power lines and poles, power company trucks, debris, and, yes, it looked like a war zone.

 

 

Here is the National Weather Service assessment issued today, April 20, 2011:

BLACK WARRIOR TORNADO (GREENE AND TUSCALOOSA COUNTIES)…

PRELIMINARY DATA…
EVENT DATE: APRIL 15, 2011
EVENT TYPE: EF-3 TORNADO
ESTIMATED PEAK WINDS (MPH): 140
INJURIES/FATALITIES: NONE
EVENT START LOCATION AND TIME: 33.012/-87.739 AT 316 PM
EVENT END LOCATION AND TIME: 33.190/-87.504 AT 343 PM
DAMAGE PATH LENGTH (IN MILES): 19
DAMAGE WIDTH (IN YARDS): 500

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS SURVEYED THE DAMAGE IN FAR
NORTHEASTERN GREENE AND SOUTH CENTRAL TUSCALOOSA COUNTIES. IT HAS
BEEN DETERMINED THAT THE DAMAGE WAS CONSISTENT WITH A TORNADO. WINDS
WERE ESTIMATED AT 140 MPH. THE TORNADO TOUCHED DOWN NORTH OF
COUNTY ROAD 86 IN GREENE COUNTY…ABOUT 3 MILES SOUTHEAST OF
RALPH…UPROOTING DOZENS OF HARD AND SOFTWOOD TREES. FROM
THERE…THE TORNADO TRAVELED NORTHEAST….MOVING PARALLEL TO AND
LESS THAN 2 MILES EAST OF THE INTERSTATE 20/59 CORRIDOR…SNAPPING
AND UPROOTING TREES ALONG THE WAY. THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE
OCCURRED AS THE TORNADO CROSSED THE BLACK WARRIOR RIVER NEAR MAXWELL
LOOP ROAD. HUNDREDS OF TREES WERE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED AND A POWER
TRANSMISSION TOWER WAS CRUSHED. THE TORNADO CONTINUED NORTHEAST
MOVING NORTH OF SHELTON STATE…AND CROSSING HIGHWAY 69 NEAR
TAYLORVILLE AND THE INTERSTATE 20/59 CORRIDOR NEAR HIGHWAY 82. ALONG
THIS PATH…DAMAGE CONSISTED OF SNAPPED OR UPROOTED TREES AND
STRUCTURAL DAMAGE TO HOMES AND BUSINESSES. THE TORNADO LIFTED NEAR
MAYFAIR DRIVE…SOUTH OF VETERANS MEMORIAL PARKWAY. THE TORNADO
DAMAGE PATH WAS 19 MILES LONG AND WAS 500 YARDS WIDE AT ITS WIDEST
POINT.

The spring tornado season in Tornado Alley Annex is nearly over, and none too soon.

 

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Just Meteorology in Tornado Alley Annex

It has been building up all day. Warm moist Gulf Air has been flowing into the state for days. A spring cold front (“cool” front, relatively speaking) has been sneaking in from the northwest – a set up for trouble.

When I went to pick up Joanna Leigh at school, I knew we were in for a stormy night, but I thought we had time to run to Ruby Tuesdays across highway 11, only a mile or two from our house, and grab supper. I kept looking toward the west and southwest as we waited for Papa. It was dark over there, and it was muggy.

We ate, paid, and headed for the door to get home. We opened the double doors and heard it – the dreaded sirens, loud, piercing. The wind had started blowing. Joanna Leigh and I ran for the car. Papa was getting her into the car seat as I hopped in and started the car. He got a call. I jumped out to go around and finish hooking up the seat belts. I ran back around to get in the front seat. As I opened the door, the wind nearly shut it back on me. Uh oh.

I looked over my left shoulder.

Oh, man, this ain’t good, I thought to myself. In a split second I decided no, we weren’t going anywhere.

I ran back around to Joanna Leigh’s door, unhooked her, snatched her up and grabbed Teddy. The wind was now blowing about 50 mph, we later learned. We ran for the door.

The manager was herding the patrons to the back, to the southwest wall near the restrooms. One of the waiters gave Joanna Leigh some colors and paper. “Why is the storm here?” she kept asking. Finally I said, it’s just meteorology.”

She colored and I watched the thing pass over us on my iPhone with the other patrons who were watching their weather app or getting text messages. One woman was texting with a fireman. She looked up and said, “He said just to hang on. It’s almost all the way over us and heading for Vance.”

Then the torrential rain. Usually that means it’s over, but I decided to stay and let this pass over us too. About 15 minutes later, we ran to the car.

“Oh, for crying in a bucket,” I exclaimed. I had left the car running when I jumped out to get Joanna Leigh out of her car seat.

Here’s a screen shot of the ABC 33/40 weather radar from their blog:

April is a cruel month in Mississippi and Alabama, Tornado Alley Annex. This happens way too often. The mess is heading for the Georgia line, but maybe it has blown off most of its steam.

Kudos to the staff at Ruby Tuesdays.

 

Technorati Tags: Tornado Alley Annex,Ruby Tuesdays,ABC 33/40 Birmingham

Krakatoa: Cataclysm Heard Around the World

We become glued to images of cataclysmic events, some natural, some man-made, and their aftermaths for days and days at a time, and we often wonder why we do this.

It’s really no wonder why we do this. The cataclysms we have endured since 2000 have not only destroyed, killed, and disrupted any sense of order we cling to, some have caused the Earth to skip heartbeats and lose memory, literally shifting the Earth on its axis and shortening the day by a nano-second. The Earth shuddered on Dec. 26, 2004, and on March 11, 2011, each as a result of 9.0 earthquakes and the huge tsunamis that followed.

The images and sounds are frightening and hypnotic. Then somehow, life returns and keeps going.

The first cataclysmic natural disaster that became part of the World’s nightmare through communication networks – the telegraph, newspapers, and first-hand accounts from survivors – was the volcanic Krakatoa’s final days in 1883.

Most of what I know about Krakatoa I learned from reading Simon Winchester’s 2003 Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 (ISBN0-06-621285-5), from which I have quoted and paraphrased for this post, as well as from book reviews and news stories that followed the publication.

The End’s Beginning

In May 1883, earth tremors were noticed, logged in by the lighthouse keeper at the Sunda strait between Java and Sumatra, and recorded in a telegraph sent by a Dutch controller, Willem Beyernick, to his superior. A few days later, a German ship captain reported a white cumulus cloud rising out of Krakatoa upwards of seven miles high. Beyernick’s wife kept a detailed journal that eventually became one of the rare eye-witness accounts of the beginnings of the end and of the end itself. After the May trembling, the Earth quieted down for June and July.

On August 11 a Dutch army captain landed on Krakatoa to prepare a topographic map; he found ominous signs, which sent him back with only a quick map that would have to do for the time being. He was the last human to touch Krakatoa.

On Sunday, August 26, a telegraph master was lounging on a porch, watching ships, when suddenly he heard an extremely loud explosion, looked to his left, and saw a tremendous eruption. He ran down to the sea where he saw very strange rising and falling disturbances. A surge of water roared toward the beach. He ran. At the time he got to the telegraph office, he saw a terrible and dark dust cloud beginning to envelope them. At 2 p.m., he tapped out his message that a major eruption was taking place, “vomiting fire and smoke.” Telegraph lines that weren’t destroyed became flooded with messages for the next 24 hours.

Frederic Edwin Church’s 1883 Sunset over the Ice on Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario may have been inspired by Krakatoa’s resulting worldwide and extraordinary sunsets.

The End

From midnight to dawn on August 27, Capt. W. J. Watson on the Charles Bal, which was trapped about 10 miles from Krakatoa and trying desperately to reach the Java shore, wrote a terrifying first-hand account that has survived. He described “impenetrable darkness,” “roaring of Krakatoa,” and a “peculiar pink flame” coming from clouds. Explosions and eruptions continued through the morning.

Four gigantic explosions occurred, starting at 5:30 a.m. The last one, at 10:02 a.m., is said to be one of the biggest explosions ever recorded. It was heard 3,000 miles away, about the distance from Miami to San Francisco.

Capt. Watson reported at 11:30 a.m. that “we were enclosed in a darkness that might almost be felt, and then commenced a downpour of mud, sand, and I know not what. . . .” “At noon the darkness was so intense that we had to grope our way about the decks. . .” unable to see each other. These hellish conditions continued all day and into the final night.

The four tsunamis that followed the four massive explosions are almost beyond comprehension. They killed 36,000 people, submerged about 300 towns and villages, and ranged in height from 72 to 135 feet high – mountains of water.

Most of those who survived these events were horribly burned by the flaming hot ash, dust, pumice, and other matter that rained from the sky all day and night.

The eruptions also produced two kinds of shock waves – air waves and sea-borne waves. The air waves traveled the globe seven times. Nine hours after the last explosion, boats were sunk or swamped in Calcutta, India; unusual waves were noticed in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

It was later revealed that the 2,600-foot mountain of Krakatoa had blown itself out of existence and left a hole in the ocean floor 1,000 feet deep. The ash and debris affected the climate and atmosphere around the world. Winchester suggests that the atmospheric effects in Europe and North America influenced artists and poets. For example, Frederic Edwin Church’s Sunset over the Ice on Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario, painted in December 1883, captures the incredible sunsets that followed Krakatoa’s explosion for the next several years. It has also been suggested that the background for Edvard Munch’s The Scream, painted in 1893, represents the artist’s rendering of the volcanic sunsets.

Edvard Munch’s 1893 The Scream

 

Winchester also argues that the disaster of Krakatoa and the communication of those events ushered in what we now call the Global Village, a world created by communication and technology. Perhaps our rage for order compels us to describe cataclysms, communicate about them, study them, and watch as life returns and the human spirit not only endures, as William Faulkner said, but prevails.

A Birth

As we watch the Japanese survivors’ determination to rebuild their lives, I think again of Krakatoa. It wasn’t too long before the site drew curious fishermen, mariners, and the scientists of the day. Krakatoa’s fate certainly informed the nascent sciences of meteorology and geology.

Then an amazing thing happened. In June 1927, the sea around the site of Krakatoa’s disappearance began roiling, bubbling, and spurting. Surely it must have scared those who knew it was happening. On January 26, 1928, land broke the surface and Anak (Child of) Krakatoa was born. Since then, the child-mountain has grown 20 or so inches each month. As Winchester reminds us, geology says the mountain will again explode, but geological time is a long, long time.

In 2006 the BBC aired a docudrama of the Krakatoa cataclysm using Willem Beyernick and his wife as the central figures. Clips of the production can be seen from the World News portal here. Below is the first clip.

From the BBC docudrama of the Krakatoa cataclysm

San Diego State University’s site, How Volcanoes Work, offers an interesting look at Krakatoa. NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research provides information and videos of the power of tsunamis.

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