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From: Jesse Ferrell (WeatherMatrix) (jesse{at}weathermatrix.net)
Date: Wed Nov 13 2002 - 09:41:51 EST
The New York Times has an excellent section devoted to this week's
tornado outbreak.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/nationalspecial/
Here are some quotes from one article, quoting the total number of
tornadoes at 88, the worst November outbreak since 1992.
"Federal storm scientists yesterday raised the count of tornadoes that
struck Sunday and Monday to 88 from 69 and said the tally was likely to
continue rising for several weeks as they examined local weather and
damage reports.
The scientists also mapped out the forces that created the twister
outbreak, the worst in November in a decade, and saw in them a
distinctive, but rare recipe for widespread disaster: a collision
between a big pre-winter gush of frigid air and an unusually broad
reservoir of residual tropical warmth and moisture flowing from the Gulf
of Mexico.
Where two such layers meet, potent thunderstorms can arise, causing huge
updrafts that can spin off cylinders of spinning air — not unlike the
way a child's rubbed palms can turn a lump of modeling clay into a worm.
Some of those cylinders can reach toward the earth as tornadoes.
This took place at least 88 times along the latest storm front, Mr.
McCarthy said, with the three strongest storms apparently registering a
3 out of 5 on the Fujita scale of intensity, with winds of 158 to 206
m.p.h.
The tornado swarm most similar to the one that struck on Sunday and
Monday, federal weather officials said, occurred Nov. 21 to 23, 1992,
when 94 tornadoes ripped across 13 states, killing 26 people and causing
about $300 million in damage."
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