Weather will kill you.

[Jim Oaks]

Weather Will Kill You.

I just recently had a conversation with my son about this. We were talking about the instability in the world, and I told him that the thing I think is my biggest realistic threat / concern, is weather. Weather will kill you.

Today (Saturday) I went down to Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth for the Pate Swap Meet. The weather was going to be 85 degrees with the chance of rain only in the teens. However, there was a risk of severe weather, even though the chance of rain was showing as low.

After I left the swap meet, my phone was showing that there was a tornado watch in the area. The weather map didn't have anything on it for a couple hundred miles. A little later I got a GEICO text alert that hail was going to start within just a few minutes, and that I need to find shelter for my vehicle. Again, nothing anywhere on the radar. It was warm, windy and the sky to the north was starting to look dark and cloudy.

I stopped at Taco Bell and as I was waiting for my food I thought; this is either going to be nothing at all, or a storm they talk about for years. By the time I was leaving, a severe thunderstorm had popped up about 45-60 minutes west of my house, and I still had an hour drive going northwest to go home. As I was leaving town, I saw a guy walking to his vehicle looking up at the sky and thought to myself, that's a smart man. He's watching the weather.

The storm was moving southeast towards me, and I had planned to drive northwest to go home, but I was concerned that I could get caught in a tornado in the middle of nowhere, so I decided to go west to Decatur, re-evaluate, and then head north to go home. When I got to Decatur, I bought fuel and saw on the radar that the storm was moving slow, and that if I headed north, I'd be able to pass in front of it and get home. The county I live in was under a tornado warning, but the brunt of the storm and real hazard was 20-25 minutes south of me. As I drove past the storm, I could see that it was a large strong storm with a lot of lightning.

The storm was producing 100 MPH winds PLUS a tornado. It did major damage to a town I was actually planning to move to before buying this place. At least one person there is dead and 20 others are displaced from their homes due to damage. The tornado actually backtracked briefly and then dropped further south. Lightning from the storm struck and blew up a natural gas well. The tornado ran out of steam just before it got to Fort Worth but was still a powerful storm.

This was a slow-moving storm. Nobody should die from a slow-moving storm. Pay attention to the weather. Seak shelter.

The blue circle with the white ring around it is where I am.
The red circles are radar indicated tornado
Blue is hail
Green is rain
Yellow is strong winds.

The first radar map is from 7:40 pm.

​

The next one is from 8:56 pm and that's a combination of strong winds as well as a tornado on the south edge of that storm.

I don't trust the radar indicated tornados on the Weather Channel radar. For tornado's I like to look at the map at:

tornado hq - tornado tracker and current tornado warnings

In a tornado warning? Use our tornado tracker map to see if a tornado might be headed your way.

www.tornadohq.com

Here's the map showing a different tornado...

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And if you 'toggle' the radar than you can see just the tornado, its path, and read the locations. If it's showing up on their map, it's a tornado.

I was watching a live feed from a storm chaser, and you could see the tornado when there was a flash of lightning as well as blue power flashes from damaging winds taking down power lines. The other people you could see driving around in their live feed were probably oblivious to what was happening. They just saw a thunderstorm at night.

If it's storming at night, it's really windy, and you're seeing blue power flashes from power lines, that should be a serious warning sign. Even things like downed trees and power lines can wreck your life if you're not paying attention.

At this time, that storm is still in the Fort Worth area beating the crap out of it. Flash flooding is eminent.

It will be interesting to see how much damage this storm causes.

Anyway, this is just a reminder to pay attention to the weather and not take it for granted.

FYI, this map shows the tornado tracks from this evening. The green dot shows where I was, and the red dot shows where I had to travel to go home.

 

[rusty ol ranger]

Yes weather is an underrated hazard. My wife kinda makes fun of me cause whenever theres a storm i track the shit out of it.

I probably dont take warnings serious enough....

That said...im kinda lucky where i live. Usually the worst of it tracks about 15mi north or 15mi south. But if we ever do take one head on i figure itll be nasty

 

[Curious Hound]

Absolutely respect weather. I don't panic like some. But I watch reliable sources and try to make reasonable de isions about it.

 

[rumblecloud]

I've always thought that Texas was like a storm magnet. It's such a large state with varying topography, exposed to the shenanigans of the Gulf.

Nevertheless, when it comes to the weather, common sense isn't nonsense. I watch the weather too.

Thanks for the Tornado HQ link. bookmarked on my phone cuz my satellite interweb is the first thing to go out during heavy storms.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Thankfully tornadoes aren’t very common here at all, but they do happen and we do get some severe weather here and there. I’ve been guilty of standing around watching severe weather roll in but I typically do it not far from solid shelter and ready to bolt if it gets too threatening.

It really does seem like a lot of people don’t pay attention to anything beyond their phone anymore and don’t take weather warnings appropriately. Guess that comes with the death of common sense.

I have noticed that we seem to be having a lot more severe weather than we used to as well as a lot of wind around here. Growing up I remember a lot of very calm days, now it seems like the wind is always blowing and most days it’s 10 mph or above it seems. I’ve been tempted to leave a chainsaw in the truck all the time anymore because trees are often coming down. Not dead ones either.

 

[pjtoledo]

I often chase the storms for a better look.
here in the flat land of northwest Ohio you can usually see the really bad stuff in time to stay at a "safe" distance.

if you're stuck without access to weather info tune the radio to AM. lightning puts static crackles on AM, gives you an estimate of proximity & intensity.

 

[sgtsandman]

Never take Mother Nature for granted. Like Lil_Blue_Ford said, severe weather and natural disasters do seem to be more frequent now than in the past.

One mixed blessing about this area is that the topography is irregular enough that most things aren't as severe as they could be elsewhere, especially if you are on higher ground. Tornadoes, when we get them, tend to be smaller and skip from hill top to hill top. Flooding is a concern is you live down in a draw or a valley but not up higher. Hail, generally isn't severe enough to cause major damage, but it does happen from time to time. We do get a little bit of everything, but as long as you are in the right place, it usually isn't a problem.

Not that it keeps me from keeping an eye on what the weather is doing and I do keep stuff in the trucks just in case. Because stuff happens. And being associated with search and rescue, I have to keep a 3 day bag ready at all times. Again, because stuff happens.

 

[Jim Oaks]

Growing up in northeast Ohio, tornados were never a threat. They don't scare me. I just pay attention to the weather and respond accordingly.

The area that got hit by the Tornado (Runaway Bay) is 50 miles south of me. It's a small community. It's also where I was trying to move to before moving here. In fact, in my house / shop thread, there's a photo of a modular home with a water tank in the side yard. That's the neighborhood. That house might even have been destroyed or likely damaged from this. I have questioned how I ended up living all the way up here. That storm may be the answer. A little divine intervention.

Storms almost always move east or northeast in Texas. Mostly northeast. If that tornado had moved in a normal trajectory from where it started, it would have came past or through my town.

Also, you can't depend on a tornado siren. Some are set to go off with a NWS alert, but many are triggered manually. Usually by a dispatcher who may not trigger it until a tornado is actually confirmed.

In Ohio, if a siren went off it was paging volunteer fire fighters to respond to the station. Here, I've had the tornado siren and my phone alert me to a tornado at the same time. That will get your blood flowing. LOL.

We are under another tornado watch. There's no reason why one should catch anyone off guard.

 

[97RangerXLT]

So about that weather radar..

David and I are getting into HAM radio, and there is a local amateur radio club nearby. we have joined, and we werre talking about how the Indiana weather services rely on storm spotters, and the local amateur radio clubs help out on that and are able to relay the info they see to the National Weather Service in their area. Little known fact, the Doppler Radar is only effective above 2000 feet, and many cases maybe only above 5000 feet. funnel clouds/ tornadoes can form well below that altitude and usually the only way to see them accurately is through weather spotters.

AJ

 

[Jim Oaks]

I was watching a storm chasers (Freddy McKinney) live feed last night and later saw where a year ago he was chasing a tornado in Texas, the tornado turned, went straight for a house, and his camera caught the devastation as it not only destroyed the house, but briefly stalled on top of it before moving on. There was nothing left. By some miracle, a woman came running from the debris carrying her child followed by her young son and limping husband. The storm chaser rescued them and took them to the hospital. It's pretty incredible.

 

[Jim Oaks]

So about that weather radar..

David and I are getting into HAM radio, and there is a local amateur radio club nearby. we have joined, and we werre talking about how the Indiana weather services rely on storm spotters, and the local amateur radio clubs help out on that and are able to relay the info they see to the National Weather Service in their area. Little known fact, the Doppler Radar is only effective above 2000 feet, and many cases maybe only above 5000 feet. funnel clouds/ tornadoes can form well below that altitude and usually the only way to see them accurately is through weather spotters.

AJ

I've seen people show debris signatures on the radar. Or indicate that it's most likely a tornado due to the debris signature. I think all cell phones these days will alert you to a tornado in your area. My concern has been not hearing it if I'm asleep. My Midland weather radio was great about alerting me to warnings when I lived near Fort Worth, but it can't pick up the signal here. I need to plug an external antenna into it. It will definitely wake you up when it goes off.

At one point last night as I was approaching the storm I turned on the WX channel on my GMRS radio so I could hear what the forecast and warning was.

With all of the technology out there, my cell phone is still the best device to alert me to weather hazards.

Actually, @Robertmangrum.rm and I were wheeling in Kentucky, and we stopped to take a break I was looking at the clouds, checked the radar map, saw that a huge storm was coming, so we headed back to camp and had everything packed up just as it started to rain.

If you're ever off-roading out west and you see storm clouds in the distance, you need to check the radar and see if it's raining because that water could come to you as a flash flood even though it's not raining where you are.

 

[Jim Oaks]

Last night was chaos. Currently it's 1:24 AM, it's 76 degrees outside, and the winds is 15-25 MPH. Standing outside on warm windy nights like this I feel like I should be able to turn around and see an ocean. There's always a breeze in north Texas. It's crazy how standing outside in that breeze brings back memories of being on a beach at night in Mexico, or along the sea in Italy. Make me want to grab a bag and board a plane.