New NASA Satellite Zooms in on Tornado Swath

Sonny writes "A number of severe thunder storms swept through the mid-Atlantic states on April 28, bringing high winds, hailstones, and heavy rains to many areas. The intense storms spawned at least two tornadoes, one of which was classified as an F5 funnel cloud--the most severe category, with winds in excess of 260 miles per hour (425 km per hour). The tornado's path can be seen clearly in this panchromatic image (1445KB) acquired on May 1 by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI), flying aboard NASA's EO-1 satellite. EO-1 is the first Earth observing satellite launched as part of NASA's New Millennium Program. This program is designed to spearhead development and testing of a new generation of satellite remote sensing technologies for future Earth and space science missions. The ALI is designed to improve upon and extend the measurement heritage begun by the Landsat series of satellites well into the 21st Century."

Would be more interesting...

[flewp]

If the satelite zoomed into the tornado.

The great land eraser

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like that tornado even removed much of the grass in the areas it passed over. If the grass in your front yard isn't gonna make it, you house probably won't do so well either.

Seems to be an increasing amount of straight line winds here in the midwest. Last year I was at my brothers standing in the backyard with my nephew. And then, as if someone flipped a switch, the trees across a field all leaned over sideways and a couple seconds later a gust of wind nearly knocked us over and sent various pieces of lawn furniture 50 feet across the yard to a chainlink fence that stopped them.

Lots of powerful lightning as well. I've gotten in the habit of bracing myself when I see lightning flash outside, since we've been getting lightning so close that it sounds like a bomb going off outside of the house.

I wonder if we're about to return to the more varied and extreme sorts of weather that were common in 70's and early 80's.. Seems like the tornado sirens were always going off back then.

Try seeing it in person

[|_uke]

Although yes, that does look pretty bad... its nothing compared to seeing the aftermath in person. I used to live in Colorado until I was about 11 years old. Every year we would have a couple big tornados during the summer. Some times when a rather bad one hit an area like Denver, my mom would take us kids down to go see the aftermath. I suppose to teach us how lucky we are... or something. When it gets really bad, some times only the plumbing is left (toilets, pipes, kitchen sinks... etc.)

Regardless, it defiantly is a humbling experience, to say the least :).

One thing I found pretty weird when I moved to California was the lack of basements... In Colorado you would almost NEVER find a house without a basement. The basement usually was a story of the house... It always provided a great since of security... a place you could go to be safe from tornados...

Came to California and whaaa... no basements? Instead of tornados we have... earthquakes? Haha joy... earthquakes don't happen as often... thank god... but when the bigger ones hit they do a lot of damage over a much wider area. So I don't really know which is better.

Re:Try seeing it in person

[n-baxley]

I'm interested, did you live in Eastern Colorado? I didn't think that tornados formed in the moutainous regions.