Re: Hmm - pre-Human-influence global...

On 15 Dec 2005 15:05:14 -0800, lorad474@xxxxxx wrote:

>Fingal wrote:
>> That I find genuinely interesting and more than a little scary. Do
>> you get more or less "used" to them. or is it a pretty serious fright
>> every time?
>
>Tornadoes are always associated with thunderstorms. The bigger and
>taller the thundercloud - the more likely it is that a tornado will be
>formed underneath it. (other considerations, such as temperature
>differentials, water vapor density, and jet stream position apply
>also).
[...]

>I said usually..
>A few years back, I went outside to check out the appearance of an
>approaching thunderstorm and was briefly confused because I could not
>locate its wall cloud. I just saw a light grey *** (of what I thought
>was rain) about 500 meters down the road. The problem was that the
>'rain' was *completely* opaque and had dark things moving in it
>-sideways, and was coming towards me much too fast. The edge of that
>wall hit my place before I could run inside and slam the door.
>
>It later turned out to be a (not typical) half-mile wide tornado that
>flattened a number of farm houses and killed a few people to the south
>of me in a line that ran over 10 miles long. But it was not typical.
>Most of the tornados are more distinctive - with the signature cone
>shape extending partially or completely downwards from a pitch black
>anvil cloud. They almost always come from the west.
>
>But sometimes you only find out that a tornado went over you - only
>after it has passed. By spotting the cone shape against the eastern
>horizon, or sometimes by the color that the sky takes on -often an
>eerie color tinge (usually light green, sometimes pinkish or orangish).
>
>
>> I grew up in a place where very serious blizzards were a fact of life,
>> but the nightmares I remembered from the time I was a kid involved
>> being caught in a tornado. Well, and one with a dinosaur, but that's
>> a subject for creationists.
>
>PS. A tornado hit Latvia this last summer. They will probably become
>more common.

Weird, wild stuff. I think I'll take the blizzards. Walking and
driving are tougher during one, but at least there's very little
possibility of winding up in the next county :-)
.