Tornado swatch.

[xilman]

More UK tornadoes. Damage but no (known) injuries.

When driving home around 1:30pm after a sauna in town, it was very windy and rainy in Cambridge, though no tornadoes were spotted. The roads were awash and the air full of of bits of trees ranging in size from leaves, through twigs, up to branches over a metre long and a cm or few thick. No entire trees fell over while I was watching.

Really quite an interesting drive.

[jasong]

I'm going to try to Google simulations of how UK tornadoes form. I've only even learned about American tornadoes.

[xilman]

Here's an amphibian member of the species.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by xilman

Here's an amphibian member of the species.

And here is a cute little baby one.

[Dr Sardonicus]

The most monstrous tornado I am aware of is the Tri-state tornado of March 18, 1925. It left the longest tornado track (150 - 235 miles) ever recorded, up to a mile wide. It moved at 60 mph or more along the ground, faster than cars of the day. It crossed both the Mississippi and Wabash rivers, putting the lie to the myth that tornadoes can't cross major rivers. It killed 695 people, far more than any other tornado ever recorded.

[Uncwilly]

A friend rode out the 2011 Joplin Tornado (EF5) in his bathtub (in a second floor apartment). His building was across the street from the WalMart and near the Home Depot that was flattened.

Here is a good image of the location along the path. https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/f..._aerial_HR.jpg
from https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-me...tragedy-joplin

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

A friend rode out the 2011 Joplin Tornado (EF5) in his bathtub (in a second floor apartment). His building was across the street from the WalMart and near the Home Depot that was flattened.

Here is a good image of the location along the path. https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/f..._aerial_HR.jpg
from https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-me...tragedy-joplin

That aerial shot certainly puts the lie to the myth that tornadoes are rural phenomena.
Years ago I was gathering storm-damage firewood after a tornado had gone through Madison WI including the UW Research Park, felling centenarian oak trees up to 4 feet (1.2m) trunk diameter, exploding garages, etc. A passerby invited me to go to a specific address for more. The storm had hit while the family that lived there were on vacation. It turned out he was cutting downed trees for a friend he'd met on a south pacific island as their Peace Corps assignment. One Saturday there were dozens of people working on cleaning up the friend's yard from dozens of downed oak trees (all the mature trees), which involved one pickup after another driving deep into his yard to be loaded, and a shoulder-high berm of small limbs spanning most of the 175 foot (53m) length of his lot line at street-side waiting for the city to pick up. People brought their own saws and trailers and lunches and beverages, and lunch break evolved quickly into a multicultural potluck. One fellow working in old blue scrubs was a surgeon who had been a farm kid a couple hours drive north of Tokyo. The house on the lot fared surprisingly well by comparison to the trees; all the windows on the porch were gone, but the well constructed brick home had little damage otherwise. Probably a good choice for an address on Hilltop Drive.
It's that time of year again. https://www.weather.gov/grb/WI_tornado_stats

The 1992 tornado that cut through the town of Dunn tore out power lines, twisted off trees and damaged numerous houses. A coworker's home was one of the more fortunate in an affected development. After getting permission to pass through the sheriff's checkpoint to help clean up the coworker's yard of debris from other people's homes, we saw one house that had lost an entire side's exterior wall, from foundation to roof line, like a full scale dollhouse, making it unsafe to occupy. The daughter's bedroom on the second floor had a perfectly made bed and stuffed animals and other toys still perched where they belonged. Another lot that had contained a home had been swept clean, with only a concrete pad and very little debris remaining. Twisted broken pieces of roof truss members and other building material were scattered miles downwind. The town hall implemented a lost and found for personal belongings found all over. Some material with identifying information on it was found as far away as Milwaukee, 80 miles east (and some possibly went further and landed in Lake Michigan). As the sun set at the end of an evening of hard cleanup work, looking to the west we could see days later there was still aerosol fiberglass wafting eastward, and partial batts hanging in the surviving trees. https://www.homefacts.com/tornadoes/...y/Madison.html

Even the "little" ones can make a big impression and a big difference. In one of the lower rated ones, a Stoughton WI man took shelter in his basement and was killed by his chimney breaking and falling on him.

[kriesel]

Originally Posted by xilman

More UK tornadoes. Damage but no (known) injuries.

When driving home around 1:30pm after a sauna in town, it was very windy and rainy in Cambridge, though no tornadoes were spotted. The roads were awash and the air full of of bits of trees ranging in size from leaves, through twigs, up to branches over a metre long and a cm or few thick. No entire trees fell over while I was watching.

Really quite an interesting drive.

At least it was no flying cows. https://ffilms.org/twister-1996/

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by kriesel

That aerial shot certainly puts the lie to the myth that tornadoes are rural phenomena.

There is footage here of a twister hitting Los Angeles: http://wgntv.com/2014/12/13/watch-ra...s-los-angeles/

Los Angeles hasn't seen a tornado for the past few years, but a study in the 1990s showed that "the amount of tornadoes we get in the L.A. basin is comparable to what they get in the Midwest but it's much weaker," Sukup said.

And there was an EF2 that hit the Convention Center in downtown http://www.welikela.com/last-tornado-los-angeles/

[xilman]

These were particularly vicious ones.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Tornadoes in the South this time of year are a sure sign of Spring, but the current crop us unusually powerful.

Meanwhile, a bit to the north (and possibly related), what one TV weather man I once listened to would call "a cold front with a bad attitude" is sending the central part of the US into the freezer again. It isn't as deep a freeze as the Arctic blast around the end of January, but subzero temps(*) in March are a bit unusual for a lot of the areas affected.

Apart from the human misery and likely traffic problems, this cold snap will probably kill leaf and flower buds on a lot of trees.

(*) Subzero Fahrenheit, or south of -17.7 Centigrade. Old Man Winter ain't going down without a fight this year.