On television, at least.
WeatherData president Mike Smith notified me (and others) that – “after several false starts,” as he put it – the show ‘Tornado Rampage’ in which he is featured is scheduled to air at 8 p.m. Sunday on The Discovery Channel.
No wonder I missed it. It hadn’t aired.
To check The Discovery Channel’s schedule for yourself, just click the link in this sentence.
I was listening to a Houston Chronicle columnist describe the destruction along the coast left behind by Hurricane Ike, and he said “It looks like a tornado went through there.”
And, yes, based on what photographic evidence I’ve seen, the damage is remarkable. But as he spoke I thought, “I can’t remember the last time someone was talking about devastation and said, ‘It looks like a hurricane went through there.’”
Interesting. Yet this isn’t meant to diminish the destructive potential of hurricanes in any way —- coastal Texas is fresh testimony to their power.
Ask all those people who decided to ride Ike out at home and now wish they hadn’t. Ask them a year from now, when infrastructure and homes are rebuilt but winds pushing above 30 miles an hour induce cold sweats and sleepless nights.
With Ike’s widespread damage as a reminder, will more people heed evacuation orders when a hurricane again threatens the U.S. coastline?
Just out of curiosity, I checked the Storm Prediction Center’s storm reports log for Friday, and sure enough – 18 tornadoes were reported around the country on Friday, including 9 in Kansas.
Not that anyone in Wichita would have had a chance to notice, given all that rain that was coming down. The Kansas tornadoes were all up in the northeastern corner of the state, in Douglas, Wyandotte and Johnson counties.
Fortunately, they were all brief touchdowns with no significant damage reported. That’s not uncommon with tornadoes that develop from hurricanes or tropical storms once they have hit land, I’ve been told. Lacking the traditional supercell structure, the clouds that develop the tornadoes aren’t able to sustain them for long.
The other tornadoes reported Friday were in Missouri and Louisiana.