The tornadoes of 2011 raised the toll of people who have died in U.S. tornadoes to 552.  It goes down as the highest recorded death toll in a single year in over 75 years.  This compares to 564 U.S. tornado related deaths in the last ten years combined !
The severe weather events of 2011 will be remembered along with the  fatalities of  1953 (519) and is just behind  1925 (794).
It begs the question “How can it be?”  with all the incredible advances in forecasting and warning systems, that there was such a high number of fatalities?  The overall yearly statistics show a wonderful downward trend of fatalities.  Also, adjusted for population growth it looks even more optimistic.

Yet, there were 552 deaths and thousands of lives shattered and scattered like the debris field of an F5 tornado.  That spike/anomaly in the downward trend will be studied, perhaps debated  for years.

Here are some reasons to consider for this and other major weather disasters.
1- Stating the obvious, a severe weather event is random, chaotic (non linear) by its nature.  It will always have some degree of unpredictability.      The major fatality weather event is a statistically  “just so happen” occurrence. To have those “just so happen” days just so happen 2 or 3 times in one season as opposed to perhaps a few every decade is rare.  Though it could be argued the overall large scale persistent, weather pattern of that season would raise that probability.

2- It’s not just about the track and intensity of these “perfect” (F4, F5) storms themselves.  There  are the “perfect storms” of circumstances and human reaction/miscalculation, and disaster response system weaknesses.
There is a dynamic of how these large-scale dramas are played out, be it in Joplin or Tuscaloosa or any other major city.  It involves the many thousands of people making split second decisions.  It’s how people process the warnings ; the woman at the Walmart, the trucker on I-35, the poor soul watching T.V. warnings at their mobile home in its direct path.  Frantic phone calls are made as the forecast media pleads and as citizens scramble to take shelter.      The chasers on the other hand converge on the storm as anxious fearful people looking for which escape road to take and  spread out in a diffluent pattern.

The NWS included four “social scientists” on the assessment team to study what happened for the shortcomings this year (Historic Tornadoes of 2011).  The social scientists looked at people’s  understanding and reactions, which seemed to be a major factor, and how the event was outworked with media, emergency managers, and the public.

Imagine if one could quantify and colorize all the “data” of  people’s understanding and actions/reactions, and the mass movements in the fog of confusion in these type of weather emergencies.  It would probably take on a “form” if it were possible to see  it  on a screen.  I think the human responses/actions in those situations would have the appearances of some chaotic storm, like the kind produced by the atmosphere itself.

The science of weather forecasting ,of those who have labored for years has made great strides.  I am not trying to rain on that parade of success here,  but I think we have to rethink what it means to really tame the weather beast.  This especially in light of the social science of how people respond.

The year 2011′s tornado fatalities is a reminder that we are not quite out of the bear’s cage yet.

Thankfully, the foreseeable/predictable patterns of the ultimately  unpredictable, are getting better understood and the deadly affects mitigated.

2011  G. Thomas Windsor,  All Rights Reserved. Whirlwinds Publishing ISBN# 978-0-9823659-5-3 (Categories: philosophy,business science, self-improvement)

 You may  pre-order this book in Ebook format at the  discounted price of  $4.99 ,due out  in December, 2011

In it he  relates  his own journey of exploring (chasing) the science behind climate change. “This is an essay on his time as an up-close observer of extreme weather systems, and his recent conversion from climate change agnostic”.    ( Earthzine is an online source for news, articles, information and educational materials about Earth Science )

Below are some photos from a rare October 2011 storm in Pennsylvania  (8-10 inches of snow)    This storm caused massive outages  in the Northeast , affecting hundreds of thousands of people and resulting  in at least 22  fatalities.

“Uncloudy Day”  Lyrics

Oh, they tell me of a home far beyond the skies
And they tell me of a home far away
Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise
Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day

Oh, the land of cloudless days
Oh, the land of an uncloudy sky
Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise
Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day

Oh, they tell me of a home where my friends have gone
And they tell me of that land far away
Where the tree of life’s in eternal bloom
Sheds its fragrance through the uncloudy day

Oh, the land of cloudless days
Oh, the land of an uncloudy sky
Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise
Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day

Oh, they tell me of a King and His beauty there
And they tell me that mine eyes shall behold
Where He sits on a throne that is whiter than snow
In a city that is made of gold

Oh, the land of cloudless days
Oh, the land of an uncloudy sky
Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise
Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day

Oh, the land of cloudless days
Oh, the land of an uncloudy sky
Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise
Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day

When I first started storm intercepting 15 years ago, my connections where national. Now I might run into a few guys from Germany or from Europe on storm vacation tours (like last year). I periodically communicate with a meteorologist in India who has done work on early typhoon warning systems. I might chat with a chaser in Australia and ” shoot the breeze” on a social weather forum.

There is also a proliferation in our digital age of local home weather station reporting, 24/7 weather cams, like the “Backyard” Citizen Weather reporting on the WeatherBug Network.

There’s a growth of citizen watch NWS Storm Spotter program (often the “eyes and ears ” in helping forecasters and emergency management officials) and the immediacy in the Internet “I-reports” on large disasters. A generation ago, a major weather event might have been chronicled /videotaped by a handful of people. Now, it’s chronicled by a thousand points of citizen data. This happens via blogs, weather forums, twitter storm reports, smartphone video, etc., and its references to humanity. This also adds to our overall understanding of severe weather events. There are even smart phone weather and storm chasing apps–this is not your grandmas storm chasing!

There is also the ever expanding and CWOP observer programs in which citizen-based real-time weather is added to NOAA Mesonet , NWS and others.

Hopefully this will all add up to a greater awareness and preparedness as people look to see whats on the horizon.

Article by Tom Windsor

(also posted on Stormtrack website)

In the early days of computer forecasting, they would run data results out for weeks and months . One day someone reran some data a second time and got very different results. They couldn’t figure out why the same data would yield two different results, until someone realized a very small decimal point in the data had been rounded off. The graph looked identical for weeks, but then started to diverge into a completely different path. Extremely small variations in the initial conditions didn’t show up until it played out far in the future.

On this note, I read that a meteorologist awhile back thought that if you could obtain accurate data from a 100 kilometer cubic grid you could finally, accurately predict the future weather. He couldn’t have known that those small differences in between the grids on a smaller scale, would still change the results. We now know why.

This illustrates the problem of complexity in forecasting. There are so many variables which can have a wide range of effects on the outcome, like pressure, temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, topography, yesterdays storms, El Nino, etc. Also, there are factors that can have an infinitely small effect , like heat from cites, solar storms, and now chasers themselves to add to that list!

As an amateur weather enthusiast, I never realized how complex the atmosphere and forecasting is until I started researching in preparation for chase seasons. I now have a much deeper appreciation for those who have it as their profession. I’m wondering if the atmosphere is the most chaotic system we know of.

The more variables, the more complex the math (involving vicious mathematical feedback loops and non-linear equations). Also every scale has to be taken into effect, since an extremely small scale event can also set off a cascade that effects the larger . One small change earlier in the day in upper level winds, temperature, or pressure could mean the difference between a town getting rained on, or struck by a large tornado, or a chaser “catching” a suntan. It’s like the few snowflakes that triggered the avalanche. The term “instability” or “loaded gun” is so appropriate. This all makes for weather living up to its reputation as fickle and unpredictable.

Even 2700 years ago King Solomon wrote a proverb, “you do not know the path of the wind…” Some centuries later a Man came along who reportedly had authority over the storms spoke that, ” The wind blows where it wills, you do not know where it comes from or where it goes…” These words still ring true today .

As one who has had to plan a storm chase vacation, based on a three day forecast and drive out west from the east coast, severe outbreaks are still often a coin toss at this point. However, as computers get more advanced and can crunch calculations involving those staggering number of variables, its getting a lot better since I started chasing around ten years ago, and that’s good news for chasers .

Maybe a very accurate 3-5 day storm forecast is not too far off , but I think its going to be a looooong time before it is accurate to weeks in advance, if ever. So to you chasers down in the outback, the phrase “be careful chasing” now has another added dimension.

Article by Tom Windsor

(also posted on Stormtrack website)

Ezekiel Chapter 1, verse 4 reads, “And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire (KJV).” Another translation states, “As I looked, behold, a storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing forth continually and a bright light around it, and in its midst something like glowing metal in the midst of the fire (NASB).” There are four things in this passage typical of a supercell (mesocyclone) thunderstorm:

1. A large storm cloud/whirlwind.  The Hebrew word translated “whirlwind” also means an unusual type of storm. In the Greek Septuagint translations it speaks of a “mega” storm and “winds lifting up.”

2. Continuous lightning, typical of a mesocyclone having “fire flashing forth continually.”

3. Updraft and/or rotation. The updraft portion of a supercell has the appearance of clouds rolling into the larger storm–a “great cloud, and a fire infolding itself.” Also, the Hebrew word means something like “catching itself around” or “in a circle.” It could also be referring to its cloud rotation base.

4. The rainbow (verse 28)

Article by Tom Windsor

(also posted on Stormtrack website)