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I heard an item on the radio where the twin twisters that clobbered a Nebraska community were said to be described by meteorologists as rare; the question "Is this due to climate change?" was also posed and left dangling. Investigating further at Google News, I found another item where a storm chaser was saying "I've never seen anything like this".
I then found an article by Andrew Freedman which says there's a wide range of tornado types and that storms which split aren't all that rare.
Pioneering tornado scientist Theodore Fujita, who devised the Fujita Tornado Damage Scale that is still used to classify tornado intensity, identified many types of tornadoes, some of which bore similarities to the twin twisters in Nebraska on Monday.
For example, the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965, during which nearly 50 tornadoes touched down and 271 people died, there was a well-documented dual tornado that struck close to Toledo, Ohio. A study Fujita published with his colleagues found that this tornado split for only a short time, coalescing back into a larger funnel soon after a famous picture was taken that bears some resemblance to the Pilger tornado.
"A single funnel split into two and then reorganized into one after about a minute," the study says.
Interesting reading.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Thursday June 19 2014, @05:16PM
... (generic remark indicating lack of surprise)
Off the top of my head, an AeroPress [aerobie.com] and a Hario Mini Mill (MSS1B) [hario.jp] should be almost unbreakable, small to stow in an emergency bag, and provide coffee if you can get hot water (pan on a fire?). Emergency preparedness, man. You don't need clean socks...
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday June 20 2014, @03:53AM
Boil some water (fire or propane), throw in a handful of coffee, let sit for 5 minutes, filter through clean socks.
Yes you do need clean socks.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Friday June 20 2014, @06:51AM
Filtering is not strictly necessary. [ineedcoffee.com] This negates the sock requirement.
(Propane usually gives heat for boiling water when it's on fire; really, any fuel source for the fire will do. Alcohol, gasoline (probably "white gas"), kerosene, butane, propane, natural gas, city gas, oil (many types!), wood, coal, charcoal, newspaper, Sterno, wax (candles or crayons), lard/tallow, vegetable shortening... or a combination, like a newspaper soaked in vegetable oil with some charcoal on top, possibly ignited by butane)
Really, there's no need to limit ourselves to "fire" as a heat source, either - if you've got a convenient lava flow nearby (or other geothermal outlet), that should do, or a parabolic reflector (or lens - fresnel or otherwise) and a conveniently aligned nuclear power source about 93 million miles away, or a noncombustion exothermic chemical reaction...
I don't recommend climbing a communication tower to stick a jar of water in front of a microwave antenna - they're usually not the right frequency of microwaves to resonate the water molecules and get them hot. It's probably easier to get into the transmitter building below and wire into their battery backup power for the electric coffee pot, anyway.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday June 20 2014, @05:15PM
The surprising thing wasn't that the trailers were demolished, what was surprising was that no one was seriously hurt. I saw twisted steel girders on a commercial building, cinderblock walls with wooden splinters stuck in them, and six foot diameter trees uprooted.
I could have made coffee by heating water in the gas stove and pouring it through a coffee filter, but walking was easier (driving was out of the question, the streets were all full of tree trunks, utility poles and other debris).
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience