Tornado carries check 150 miles
In last week’s column I wrote about several tornadoes which tore across parts of Central Oklahoma on Feb. 10.
One of the towns most severely hit, was Lone Grove, located about 100 miles south of Oklahoma City just off Interstate 35. There were eight fatalities and at least 14 serious injuries due to the half-mile-wide tornado which appeared to have been on the ground for more than an hour.
The National Weather Service estimated that wind speeds reached 170 miles per hour in the storm, and later damage surveys resulted in the tornado receiving an EF-4 rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale (scale ranges from EF-0 to EF-5 with EF-5 being the most destructive).
An interesting discovery has been made, as meteorologists have studied the storm, along with the resulting damage and debris. It turns out that a bank check, with a Lone Grove address, was found about 150 miles northeast, by a resident in the city of Broken Arrow, Okla. Is it possible that this small piece of paper was really carried up into the storm, and transported such a long distance away?
Meteorologists were able to use a specialized computer model called HYSPLIT (which stands for Hybrid Single Particle Langrangian Integrated Trajectory Model), to test the plausibility of such an event occurring. The HYSPLIT model is normally used to estimate where chemicals released during a hazardous materials spill will move.
Meteorologists used this model and plugged in atmospheric data from the Lone Grove storm, to see what path a light weight object (such as a small piece of paper) might travel. To their amazement, the computer model spit out a trajectory that led right over Broken Arrow!
Though this wasn’t a scientific experiment – in that many assumptions had to be made about the exact time and location where the check was first carried up into the storm, and the time and height of its release from the updraft – the results are still very interesting. Though the computer model is meant to track a trajectory of hazardous chemicals and not pieces of paper, it does seem like these initial results give credibility to the idea that storms can accomplish such amazing feats.
Locally, the predominance of high pressure has kept our weather rather quiet across the region. Overall, February has been slightly cooler than normal, but drier than normal at the same time. As a result, we have seen little in the way of snow since an extremely prolific early January.
Spokane currently has a seasonal snow total of 84.1 inches, about 10 inches shy of beating the all time snowiest winter season of 1949-50. Coeur d’Alene has seen about 122 inches, still a far cry from the 172.9 inches recorded last season by local climatologist Cliff Harris. There is still plenty of winter left, though.