Weather data from a moving vehicle – in poor condition 90 years looking for a model Dodge Intrepid with classic rock radio, flags placed in the roof of the tower and bolted to a portable control panel – the main road from the port along the way Hackleburg, Alabama. He left the band supports the pines and oaks in the north, like dominoes along the straight line distance, the trees swayed in the opposite direction – all powered by the direction of the vortex tornado. Seat, Todd Murphy, a note of students in a handheld GPS. They found what they wanted: a fatal blow from a storm in northern Alabama, April 27.
Six weeks, hit the southern most serious outbreak of tornadoes in American history. Alabama, 69 tornadoes killed 240 people. Tuscaloosa and Birmingham suffered greatly. Hackleburg, population 1430, was destroyed – miles of the tornado began near the border with Mississippi, Alabama and covers a distance of 132 km before coming to Tennessee, and became the short term. Eighteen people died in Hackleburg.
Flathead are on the ground to assess the damage from the storm, before everything is destroyed, and talking to witnesses, when their memories are still alive.
The following year, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation that he and his team investigate what they see downed trees and debris – as well as recordings of radar, satellite images, interviews with family, and even YouTube videos sent to people who have been abducted and taken to mental illness and its consequences. Less “Storm Chaser” and “CSI: Northern Lights”, the team hopes to obtain information to better understand how the storm developed to improve tornado prediction and save lives.
The team also believes that data sharing Mana Knuppe unprecedented destruction in the atmosphere can take several days to test theories.
Murphy wants to see how the valve is called gravitational waves, tornadoes, for help. Elise and Chris Schultz, the man and his wife, the student must submit an experimental radar to track the path of a tornado is “a ball of iron” – all the dust and trees and houses all parts Twister – a an impossibility for most radars in use today.
If approved, the data can also be flat head and postdoctoral fellow Tim Coleman, the opportunity to test the controversial idea that thought for years that the country in the properties of trees, hills and valleys that affect a tornado.
Knuppe – mild mannered finishing machines – grew up in tornado country, the family farm in Iowa, where they grew corn and soybeans and pork. He wrote his first scientific work of tornadoes in 1976, when a student at Iowa State University.
As a teenager, convinced that his father stopped the car on the way home from practice the band, so you can see the funnel cloud approach. Family was discovered when the 60 mph wind, Knuppe thought a tornado struck the poor. No one was hurt.
He briefly tried to escape, and “veil” is April 27 storms, extreme weather events, but convinced him to turn his car around.
“I am close and I felt very bad,” he said.
That day, instability in the atmosphere – a warm, moist air near the ground and the air along the cold, dry air – with wind shear. Association of super-cell thunderstorms. The cells can produce large tornadoes.
Tornado Outbreak of instability in one of the power indices helicopter typical wind shear, can record 3 or 4 in some parts of Alabama, and one hour before 27 April 11 Slap Shot – “almost as large I have “seen,” said Knuppe.
From his home in Huntsville, flat head for the students to create a mobile radar can detect clouds, rain, hail and debris. Students are encouraged to lifting equipment, and only 20.30, constituency by storm. Three hours, MAX, as it is called the radar was alone in a place not far away.
Monitoring of input images to the computer, so after the storm after the storm Knuppe storm. At noon there were two weather systems to separate the state produces more than 30 tornadoes that killed five people and cutting power to more than a quarter million homes and businesses.
In the afternoon was a mega-hurricane, a tornado destroyed the Hackleburg. National Weather Service has finally decided that there were 19 tornadoes in Alabama is known for EF3 or greater than the Fujita scale of sophistication, EF0 (small tornado was observed after the tests, the bandwidth, flat head) EF5 is ( For example, a devastating effect on Hackleburg). Sirens sounded throughout the day.
