Deadly tornado strikes Texas town of Granbury

[Jimbuna]

Texas doesn't appear to be having much luck lately

Thoughts and prayers to the victims families and loved ones.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22549952

[WernherVonTrapp]

Texas is part of tornado alley where more tornadoes occur than anywhere else in the world.

[Oberon]

Another severe tornado has hit Moore, Oklahoma. The damage to the town looks considerable including one, perhaps, two schools.
KFOR are covering it from their helicopter:

http://kfor.com/on-air/live-streaming/

Moore was also hit hard in 1999 by an F5 tornado (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Br..._Moore_tornado) and reporters are indicating that the damage path looks wider than the 1999 tornado.

I can only hope and pray that the death toll is kept low.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Another severe tornado has hit Moore, Oklahoma. The damage to the town looks considerable including one, perhaps, two schools.
KFOR are covering it from their helicopter:

http://kfor.com/on-air/live-streaming/

Moore was also hit hard in 1999 by an F5 tornado (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Br..._Moore_tornado) and reporters are indicating that the damage path looks wider than the 1999 tornado.

I can only hope and pray that the death toll is kept low.

I saw the tornado being tracked as it was moving toward Moore, it was huge. Almost a mile wide, I think they said. The Weather Channel has Live coverage of the aftermath. Think I saw some scoring of, and missing asphalt on one of the roads. Devastating damage on the news coverage. Lord help them.

[Oberon]

It does, sadly, sound like an EF5.

[Jimbuna]

Seriously tragic and comments are already circulating on the news that this could possibly be the highest wind speed ever recorded on the earths surface.

[WernherVonTrapp]

I just heard an update that the tornado was 2 miles wide at some points.

[Armistead]

So sad about the school and the loss of so many children.

[desertstriker]

has anybody else noticed that weather is getting increasingly more severe during the past 5 years?

Also Moore was hit by a reported at least a 2 miles wide tornado.

[GoldenRivet]

past 5 years?

longest path for a tornado... 1917

deadliest in the USA... 1925

greatest damage to structures... 1896

not just tornadoes, the deadliest hurricane took place in 1900

its a matter of more data being recorded more readily and more quickly, not some apocalyptic weather change

[desertstriker]

I am just saying I have noticed more wacky weather in the past 5 years mind you i really only started caring about the weather in the past 7 but still things seem to be changing and acting weird than from my childhood memories.

sorry should have changed severe wacky but didn't in the my first post

[Feuer Frei!]

If we are only talking in the US, then in particular the last 2 years has been very severe.
Two record heat waves, an historic drought, above-average destructive wildfires, and two powerful hurricanes that slammed into the East Coast.
In 2012, the U.S. experienced the most extreme year for weather ever recorded, according to NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index.

Growing number of weather extremes are a strong indication of climate change.
These 2 studies confirm the increase in severities, which are directly impacting the USA:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...53268/abstract

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v.../ngeo1590.html

So, he would be right in assuming that weather severities have increased. Over 5 years? Longer than that.

[Oberon]

Well we've got a significant amount of CO2 in the atmosphere now, an amount not seen for 4.5 million years when the Earth was a very different place. So the weather systems are going to change to adapt to the new conditions of the atmosphere. It's not likely to happen overnight, there's a lag-time of an unknown period of years where the weather is going to change before it stabilises, that's if, of course, the amount of CO2 stabilises which at its current rate it isn't, and indeed, by the 2040s we could be looking at 450-500ppm of CO2, which hasn't been seen for a very very long time and would not be a good thing at all.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Am heartbroken for Moore, Oklahoma... especially for the parents and teachers of all those poor dead children.

Now it looks like east Texas will be in the storm crosshairs later today. The conditions are right for the tornado outbreak to continue.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by desertstriker

has anybody else noticed that weather is getting increasingly more severe during the past 5 years?

Yes.



Those poor people in Oklahoma. I can't imagine losing everything in a blink of an eye. I hope they had good insurance. And the ones that lost family and friends...my heart goes out to them definitely.