Christmas Day tornado outbreak possible in LA/MS/AL/TX

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Hope LA/AL/MS/TX GAF stays safe. What a shitty way to spend the holidays. Luckily I'm just north of the worst of it in Eastern Tennessee.
 
This sounds absolutely awful, I feel so terrible for all the families that are going to have to spend Christmas like this. Really hope it's not a major disaster.
 
serious question: why are large cities never affected? do all the tall buildings mess with the wind enough that they can't form or be sustained?
 
Row said:
serious question: why are large cities never affected? do all the tall buildings mess with the wind enough that they can't form or be sustained?
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I've heard that has something to do with it, the airflow carries a tornado around a city instead of through it. No idea if it's true, I'd guess it's not.

They don't always miss cities, I know one went through Huntsville back in 1989 but that was before I lived here.
 
chaosblade said:
I've heard that has something to do with it, the airflow carries a tornado around a city instead of through it. No idea if it's true, I'd guess it's not.

They don't always miss cities, I know one went through Huntsville back in 1989 but that was before I lived here.
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I was a baby during that. Not only did it go through Hunsville, it went down airport road which is one of the busiest roads in the city.
 
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Good luck Satan.
 
Well I'll be working overnight in Baytown, TX (just southeast of Houston) and will be driving home around 6AM, which could be when things are the jankiest in my neck of the woods. Rawk.
 
mre said:
Put something in the title about the confederate battle flag, then maybe more people will pay attention to the topic.
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I remember during the April 2011 outbreak, the charity/recovery stuff on TV got put on hold for the "Royal Wedding". Now, that was some bullshit.

This whole thing really blows (Seriously, no pun intended). My family gets very little free time together and we were planning to go have dinner with my grandmother with all of our relatives, and maybe go catch a movie later. Not going to happen now.
 
chaosblade said:
I've heard that has something to do with it, the airflow carries a tornado around a city instead of through it. No idea if it's true, I'd guess it's not.

They don't always miss cities, I know one went through Huntsville back in 1989 but that was before I lived here.
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This is definitely not true.
Large cities are just as susceptible.
However, due to sprawl it is usually outlying areas more susceptible to heavy damage.
A damaging tornado went right over the georgia dome in Atlanta, over hotels in Miami, F5 through the suburbs of OKC, and in the heart of Tuscaloosa. Cities are just concentrated in a smaller area and storms are statistically more likely to touch down in rural areas.
 
cajunator said:
They can forecast areas likely to have tornado activity based on air instability and other factors.
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Pastry said:
I think it's just that they predict the weather patterns that typically spawn tornados. I don't think there are any predictions about where or when they will touchdown.
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that's neat.

I always thought tornados were the most dangerous type of weather to have since you never know when one just shows up.
 
jobber said:
I always thought tornados were the most dangerous type of weather to have since you never know when one just shows up.
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No, that's touchdown/alerts that are lagging. Meteorology has been able to see "areas of interest" for a while.

But the science still isn't perfect and that's why there's crazy people that drive vehicles into the storms/intercept them to try to learn more about tornados.
 
TheSeks said:
No, that's touchdown/alerts that are lagging. Meteorology has been able to see "areas of interest" for a while.

But the science still isn't perfect and that's why there's crazy people that drive vehicles into the storms/intercept them to try to learn more about tornados.
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Ah. People claim that tornados hit all around Virginia then the nws says
NOPE it was the wind.
 
jobber said:
that's neat.

I always thought tornados were the most dangerous type of weather to have since you never know when one just shows up.
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Well you can get programs that show areas of circulation called tvs or tornado vortex signatures.
These are not always tornadic but they indicate areas where the wind is quickly moving towards and away from the radar in close proximity.
These tvs indicators are used to issue a tornado warning.
In this case its a prediction based on the convective outlook which is saying that a deep upper level trough feature which is expected to develop into an upper level low (this is currently visible if you go to noaa and look at continental us water vapor loops) which will deepen and meet the warm layer coming up from the gulf.
Both of these will collide and along that boundary its going to get very ugly.
Its going to get interesting around here.
 
cajunator said:
Well you can get programs that show areas of circulation called tvs or tornado vortex signatures.
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I have a program that will show TVS when it detects them. Its pretty pointless because I can only access them when I'm looking at a composite scan (all radar level scans, I want to look at the lowest scan to the ground) and it gets in the way of actual visual data that I can see on radar. Granted its a free program and nothing like grlevel3, so its probably not great to begin with.

Anyway, stay safe everyone. I'm in Oklahoma, so I'm dealing with the snow from this system.
 
chaosblade said:
I've heard that has something to do with it, the airflow carries a tornado around a city instead of through it. No idea if it's true, I'd guess it's not.

They don't always miss cities, I know one went through Huntsville back in 1989 but that was before I lived here.
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One hit Ft. worth a few years back and decimated the windows of quite a few skyscrapers. We've had a few near misses in Dallas also

Edit: meant to edit my last post sorry
 
legacyzero said:
Stay safe down there!

Reed Timmer will protect you.

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But seriously, on Christmas day? How often does that happen?
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Check out Tornado Glory if you haven't seen it. It was Reed and Joel's first documentary when they were both students at the University of Oklahoma and I was able to attend the premiere when I was in guerrilla film-making. It has some gnarly footage.

Hope you guys stay safe. I'm sure the snow we are expecting in Oklahoma is going to cause major issues albeit not as scary or immediately life threatening.
 
Houston has been pretty quiet so far...always have been an insomniac on Christmas eve...but this is just making me a little anxious.

We've had a little bit of a drizzle, but thats about it.
 
Teknoman said:
Houston has been pretty quiet so far...always have been an insomniac on Christmas eve...but this is just making me a little anxious.

We've had a little bit of a drizzle, but thats about it.
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I need to get out of this parched fucking city/region. Feels like we've been slowly but steadily drying up the past couple decades and I've long since lost count of how many times we've narrowly missed big rain events.

Sigh.
 
Baraka in the White House said:
I need to get out of this parched fucking city/region. Feels like we've been slowly but steadily drying up the past couple decades and I've long since lost count of how many times we've narrowly missed big rain events.

Sigh.
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Yeah I think we're in the middle of a drought right now? I've also got to say I miss cold Decembers.
 
Teknoman said:
Yeah I think we're in the middle of a drought right now? I've also got to say I miss cold Decembers.
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We got just enough rain earlier this year for them to officially call an end to the 2011 Drought for a month or two before we slipped into our new current drought.

Oh well, it's taking a massive blast of arctic air but at least we'll be cold for a day-and-a-half...
 
Thankfully its not as bad as predicted. Still lots of severe storms coming through right over the area so I'll have to watch them carefully, just in case.
 
What's it like in Ft. Worth? I have a sister there that I haven't been able to reach this morning. Any power outages or anything like that?
 
I'm in Baton Rouge and it did rain some last night. Going to moms house at around 9 or 10 in the morning, hopefully it stays clear long enough for me to get to her house. She only stays about 5-7 minutes from me.
 
Luckily here in Arkansas it looks like we're just getting heavy snow, but I have family in Alabama and hope they stay safe.

Be safe my southern brethern.
 
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