Tornado warning today...

[2001srnfan]

Here is the warning...

TORNADO WARNING
ISSUED BY ENVIRONMENT CANADA
AT 3:09 PM EDT WEDNESDAY 31 MAY 2006.
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TORNADO WARNING FOR:
=NEW= KITCHENER - CAMBRIDGE - REGION OF WATERLOO
=NEW= GUELPH - ERIN - SOUTHERN WELLINGTON COUNTY.

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==DISCUSSION==
RADAR AND SEVERE WEATHER WATCHER REPORTED A SEVERE THUNDER STORM
ABOUT 20 KILOMETRES WEST OF KITCHENER. THIS THUNDERSTORM IS MOVING
EASTWARD ABOUT 20 KM/H AND IS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING TORNADOES.

THIS IS A WARNING THAT SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WITH TORNADOES ARE
IMMINENT OR OCCURRING IN THESE REGIONS. MONITOR WEATHER CONDITIONS.
TAKE IMMEDIATE SAFETY PRECAUTIONS.

[AllSafe]

SKYWARN? is a network of trained weather spotters who monitor and issue live reports about severe weather to the National Weather Service.

[2001srnfan]

Here in Canada we have CANWARN and EWT. I'm an EWT, so I can relay my reports to The Weather Network, who will forward Environment Canada.

[Trey]

Yeah I don't plan on being a meteorologist, nothing more than a SKYWARN spotter.

[2001srnfan]

Anyways, this is what happened with the storm.

Two funnel clouds reported. One near Bamberg and one hanging over Westmount Rd. in west Waterloo for about 5 minutes.

Dime to nickel size hail all across the city. It covered the ground about 1.5 inches, like snow.

The most intense lightning I have ever seen. It was flash after flash after flash. Loudest thunder too, we plugged our ears a lot. Lightning hit about 50 feet behind my house on a transformer and knocked power out all over the city.

47mm of rain fell, prompting a flash flood warning and widespread flash flooding. There is a dirt path down the road that was washed away. It's about 1 to 2 feet deep now and just the large rocks below the dirt remain.

Wind damage at the construction sites across the city, including a few downed tree branches across the city.

A lot of flooded basements and low lying areas are under water.

[500AT]

Also, yeah, it sucks to be without a warning system: in Windsor, whenever a big storm comes, the only warning we have is from Detroit's system.

Windsor used to have an extensive siren network, dating back to World War II. I forget the name of the company that manufactured them from Toronto, but they looked and sounded just like a Carters air raid siren. However, they ran off 440 volt three-phase power.

Randy Mawson, the creator of CANWARN, was stationed at the Windsor Airport weather office in the mid-1980s. We talked very often about the siren system in Windsor, and what it would take to have them placed back in operating condition. The end result, was the city couldn't justify spending the money on the sirens, since the threat of tornadoes is considered to be so low in southwestern Ontario. Moreover, there is a myth that since Windsor is right on the Detroit River, any twister would lift crossing the water and stay airborne over the city. However, this was not the case on June 17, 1946.

The city of Windsor and Essex County learned the hard way that tornadoes can kill people without any warning, especially in their own backyard. Thereafter, until the late 1960s, the air raid sirens in Windsor were used for weather warnings. Ironically, they stopped using them before the tornado that struck on April 3, 1974, which also killed a few people in the city. Much to my astonishment, Windsor city officials did not take any action to upgrade or replace the siren system in the aftermath of that killer storm.

In reality, the Detroit-Windsor area is living on borrowed time, which is running out with each passing day, until the next deadly tornado strikes the region. Randy Mawson and other weather officials at Environment Canada feel the same way. Moreover, since climatologists feel that 2007 could be one of the hottest years on record, it may set the stage for a very violent Severe Weather season across lower Canada and Great Lakes regions.

Here is more information on the 1946 Windsor tornado:
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-70-1713-11 ... does/clip3

[SirenMadness]

Thanks.

The good news are that storms will increase in frequency over this year, compared to the years before. What does get me disturbed, though, is that with the heightening threat of a terrorist attack between borders in North America, Windsor still hasn't bought that 2001 that they are, or were, at least, opting for. I've seen a super cell storm almost spawn a tornado over our [former] building once, and that storm came from the Windsor area itself, not Detroit. You'd at least think that Windsor would put any bit of thought into a threat that is ready to develop into a major long-term issue to the city any month now!
Sarnia, at least, seems to be dwelling on the issue more than Windsor. Windsor is a well-built city; they are lazy in some aspects, though.
Windsor should initiate a public warning system, if not a strategic plan, soon.
A tornado can't be stopped over water, unless it's on a hill, in which occasion it would get stopped, if not lessened, anyway.

[2001srnfan]

500AT you wrote...

Windsor used to have an extensive siren network, dating back to World War II. I forget the name of the company that manufactured them from Toronto, but they looked and sounded just like a Carters air raid siren. However, they ran off 440 volt three-phase power.

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I've seen those sirens floating around southern Ontario, and I believe one of our members in British Columbia recorded one of them, I still have the recording.

Nothing new on warning systems up here, I own a weather radio now... taking matters into my own hands I suppose you can say.

Also SirenMadness, Sarnia's siren system is not effective in any way. The ATI's are at some points over 1km apart, and there is only 4 working in Sarnia, and about 10 Alertronic 6000s that don't work. I've tried to aquire one of the 6000s before, and the city wanted $700 per unit not including removal from the poles.

[Robert Gift]

... A tornado can't be stopped over water, unless it's on a hill, in which occasion it would get stopped, if not lessened, anyway.

Nothing will stop a tornado short of an atomic bomb disrupting the atmosphere.
An air mass, which has created a tornado, does not care what is below.
It is too big to be influenced by water and mountains.
A funnel will just plow right into a hill or mountain or travel right over water.
Yes, water and mountains can influence storm system developement, but will have no effect on an already developed tornado above.

[SirenMadness]

Thanks for the information, Mike. If I do get enough money to require a unit, is it necessary that the pole is removed, as well?


Not all hills will stop a tornado.
Yes, no absolute topographical barrier exists for a well-developed tornado anywhere they form. However, thunderstorms with very low bases and pretty small tornadoes would have an extremely big elevation as a barrier. A tornado is formed when warm air from the ground tries to push up against the cold air that the thunderstorm mass itself has dispelled down. When enough pressure builds up between the two air masses under the cloud, there will have to be a point at which the warm air creates a hole that is known as a tornado. As the first and leading columns of warm air go up, making the vortex, trailing air left behind gets pulled up by suction, sustaining the vortex. What a tornado needs is warm air to feed the suction from the bottom, the warm air later dissipating itself somewhere in the cloud. However, when there is something blocking or lessening the intake, or bottom, of the tornado, there will not be enough air coming in from underneath to keep the tornado alive, thus allowing a blanket of cold air from just above the base of the cloud to cover up the hole and put a plug on the tornado. Tornadoes die out because there is not enough warm air from underneath to sustain suction, equalizing the pressure in the end, and very weak tornadoes sometimes go through that principle by going over a very big barrier, though you are right in the fact that it takes phenomenal force to stop a big tornado.