Weather Imagery

If you find that your BMW 650 CS/GS/Dakar tail light doesn’t work at all or flickers when riding, chances are the metal power terminals inside the bulb socket are no longer making a good connection with the metal bumps on the tail light bulb. This is a very common problem with the BMW 650 of all makes, models, and years. Fortunately, there is a very easy fix.

Due to excessive vibration, temperature changes, and replacing light bulbs, the two metal power terminal tabs inside the tail light socket deform and get pushed too far back inside the tail light chassis. This prevents the tail light bulb from making good contact with the power terminals and the smallest vibrations can cause the electric connection to break temporarily or indefinitely.

To fix the problem, all you need to do is pry the two metal power tabs forward just a little so that they make a better connection with the metal bumps on the tail light bulb. If you look at the back of the bike, the red tail light casing on the 650 CS/GS/Dakar is held in place with two screws. If you remove these screws the red tail light casing comes off and you have access to the light bulb inside. At this point, turn the ignition on, but you don’t need to start the bike. Remove the light bulb by pushing in and twisting clockwise about 1/8 turn. If the bulb flickered while removing it, then the bent power terminals are most likely the cause.

Looking at the tail light bulb you should see two metal bumps. These bumps need to make a good connection with the two metal power terminals inside the tail light casing. Turn the ignition off and find a small tool that you can use to pry the power terminals forward just a bit. Make sure the bike is off and you don’t want the power terminals tabs inside the tail light casing to touch.

After you have made the adjustment, turn the ignition back to “on” and re-insert the taillight bulb. If the bulb is lit, then you are done. If it still flickers a bit and doesn’t stay lit, then you will need to continue prying the tabs forward until a good connection is made. It took me 4 tries before I fixed mine because I didn’t want to pry them too far forward.

Tornadoes don’t really hop, jump or skip. They can pull back up into the clouds and come back down sometime later, but this usually occurs over a fairly large distance. On a smaller scale, people tend to believe tornadoes can hop or jump over one house while totally destroying the one next to it. While this is true that a tornado can completely destroy one house and minimally damage another right next to it, the real reason has nothing to do with a tornado jumping or skipping. It has to do with the internal structure and varying intensity of a tornado.

The funnel of a tornado is sometimes composed of two or more vortexes which are just like smaller tornadoes that spin around in a circle (as seen in the picture to the left). This kind of tornado is called a multiple-vortex tornado and is almost always responsible for narrow paths of extreme destruction. We normally can’t see the individual vortexes because condensation and debris obscure the internal structure and give a tornado that wedge shape appearance.

Even though a tornado can be a hundred yards or greater in width, these smaller vortexes may only be a couple dozen feet in diameter and follow one another, often referred to as “training”. The winds in the vortexes can easily spin in excess of 200 mph and are actually responsible for a majority of a tornado’s destruction. Since these vortexes are only a couple dozen feet across, they represent a smaller portion of the entire tornado funnel. So as the tornado moves into a neighborhood, almost all the houses will suffer some damage from flying debris and the surrounding winds, but those that get hit by a vortexes will suffer far greater damage compared to those which didn’t. That means one house may be totally destroyed while the house across the street may still be standing and have considerably less damage. This is the main reason why it looks like tornadoes skip over one house while completely destroying the one right next to it.

On a slightly larger scale, a tornado can destroy one neighborhood while only lightly damaging the next in its path of destruction. A tornado’s destruction can vary significantly in just a quarter mile or so. As an example, one neighborhood might experience destruction consistent with an F3 tornado, but by the time the tornado crosses into the next neighborhood, the intensity might have dropped off considerably down to an F1. By the time it reaches the next neighborhood, it could very well have re-intensified into an F3 or greater. The neighborhood lucky enough to experience F1 strength destruction will suffer far less damage compared the to other areas that experienced the F3 or greater tornado intensity. This may give the appearance that the tornado skipped over a set of houses in one neighborhood while destroying everything else in front and behind it.

Because of the above reasons, damage reports vary for the same tornado event which make classifying the tornado on the Fujita Scale (the F-Scale) difficult. A new enhanced F-Scale will be implemented starting February 1st, 2007 to address this problem and make tornado reporting more accurate.

Other Tornado Myths

• Do Mobile Home Attract Tornadoes?
• Does Opening Windows During a Tornado Help?
• Is The Southwest Corner Safest?
• Do Highway Overpasses Provide Safety?
• Can You Really Outrun A Tornado In A Car?