Weather

Tornadoes don’t hop, jump or skip. They can retreat back up into the clouds and spawn again sometime later. They can carve a path through a neighborhood that spares some houses and demolishes others. This leaves the impression the tornado skipped houses. While it’s true a tornado can completely destroy one house and minimally damage another right next to it, the reason has nothing to do with jumping or skipping. It does have to do with the internal structure of the tornado and its path. The funnel of a tornado…
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With today’s land starved metropolitan cities expanding further into their rural surroundings, a strange consequence had been documented: cities create thunderstorms, or at least assist in their genesis. It’s called the “urban heat island effect” and is based upon a simple concept. As a city increases in size, the amount of heat absorbed in the area from the sun also increases. Vegetation and trees, which cool the air through shade and evaporation are being replaced with tar roof tops, dark colored roads, and asphalt parking lots which absorb more energy….
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Those big thunderstorms that produce tornadoes, powerful downdrafts and torrential rains are almost always accompanied by hail. Some of these storms can drop so much hail, it looks as if it’s snowed in the middle of summer. Others can drop hail the size of softballs, large enough to kill livestock and even unsuspecting people caught outdoors. These storms cause billions of dollar in damage to crops and property each year. For example, one storm that ravaged the Denver Metro area on May 8th, 2017 caused $1.4 billion in damages with…
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