A "Lightning Rod" for Tornadoes
So my friend, who has thought all this through, has come up with the idea that every little town, city, etc. should have a "trailer park" of abandoned house trailers, to behave as a lightning rod-- the idea being that the abandoned house trailers would somehow draw the tornado away from the house trailers out and about, as well as the city's hospitals, neighborhoods, schools, etc.
At first, I poo-pooed this idea, as being unworthy of Serious Scientific Study. Then, I began to pay attention to what she really meant, making note of the tornadoes in and around my area, and finally, coming to the conclusion that she is right on the money!
We all know that tornadoes are created by warm, moist, unstable air slamming and becoming trapped beneath a layer of cold, dry, stable air. Convection currents, caused by a layer of warm air under a layer of cold air, causes the air to "boil", up to the point where it begins to rotate, more and more strongly, until a tornado, one of the strongest and most unpredictable forces of nature, forms up in the clouds.
Thanks to our history of tornadoes, especially the April 3-4 super-outbreak of 1974 , sirens begin to go off, media outlets howl, and one begins to feel as if one is living through the Blitz of London. This warning system has saved countless lives, and is truly the result of hard work and many people making the effort to study the weather phenomena. Thank God for them!
Yet, I can't help but wonder if my friend's "theory" could help-- even just a bit. Tornadoes rarely strike the expensive neighborhoods-- the do strike there, but not as often. Here in KY, we have a lot more poorer neighborhoods than expensive ones, and the people that live there seem to suffer the highest consequences, all because their neighborhoods are built on the flat lands, rather up in the hills, where it seems that the bumpy ground sort of cushions the blow.
The picture on the right shows the green circle where Lietchfield is located. Of course Louisville has a lot of tornadoes, too-- but I think our total count is based on the tornadoes we had in 1974...
So, this weekend, we went to a band competition in Grayson County, and I looked at the landscape. The last time I was there was many years ago, and I was driving, so could not peruse the landscape as thoroughly as I could as a passenger. The landscape is very beautiful-- gently rolling hills, green everywhere, and sure enough, every little plot of land seems to have a house trailer. No wonder the entire county is put under alert when the weather is bad! House trailers are scattered about willynilly-- not in neat rows on flat land...
Obviously, what they need to do is pick a spot, out of the way, and use it to dump all the abandoned and used up house trailers. Perhaps it could be the lightning rod they so desperately need, and draw all the tornadoes there, instead of allowing them to roam freely about the countryside, destroying at will...
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I was at school in Murray, KY, in 1974. My husband was here in Louisville, riding his motorcycle down Bardstown Road on that fateful day when two tornadoes were in Louisville, wrecking everything. He drove like a bat out of, well, you know, and just missed being wiped out by an airborne garbage dumpster from the Krogers grocery... The dumpster flew across the parking lot and the road, wiping out a Toyota parked across the street, and ended up in the window front of one of stores along the street.
Louisville obviously doesn't have enough house trailer dumping grounds to act as lightning rods!
Hmmmmm, that's quite the theory Dowser...But it does seem that trailer parks really get hit a lot with tornado's.
How about just making a park out of model trailers, less expensive, takes less room, and easy to put in place...
I'm all for it, dear Kavika-- but what happens to the old house trailers that are abandoned? To me, it would be better to gather them up and put them somewhere, neatly, rather than just let them sit there, with a tree growing out of the roof... In parts of the state the prime real estate is on the flat spots-- so maybe in those parts, they could let them hang onto the side of a hill...
Can a tornado discern the difference between a fake house trailer and a real one? I don't know...
As you can see by the map about the worst single state for tornado activity is OK . They get some storms there that are so large they destroy entire towns . One of them hit Moore , OK a few years back and took out everything in the town including trailers and fixed structures too . I was fortunate to not have been there when it happened but I did get there for the aftermath . It was one of the widest tornados in history . Apparently it has something to do with the extremely large stretches of flat land ... not trailer parks .
Petey, you're absolutely right! There are lots worse places to live for tornadoes than KY-- but I'm here, and looking at this unscientifically from my point of view. I'm not claiming this to be a scientific study, just an anecdotal observation...
Besides, I don't live in OK, so I can't observe much there, unless it actually happens and comes on the news.
Here is the map for the 1974 super cell-- It covered several states...
We used to get them from time to time in South Western lower Michigan. I can remember watching one from the basement window when I was about 11 take out a huge tree just across the road (we lived in the country) and then it went on to flatten a trailer in nearby Burnips, Michigan. Just that trailer was hit in the whole the town (of course it wasn't much of a town). Flattened it right in place like it had been stepped on. Killed a women and her toddler. I'll bet the whole thing wasn't more then three feet high afterwards.
When I was a really small kid, somewhere nearby had a tornado that killed a lot of people, 10+. They showed pictures of a lumber yard, with plastic sheeting blowing around beneath the layers. i thought the plastic sheeting was PEOPLE, trying to get out beneath the wood. I was terrified!
Then, Grandpa hung wind chimes outside my window and told me the the bells were the voices of my ancestors, as they watched over me, caring for me... He told me it took the wind to hear their voices. I was not afraid of wind storms, after that. Instead, I listened for the chimes!
After the 1974 tornadoes, Brandenburg was so flattened, even the foundations of the houses had come up. All you could see was some small pipes sticking up out of the ground. It was a sobering view. I believe that 33 people died at Brandenburg...
Dear Friend Dowser: Thanks for conveying this interesting theory.
I agree with you. It is certainly worth a pilot program, not oppressively expensive, to try this out, track it and see if it helps.
If this proves itself to be a way to reduce loss of lives, limbs, damage to property and infrastructure the return on public investment should show up pretty rapidly.
One of my Master Degrees was earned while at Kansas University at Lawrence. Kansas, it should be remember has many severe tornadoes. Similarly, Iowa more cyclones.
I saw my share of up to level 5 twisters in the Sunflower State.
I witnessed 18 wheel trucks, livestock, homes, barns and office buildings literally picked up, thrown dozens of feet or torn to shreds in the air. The power of a high level tornado has to be witnessed to be fully appreciated.
One reason cited for so many tornadoes, the worst of which are in the center of the plains states is that they are in the plains states.
Plains states are long stretches of flat lands with little in the way of earth or man made objects to break up winds or diffuse atmospheric instabilities. Often hot wet air travels unimpeded from the Gulf Coast to meet colder drier air from the Artic and Canada. When the two systems collide, Whammo!
The more we know, the more effectively we utilize this data the better for those caught in the midst of such noteworthy events.
We cannot control nature. WE can use knowledge to remove people from harms way. We can also take preventative action to divert problems as we learn how.
We are indebted to you for an enlightening article which has great potential for humanitarian application.
As we used to say when I was in Lexington KY as an undergraduate, "Ya done good"!
Enoch.
You are so sweet, dear friend!
I doubt that the actual application of abandoned trailers in a park, would do much, but it might, on the Murphy's Law scale, help a little... After 1974's super outbreak, I saw a lot that I didn't want to see, and hope I never see again. I pray for the poor citizens of Lietchfield, who are bombarded constantly by severe weather alerts... They have certainly earned their status in the tornado alley of fame in KY.
Occasionally we seem to get these storm cells-- or set of conditions that produce storms-- that sit over us and just spin. Louisville had one of these about 25 years ago. Every day, for two weeks, we had one or two tornado warnings. Every day! My office was in the basement, so I felt "safe", but it was a lot like living through the blitz. I would run out and grab the postman and make him come down to the basement until the all clear sounded. I'm sure he wondered if I was up to no good... One time, I had the gas man, the postman, and the sidewalk guy huddled in my office!
Lexington seems to be protected from above, somehow. Nothing hits there, much-- although they make a lot of noise about it. I think all of us hold our collective breaths, until we know that the horses are safe. And of course, the people!