TORNADO IN U.S.A.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 November 1936, Page 2

TORNADO IN U.S.A.

DAMAGE IN PAST 20 YEARS

Tornadoes have killed 5358 persons and caused damage to property estimated at £40,000,000 in the United States in the last 20 years.

Cows sailing, unharmed through the air, splinters driven through plate glass windows and.straws embedded in planks are among the oddities listed from the 2702 tornaddes recorded officially m that time, s •

There is no regularity about visitations of tornadoes. The town of Codell, Kansas, -was struck three times in three successive years, 1916, 1817, 1918. Each time the tornado occurred on May 20 and at- almost the same hour of the day.- The last, time the town was practically wiped out. Residents stick close to their basements on May 20, but the town has not been struck since.

In the G-ainsville tornado of last April 6, an automobile was thrown into a hole made by an uprooted tree. A tree was snapped off and then replanted upright a short distance away. A large hog was 'picked up in the suburbs and set down on a public square without being injured. A wood splinter was driven through a large plate glass window of the Santa Fe storehouse of Wellington, Kansas, during the tornado of N ovember 18, 1954. The splinter made a clean hole without cracking the glass. In a Louisiana tornado, a rooster was carried several miles and set down in another flock of chickens. In the Great Bend, Kansas, tornado if November 10, 1915, an unmailed letter was carried 85 miles to the north-east. In another 'Kansas tornado, a herd of cattle was struck and sailed through the air like a flock of birds. A tornado, still miscalled a cyclone in spite of educational efforts of the weather bureau, is caused under certain conditions by abnormally warm, moist air being overrun by odder air. The warm air. being lighter, is forced up through the colder much as a cork is forced up in water, and its movement is governed by the same law of moving liquids that sets up a whirl in a draining bathtub except that in the case of the tornado the movement is upward.

The speed of the whirling winds in a tornado has never been measured, but ha s been estimated at 300 to 500 miles an hour. The decreased presure in the whirl actually causes buildings to explode when the normal atmospheric pressure inside is ' suddenly exerted against the lowering-pressure outside.

Tornadjpes, usually-'trave] toward the north-east, and most commonly form in the late afternoon; but they have been known to approach from almost every direction qikl to occur at all hours. Con-

ditions that favour: 'tornadoes • are warm, “sticky” mornings, especially between March 15 and June 15, over an a real located e.-south-west of a centre of low - atuiosjaheric pressure in the IJnited' States .-.of .America.'