I’ve often thought these guys nuts (storm chasers that is) but recent discussions on the appalling luck that Oklahoma and other parts of the mid west recently experienced has changed that. They apparently provide up to the minute, on the spot detail of a tornado’s size, damage, direction, exact location, etc. Vital information I assume for listeners / residents survival strategies.
Watch how these guys and their car (an SUV) get lifted and tossed around.
and ….
Pay attention at 1:43 when another vehicle passes our camera crew and gets tossed into the adjacent ditch / field
Boadicea's Chariot 
G’morgen, Soutie! I recall I took my children to see the film, Ghostbusters yonks ago – which showed similar scenes. 🙂
Speaking of Stormers….
I did not see any of the game, but I will take the win.
I gather three of them were killed Friday in Oklahoma City.
No ‘luck’ about it either. The coincidence of three climatic factors cause tornadoes, the Great Plains being the only place in the world where it happens to happen, so to speak! I am at a loss that they allow building codes without safe rooms and cellars, utter stupidity. Must say, having seen one come ashore in the Gulf and change from a monster water spout to a tornado it was the only time I was happy at being driven at 125 mph to escape from it! Seriously nasty!!! Traditional country places in the plains have root cellars away from the house with unimpeded access for subsequent emergence after the event. They ought to be mandatory in residential areas.
Much rather take my chances with an earthquake! Curiously there is no place in the USA that is safe from all of these horror weather stories or cataclysms, a very alien concept to any used to NW Europe that is one of the safest places on the planet. Here you pays yer money and takes yer choice of horrors! We were only saying last night that we wouldn’t live in Oklahoma for all the money in the world!
We used to get tornadoes in Memphis but they were only small ones, ripped the odd roof off etc but nothing mega. Dust devils up to 50′ high used to wander round the golf course opposite our house like drunken sailors. One ripped out 7 stems of a decorative pin oak tree in our front yard like match sticks but didn’t touch the house 20′ away. By which time we were in an interior bathroom, in the bath with a precut plywood cover over us!
I have to say that I do think most people are very stupid, it is not exactly rocket science to work out their trajectory from local landmarks and they do not proceed that fast along the ground, the high winds are inside the tornado itself, up to 200 mph. Most modern cars can outrun them if you put the boot down. Equally, they follow contours, tend to bounce from bump to bump, however small, in the landscape. It is quite possible to survive in a roadside ditch no deeper than 4′, many have, not a bright idea to stay in the car!!! Maps of previous tornadoes soon show where not to live! In Memphis they always hit the town and roared up Elvis Presley Blvd. Curiously only on one side of the road! Graceland mansion was never touched but just opposite half a mile up the road a strip shopping area was regularly de- roofed! Also the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated was a regular victim, then they bounced and hit the Air base in Millington to the NE of the city. All as regular as clockwork. Darwinism at work as usual! It staggers me that people are so unprepared for disasters in areas prone to them and generally studying their mobile phones, when looking out the window might just be a life saver!
Out of sheer curiosity I just looked up the price of shelters. An underground fibreglass shelter with walk down stairs can be had for $4097. INSTALLED!!!!
And people are prepared to die rather than pay such a paltry sum? I bet the value of their monster TVS, computers, tablets and ipads comes to more!!! As I said, sheer Darwinism!
A couple of things struck me from the news reports on the Moore tornado, 1) somebody explained that Moore has an underlying bed of rock and dynamite would be needed to blast out shelters making them perhaps unaffordable and 2) the acceptance that tornadoes ‘happen.’
My point here though was that these storm chasers aren’t simply thrill-seekers but that they provide a very important service.
Sipu, 8 of us had a trip arranged, accommodation booked, tickets arranged transport sorted, I had to pull out at the last minute 😦
In a way I’m pleased, awful awful weather, poor game, worse result and don’t get me started on the refereeing that robbed us of at least a bonus point!
We are going to Jhb though for the first leg of the play-off games 🙂
I bet the first, ‘native’ settlers didn’t live there! Or if they tried it they were bright enough to move away after an initial shock!
Hate to tell you, a branch of the Comanche and the Osage. Everywhere was occupied before the white man came, just at much less density. Plains Indians always moved, following the buffalo.
Thanks, C! So no doubt the beasts scarpered when the bad weather threatened and the people followed!
J I suspect you are right. There is quite a lot of precedence for that kind of thing here. In N California there is a place called Crescent City on the coast. The Indian name roughly translates as- Good place to fish, bad place to sleep. They never built a permanent settlement there just came to fish a few weeks a year and buggered off. Guess what! Every time there is a tsunami in the Pacific basin, this is the spot that it hits first and highest in the continental US! The Indians knew by watching creatures etc that bad things were about to happen, very delicate early warning system so to speak. I do think that even today, those that live nearer to the earth are far more able to discern minute changes in landscape and environment.
I note that even though I am not in my native environment, when we are on our travels I often say to s/u-
God, look at THAT! I wouldn’t live HERE!
He never knows what I am talking about or can see anything untoward without vast explanation, that is the difference of New York and an incredible rural upbringing.
I knew something was wrong with Crescent City the first time I set eyes on it! Weird wave cut benches on the low cliffs behind the beach and far too many of them to account for normal sea level movements. The sea had to be going up and down like the whore’s draws!! I commented in town when at lunch and got the story immediately. (Normal tidal reach in that area of the Pacific is only about 8′, Milford Sound is 36′!!!!)