Saturday, December 15, 2018
At least the one I saw
Headline:
Tornados may form from the ground up. New research may upend what we know about how tornadoes form. As the climate changes, twister behavior on the ground is changing too
Of course we have to get CLIMATE_CHANGE into the headline, otherwise we'll lose our grants and tenure.
Reading the article, the actual information IS OPPOSITE the headline. Meteorologists have been trying to get full close-up radar data from tornados. So far they only have such data from EXACTLY TWO tornados, both of which are known to be unusual and exceptional. One of them seemed to start rotating first on the ground, the other seemed to start rotating uniformly through the column.
Conventional wisdom AND actual observation agree that most tornados start rotating in the wall cloud, then grow downward, sometimes reaching the ground and sometimes not. Damage depends on local elevation and 'desired base' of the twister. When the 'desired base' happens to be below ground level, you get max damage.
In a tornado-generating storm, you often see several funnels trying to form directly overhead. Most of them fail and retract. If the rotation started from the ground, you'd be dead before you could see such funnels; or you'd see houses flying apart before you saw the dipping funnels.
This article is committing a classic and basic logical error.
One of my father's science jokes:
"I have studied the Incas and determined that all Incas walk single file.... at least the one I saw did."
Labels: Blinded by Stats, Carbon Cult
¶ 8:27 AM
