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Aquapope: Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) voted against aid for Hurricane Sandy. What do you bet he's ALL OVER aid for this?
He won't be. He's a tea party guy, so he'll be against federal aid for anything at all. I also wouldn't put it past him to say this is God's way of showing us we shouldn't have public education
/hate that #%#@er.
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That gives us a kinetic energy of 3.78*10^12 joules, or 3.78 Terrajoules.
I'm rusty on my energy measures; would that be 3.78 TJ per (second/minute/whatever), or for the assumed life of an average tornado?
If the former, then your (excellent, mind you) comparison would put that tornado at 1/20th of Little Boy every (unit of time), since a bomb releases all of its energy relatively instantaneously, making the storm far more powerful.
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Smelly Pirate Hooker: No calls or texts are going through, so I've stopped trying. Did get hold of my other sister (she lives a bit away from this area). Her electricity was out, but no damage.
If my other sister still has a house, it probably doesn't have electricity.
The footage of the damaged cars on the highway is troubling. Kinda looks like people got trapped in the path of the tornado as they sat on (I assume) I-35.
Apparently it plowed through a few intersections. There's some horrific images of vehicles that got caught in this.
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Felgraf: LasersHurt: Can't we put up some kind of vertical structures to break up the ground speeds of tornados? I've seen all manner of things designed to break up waves, etc - surely a similar principle could be used to protect residential areas?
I think the kinetic energy just makes that impossible.
Let's say a tornado is 1km wide, and 1km tall (this one may have been wider? But to simplify the math)
So that's a volume of .785 km^3, or 7.85*10^8 m^3. (note: This is a very rough estimate, and I realize I should TECHNICALLY do rotational kinetic energy, but this is easier and faster)
Assuming normal air density at 20*C and atmospheric pressure (1.2041 kg/m^3), that gives us a mass of 9.46*10^8 kg.
The tornado had a windspeed of 200mph (I think it may have gotten up to 225, someone said?). That's 89.4 meters/second.
Kinetic energy is .5*m*v^2
That gives us a kinetic energy of 3.78*10^12 joules, or 3.78 Terrajoules.
Little Boy released an energy of 67 TJ.
Basically: An *UNDERPOWERED* estimate gives this tornado 1/20th the energy of an atomic bomb.
I should note this is a VASTLY underpowered estimate; I'm not using rotational energy (where I'd use w^2 for the velocity term... where w is the velocity of the wind TIMES THE RADIUS OF THE TORNADO, and where I'd use I instead of m, where the momet of inertia would be 1/3 m r^2, which would scale it up a LOT. I just have to skip out of the lab soon, so I didn't do those extra steps.)
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Aquapope: Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) voted against aid for Hurricane Sandy. What do you bet he's ALL OVER aid for this?
Shocker.
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mr lawson: LasersHurt: I can't imagine that it wouldn't take some pretty ambitious engineering. But this idea that tornados are unstoppable, forever, by anything, at all, is ridiculous and I won't have it.
i get where you are coming from..i do.
however, the material sciences come into play.
Both the height needed and the mass required to deflected the energy rules all most all material.
after a certain height, even steel can not hold up it's own weight.
I'm only imagining these things being a few hundred to thousand feet. Less than record-breaking skyscrapers, though admittedly we're asking it to take an enormous amount of side-winds. You'd almost need a super-structure to help them strengthen each other, and at that point it's basically a giant dumb dome to kill everyone when it collapses.
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TommyDeuce: Local news on TWC "Pretty sure at least some kids were in the 2 schools hit" The anchors are looking pale
I heard that, as well. One school sounds like it's been evacuated. . . huge gas leak.
I haven't heard much about the other school.
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ArtosRC: This is a force of nature. It cannot be stopped.
I agree with your engineering points, but that's mystical hocus pocus BS.
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Aquapope: Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) voted against aid for Hurricane Sandy. What do you bet he's ALL OVER aid for this?
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soporific: Tornado on the ground.
I'm not a part of this storm system
Welcome to the real world, jackass
\MAN!
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Bontesla: GBB: Anyone listenting to the scanner, Signal-7 is a "dead body" according to most codebooks. And they are talking about them on OKC scanner.
Thank you. I heard "Signal-7" in conjunction with a downed building. No clue what that meant.
Agencies have no obligation to use standardized codes and can make up definitions how they see fit. But, I could tell by his voice that this is what he meant. I've heard it before.
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LasersHurt: ArtosRC: This is a force of nature. It cannot be stopped.
I agree with your engineering points, but that's mystical hocus pocus BS.
There are F-5 rated storm shelters, but I think the original post asked if there was a way to build something to stop/weaken the tornado itself. I doubt that....
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mzkitty901: CNN reporting kids were in the schools
grain of salt coming from CNN
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LasersHurt: I agree with your engineering points, but that's mystical hocus pocus BS.
I'm all ears on how to stop a ten-mile high wall of rotating air.
Pauls Valley about to be hit by another grinding monster.
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