Meteorologist, Author, and Storm Chaser Cyrena Arnold answers your questions about extreme weather from Twitter. How accurate is the science in the new film "Twisters?" What is the difference between El Niño and La Niña? Why are scientists predicting a super-charged storm season for 2024?
- Follow Cyrena on all socials @WxCyrena
- Cyrena's children's books on weather:https://www.francesfoxstories.com
- Learn more about storm chasing athttps://stormfrontfreaks.com
- Follow Cyrena on all socials @WxCyrena
- Cyrena's children's books on weather:https://www.francesfoxstories.com
- Learn more about storm chasing athttps://stormfrontfreaks.com
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TechTranscript
00:00I'm meteorologist Storm Chaser and author Serena Arnold.
00:03We're here to answer your questions from the internet.
00:05This is Severe Weather Support.
00:07At Barb's Loco says, where is Tornado Alley?
00:15So Tornado Alley is Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas.
00:18Tornadoes occur in these locations April, May, June.
00:21Now we're seeing a little bit of a shift where Tornado Alley is moving further east as well
00:26because we have moisture from the Gulf that comes up.
00:29You also have cold, dry air come further down, and that warm air and cold air coming together
00:34is what helps to cause thunderstorms.
00:36And the reason that we are seeing this eastern migration of Tornado Alley is mostly because
00:41of climate change.
00:42At Olivia Frog says, how the f*** do we predict weather?
00:46How do we just see the future and know what the temperature is?
00:49So the way we're able to predict the future and tell you what's going to be happening
00:52is through weather models, a whole bunch of equations that are thrown into a computer.
00:56They are run at government institutions or universities and research facilities.
01:00They're taking in what's happening with the atmosphere right now.
01:03They're applying it to these equations that we know about the atmosphere and outputting
01:07information about what's going to be happening in the future.
01:09So then your TV meteorologist can log onto their computer, pull up these different websites,
01:14and actually see what's happening in those forecast models.
01:17Even the free weather app on your phone is usually being tied back to one specific forecast
01:21weather model.
01:22We as meteorologists have to be able to figure out which model are we going to use in what
01:26situation.
01:27We know different forecast models have different strengths and weaknesses.
01:30Some are really good within the next 12 to 24 hours.
01:33Some are much better when we're looking out 5 to 7 days.
01:36Some are better at forecasting hurricanes.
01:38Some are better at nor'easters.
01:40And some perform differently in different locations around the world.
01:42Weather forecasting is really hard.
01:44Here we are, this big rock in space.
01:46We've covered 70% of the surface with water.
01:49Then we've got this crazy gas around the entire planet that's our atmosphere.
01:53We're spinning at 1,000 miles an hour as we're rocketing through the solar system.
01:57The sun is roasting one half and the other half is facing the vast void of space and
02:02is cooling.
02:03And now you want me to tell you what's going to be happening in 5 days?
02:06At Diju asks,
02:07Tornadoes always gone confuse me because how the F do they happen?
02:12So you telling me the wind just throws that ass in a circle?
02:15Scientifically, it's kind of what happens.
02:16This is a supercell thunderstorm.
02:18They rotate counterclockwise.
02:20And these are the storms that are capable of producing tornadoes.
02:23Right here under this rotating part of the storm that's called a mesocyclone.
02:27With all the circulations, the updrafts, the downdrafts, the rotations in these thunderstorms,
02:31this is actually also a very large updraft area.
02:34You create a void down here and that creates an area of low pressure.
02:37And this is the area that forms a tornado.
02:39So typically about 1 out of every 10 storm chases actually results in seeing a tornado
02:44because they are incredibly hard to forecast.
02:46This storm could be capable of producing a tornado or maybe not.
02:50Tornadoes can last for just a couple seconds at a time.
02:52Sometimes tornadoes can last for an hour and go for miles and miles.
02:57Becky Lou says,
02:58Why are hailstones a thing?
02:59Whose idea was it to hurl tiny blocks of ice from the sky into our faces?
03:04When you have a strong to severe thunderstorm, the updrafts in that storm are incredibly
03:07strong.
03:08And so it takes these little water drops and it launches them up really high way above
03:12that freezing line and they turn to ice.
03:14Then what happens is they fall down back through the storm again, go back below the freezing
03:17line and as they're passing through, lots of water drops are hitting them and they catch
03:21the updraft and there they go up again for another cycle and that water freezes.
03:25And it does this over and over and over again.
03:29If you find a hailstone and you're able to cut it open, most likely it's going to look
03:32like it has rings like if you cut down a tree from all of the trips and the cycles that
03:36made inside of the storm.
03:37So if you're looking at some hailstones and you find little pea-sized hailstones on the
03:41ground, that's great.
03:42Your storm wasn't very strong.
03:44But hail sizes can actually exceed baseball size hail.
03:47Gorilla hail is just another name for really large hail.
03:51Grapefruit size or larger, like four inches in diameter or larger.
03:55And on a storm chase I was on earlier in June, the National Weather Service issued their
03:59first ever warning for DVD-sized hailstones.
04:03At Shuffleupagus says, wait, Sahara dust affects weather in the USA?
04:08Sahara dust absolutely affects our weather here in the United States.
04:12The Sahara here in the northern part of Africa has lots of dirt and sand.
04:16And when we get severe sandstorms, those blow across here and take the sand and bring it
04:21over this moist, warm ocean.
04:23We have water that's constantly evaporating.
04:25And that water condenses on the sand.
04:27And this eventually forms the first clouds that will eventually turn into hurricanes
04:32and potentially impact the United States.
04:35Ashxx11 says, if someone gets caught in a tornado in their car, do you open a window?
04:40Also do you open windows in your home?
04:42People say it's a myth.
04:43There's absolutely no need to open the window in your car.
04:46It's a common misconception that low pressure is what breaks the windows in a tornado.
04:50It's actually the debris, two-by-fours, and other things like that, that the tornado is
04:54throwing around.
04:55If you're indoors in any building of any kind, get as low to the ground as possible.
04:59You want to go to an interior room where you don't have any windows.
05:02The more central to your house and the more interior with tight walls around you, the
05:05safer you're going to be.
05:07If you are stuck outside, then what you need to do is get to the lowest lying area you
05:10can, even if that means lying in a ditch in a field somewhere.
05:13Never, ever park your car under an overpass.
05:16Might seem like a good idea.
05:17You may want to protect your car from getting any damage, but what's going to happen is,
05:21one, the winds are going to funnel through there in a really bad storm, but two, other
05:25cars park under there.
05:26You could potentially be keeping emergency services from reaching people who were just
05:30hit by a tornado and badly need medical attention.
05:33At Gmonster7000 asks, wait, quick question.
05:36What are some of the latest technological advancements in tornado prediction?
05:40Have they improved warning times?
05:42I'm asking for myself.
05:43Yeah, absolutely.
05:45We have a lot of increased radar technology and better notification that has definitely
05:49increased tornado warning times.
05:50In the 1980s, we only had about four or five minutes heads up when there was a tornado
05:55warning before a tornado would actually be occurring.
05:58Today, that warning time is up to, on average, 13 minutes, and there's some instances even
06:03where we are being able to give tornado warnings almost a half an hour before a tornado.
06:08The technology that's making that happen is drastically improved radar data.
06:13So this is a radar image of what a supercell thunderstorm looks like.
06:16Not only are we improving how frequently we're scanning the sky, but we're also getting more
06:20detailed information back on that storm.
06:22We've gone from them looking in the atmosphere every eight to ten minutes down to every four
06:26to six minutes, and in some instances, even more frequently than that.
06:30And it's with that increased radar technology that allows us to get a better picture of
06:34that storm.
06:36So, have you been able to recognize patterns or relations between the radars and frequencies
06:40and the weather?
06:41You know, see a certain radar-lidar pattern, then you know to expect higher low pressure,
06:45tornadoes, etc.
06:46What's interesting about looking at lidar and radar and stuff like that is they are
06:50tools to help us understand what's going on in the atmosphere right now.
06:53This image here shows radar reflectivity.
06:55Weather radar is sending out radar beams, and they're bouncing off of the little raindrops
07:00and water drops and coming back, and what it tells us is in decibels what is happening.
07:03Basically, it's showing the intensity of the storm.
07:06These radars are located across the country.
07:08The radar is housed inside of a domed tower.
07:11You see them a lot of times at airports or just outside of major populations.
07:15This image here on the other side shows us a velocity image, and this tells us whether
07:19things are moving to or away from the storm.
07:22And this red-green difference we see right here is called a couplet.
07:25It's telling us all of this is moving away from the radar, except for this one little
07:29piece that's moving towards.
07:30What that's indicative of, then, is rotation and could mean that there's a tornado there.
07:34This comma here on the right is the hook echo.
07:37This is the mesocyclone.
07:38What you see above this hook is where the rain is and where the downdraft is.
07:42TheNewsbox1 asks, what is the difference between a violent tornado and a regular tornado?
07:47Does a violent tornado mug you after blowing everything over?
07:51Not quite.
07:52So there's different scales of tornadoes.
07:53Weak tornadoes are those EF0 to EF1 tornadoes.
07:56They typically don't last very long.
07:58The wind speeds are relatively low, sometimes less than or around 100 miles an hour, which
08:02for a tornado is actually pretty small.
08:04EF2s and EF3s are strong tornadoes.
08:07And then our violent tornadoes do account for 70% of all tornado fatalities.
08:12In an EF4 or an EF5 tornado, wind speeds exceed 200, 300 miles an hour.
08:17The May 3, 1999 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, had a mobile radar unit measure wind speeds
08:22at over 300 miles per hour.
08:25Matt Schaffernaker asks, what are El Niño and La Niña and how do they change the weather?
08:30What these are are sea surface temperatures of the eastern Pacific, somewhere between
08:36Central America and South America, very close to the equator.
08:40We monitor the sea surface temperatures there because they're either in an El Niño phase,
08:44which means they're a couple degrees warmer than they should be, or we are in a La Niña
08:48phase and they're a couple degrees below where they should be.
08:51Now these El Niños and La Niñas have very large effects on our weather.
08:55So for example, during an El Niño year, we can see certain parts of the country be wetter
09:00than normal.
09:01Other parts of the country will be warmer or drier than normal.
09:04The biggest driver that we see with La Niña and El Niño is how they affect what happens
09:08in the Atlantic Ocean and how they impact the forecasts for our hurricane seasons.
09:13AtTruthScant is asking, why is AccuWeather predicting a supercharged hurricane season
09:18in 2024?
09:19Do they know something that we don't?
09:21Yeah, actually they do.
09:23So with this upcoming hurricane season, the Hurricane Center, Colorado State University,
09:29Atmospheric G2, all of these locations are forecasting an above average hurricane season.
09:34First of all, the waters in the oceans right now in the Atlantic and the Caribbean are
09:38darn near record highs.
09:40Warm water is the fuel for hurricanes.
09:42It's what makes them strong and it allows them to last for a really long period of time.
09:46The second reason is we spent last summer in 2023 in an El Niño year.
09:51El Niño years are known for reducing hurricane activity in the Atlantic.
09:55The bad news is that we are transitioning from an El Niño year to a La Niña year.
09:59It means those sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific are going to be colder
10:03than average.
10:04When that happens, it actually decreases the amount of wind shear we see in the Atlantic
10:08Ocean and is also something that leads to an increased hurricane season.
10:12So hurricane season begins June 1st and goes all the way through November 30th.
10:16And within that time frame, in a typical year, we see about 14 name storms.
10:21About three of those become major hurricane, which is Category 3, 4, or 5.
10:25For 2024, the experts are forecasting that we're going to see more like 23 name storms.
10:30So the numbers of number of name storms we're forecast to see this year, as well as the
10:34severity of them, is higher than what we've ever forecast before.
10:38Kat Starbecks asks, are storm chasers adrenaline junkies or are they doing real science out
10:43there with all those crazy gadgets and gizmos and their storm chasing cars?
10:47All of us are a little bit of adrenaline junkies at heart.
10:49Can't deny it.
10:50It's something that we do absolutely love.
10:52The toolkit for a storm chaser can vary far and wide.
10:55We definitely all have cameras.
10:56We're looking for weather data through redundant sources.
10:59So we're getting warnings on our phones and alerts are popping up.
11:02We're getting texts.
11:03We can pull up radar data on computers.
11:06But many of us also have weather radios with us because if you get into an area where there's
11:10no internet, there's no cell phone reception, they will announce when warnings are issued
11:14and the locations that those warnings are for.
11:17Another thing that a lot of storm chasers will have with them is different types of
11:20anemometers, a fancy word for something that measures the wind speed.
11:24You're going to see anemometers like this one that are both measure the wind speed with
11:28the propeller and the direction of wind.
11:30One of the things that people are most interested in doing is collecting weather data from inside
11:34the tornado.
11:35Sometimes you see people shooting rockets into storms, flying drones very closely nearby
11:39to storms.
11:40There's some research teams where their goal is to get out in front of the tornado and
11:44put these weather instrumentation dishes that are really, really heavy out on the ground
11:48or in fields with the purpose of having a tornado come over them, suck it up, kind of
11:52like you saw in the movie Twister.
11:54That's actually based on a real scientific experiment that happened about 30, 40 years
11:58ago.
11:59The actual vessel, instead of being named Dorothy, was actually named Toto.
12:02App Melomalebo says, weather forecasts always mention it's going to be partly sunny or partly
12:08cloudy.
12:09What's the difference?
12:10I feel your pain there.
12:11But to help you understand this better, what we're going to do is we're going to imagine
12:13the sky above us is like an upside down bowl, like a big dome.
12:17We are going to divide it into eight sections.
12:19This is how us meteorologists look at the sky.
12:22If there's no clouds present and all sections are clear, we're going to go ahead and call
12:26that clear.
12:27If, however, we take one of these sections and we fill it with clouds, now this one section,
12:32is going to tell us that this is mostly clear, because now we have one-eighth of the sky
12:38that has clouds in it.
12:39If we have two-eighths covered, this is now mostly sunny.
12:43Here's the handy-dandy cheat sheet with all of its fractions.
12:46Partly cloudy is three-eighths of the sky obscured by clouds.
12:50Partly sunny is four-eighths.
12:51But if you have all eights of the sky covered in clouds, it's just a good old-fashioned
12:55cloudy day.
12:56At Kid Chris asks, in the movie Twister, the EF5 is so strong that it destroyed everything.
13:02Yet, the two main characters used leather belts tied to a pipe to prevent them from
13:06blowing away.
13:07I'm starting to think that shit was fake.
13:09Yeah, absolutely.
13:10It was.
13:11So this was supposed to be an EF5 tornado, the strongest of all tornadoes.
13:14They wouldn't have been able to hang on with just leather belts.
13:17There would be an incredible amount of debris flying around in there.
13:20We're talking about entire roofs of houses.
13:22And they would, unfortunately, have been hit by a lot of that debris.
13:25So in that movie, which is one of my absolute favorites, don't get me wrong, you see things
13:30like cows fly by.
13:31Tornadoes are able to pick up cows.
13:33They are able to pick up tanker trucks.
13:35They're just incredibly, incredibly powerful forces of nature.
13:39So in some ways, the movie is accurate in what it shows you and what the tornado is
13:43capable of moving or picking up or the damage that it causes.
13:46I Like Corn wants to know, how accurate is the science in the new Twister's movie?
13:51Can we actually disrupt tornadoes in real life?
13:54And WTF, twin tornadoes can combine into one?
13:57Like what?
13:58The odds of two tornadoes being able to combine into one are pretty slim.
14:02We got twins!
14:03Twins!
14:04They're combining.
14:06What's more likely to happen is that their different rotations would disrupt each other.
14:09They are not going to form some super tornado.
14:12Now we do see out in the field storm chasing, two tornadoes happen at once from time to
14:17time.
14:18It's super rare.
14:19But you can have a main tornado and outside of that have satellite tornadoes that form
14:22that are much smaller and much weaker tornadoes.
14:25As for your second question, you think you can disrupt a tornado.
14:28Can we actually disrupt tornadoes in real life?
14:31Not really.
14:32The technology is not there yet, nor the knowledge to be able to control the weather in any way.
14:36The absolute closest we can get is through some very basic cloud seeding, putting some
14:41chemicals into the atmosphere and they're naturally occurring chemicals and allows condensation
14:45to happen and allows storms to precipitate out or to rain.
14:49That can increase precipitation that a storm is going to put out by 10 to 15%.
14:53So the effects of cloud seeding are super negligible and that's really the only thing
14:57we can do these days to kind of control the weather.
15:00At This Is My Handle says, what causes heatwaves?
15:03I can't figure it out.
15:05Heatwaves are when you have very hot air persistent over a location for a very long period of
15:10time.
15:11Sometimes you can have heatwaves that form, say, along the Gulf where you've got strong
15:14southeasterly winds or flow that keep other storms away.
15:18You have high pressure there and the sun just beats down on you and allows that humidity
15:22to pour in and the temperatures to climb.
15:24And heatwaves can be particularly deadly, not so much because of the actual ambient
15:28temperature of the air, but due to the heat index.
15:31So that's when you combine the temperature of the air plus the moisture of the air, the
15:34humidity.
15:35If it's extra humid, the sweat on your body, which is your natural air conditioning system,
15:40doesn't evaporate and doesn't allow you to cool.
15:42So it may be 95 degrees out, but with really high humidity, it could feel more like 105.
15:49Actually, KD asks,
15:57Actually, when you're smelling rain, oddly enough, what you're smelling is some of the
16:00different pollutants in the atmosphere.
16:02So when you have this warm rain fall down, particularly on asphalt, you can actually
16:06have a chemical reaction that increases some chemicals in the atmosphere temporarily, which
16:10are the ones that you can smell, and that's why you can smell rain.
16:13Sometimes people can feel it in their bones or in their muscles.
16:16Our atmosphere is really heavy, and it's pushing on us constantly, with about 15 pounds
16:20per square inch on your body every single day, but that can vary.
16:24When we have high pressure, that may be more like 16 pounds per square inch, and with low
16:28pressure, it's more like 14.
16:30That air acts like a natural compression instrument for us, and when we have lower pressure, less
16:36air is pushing on you, you have less pressure on your joints and your muscles, and this
16:40is why, during low pressure, some people feel achiness or soreness in their muscles, especially
16:45from old injuries, and why some people also get headaches.
16:48Hunter T wants to know, how much energy could we generate from a hurricane?
16:52Now it would be really hard to capture energy from a hurricane, but hurricanes are incredibly
16:57powerful.
16:58People estimate that a hurricane is able to release as much energy in a day as the entire
17:02world consumes in a day.
17:04Some people estimate the average life cycle of a hurricane can generate as much electricity
17:09as 10,000 nuclear bombs.
17:11So Baby Gorgeous asks, question for meteorologist friends, what happens when two hurricanes
17:16hit each other?
17:17Do they break up or combine?
17:19If two hurricanes were in fact to hit each other and collide, they would actually break
17:23down the systems in each storm.
17:25Hurricanes are a little bit like an engine, and they run on a very specific fuel, which
17:29is that warm ocean water, they have set circulations in them, and this is what allows a hurricane
17:33to last for a really long period of time.
17:36If they were to hit, it would be very similar to two cars on the highway colliding.
17:40It's not like it would form some supercar, you would just have two really wrecked cars.
17:44Bryce Jones asks, can lightning strike the same place twice, and can tornadoes cross
17:49rivers and mountains?
17:50Yes and yes.
17:52Lightning can absolutely strike the same place twice, it can strike the same place twice
17:55in the same storm, now it doesn't necessarily have to, but there are some places around
18:00the world that actually receive multiple lightning strikes within specific storms, typically
18:05they're at higher elevations.
18:06The tallest buildings in New York City can be hit multiple times in a single storm.
18:11And your second question, can tornadoes cross rivers and mountains?
18:14Yes, absolutely.
18:16Now with mountains you could potentially disrupt some of the airflow that's involved with a
18:20tornado and some of the supporting structure of the thunderstorm itself, but I have absolutely
18:24seen tornadoes occur in mountainous locations, and tornadoes do not have a fear of water,
18:29they will absolutely cross it without any problem.
18:31Anyone who tells you a tornado will not cross a body of water, a river, or anything like
18:35that, it's a complete myth.
18:37At Faded Fairy asks, why does thunder sound like the world is ending?
18:41Thunder is actually just hot expanding air, when that lightning strike occurs it heats
18:45up the air around it so fast it actually breaks the sound barrier and what you're hearing
18:50is basically like a sonic boom, and that rumbles through the atmosphere.
18:54After you see the lightning, count five seconds, and after five seconds if you hear the thunder,
18:59that lightning strike was one mile away.
19:01After ten seconds, that lightning strike would have been two miles away.
19:04One of the most important lightning safety tips out there is the 30-30 rule.
19:07A lot of lightning comes out the backside of thunderstorms.
19:11After you see the last lightning strike, wait 30 more minutes before you go outside.
19:17At Thichuia asks, how much energy does a lightning strike have?
19:21Lightning strikes can have various amounts of energy in them, but I can tell you the
19:24lightning strike itself is five times hotter than the surface of the sun.
19:29Lightning is just a release of static electricity.
19:32When you were a kid and you used to rub your bare feet on the carpet and then touch your
19:35sibling and zap them, lightning is very similar.
19:38Lots of ice particles are rubbing together, creating static electricity.
19:42You'll see this strike that goes from the sky down to the ground.
19:46It's the electricity trying to balance itself out again.
19:48Areas of low concentration of electrons trying to balance out with areas of high concentrations
19:53of electrons.
19:54If you're ever standing outside during a storm, or maybe there's rain nearby, or maybe even
19:58like a town over, and you start to feel all the hair on the back of your neck stand up,
20:02that's a bad sign that you may be hit by lightning.
20:05If you're an open body of water, like the ocean or in a pool, and a thunderstorm moves
20:09in, please get out of that water and go inside, because water is a big conductor of electricity.
20:15And so if lightning hits that pond that you're in, or that pool, or that body of water, it
20:19could electrocute you as well.
20:20So these are all the questions for today.
20:23Make sure that when you're out there, you're weather aware and not scared.
20:26Thanks for watching Severe Weather Support.