A quick-rolling line of severe thunderstorms rocked Texas Thursday evening. Strong winds knocked out skyscraper windows while flooding downtown Houston streets. City officials said the storms killed at least four people while leaving thousands of more in the dark as crews race to restore power. Nearly one million customers are reportedly left in the dark…
Do you know that Japanese weather patterns can affect the annual number of tornadoes in the United States? Although the island nation is thousands of miles from the heart of Tornado Alley, migrating sea surface temperatures off Japan’s eastern coast in the winter can fuel North America’s springtime weather. Weather and climate don’t happen in…
Depending on their velocity and targeted population concentrations, tornadoes can pack similar strength to a hurricane, albeit for shorter durations. Tornadoes can also strike further inland leaving no community insulated from sporadic storms. On average, more people are killed in tornadoes (71) than hurricanes (+40) annually. With such striking similarities, reasonable minds would believe that…
You may be thinking, “What does a factory in North Carolina know about tornadoes?” While conventional wisdom suggests that engineers a thousand miles away from Tornado Alley wouldn’t understand the complexities of Texas-sized twisters, this couldn’t be further from the truth! Last night, a tornado touched down within miles of our Wilkesboro factory, downing tree…
America has always been fascinated by the grim and macabre. “If it bleeds, it leads” has become a prevailing marketing tactic by newscasters. Americans can’t get enough of calamity and headlines portending destruction – as long as it’s far away from us. We are a nation of both thrill-seekers and masochists looking to live vicariously…
March is Madness in Ohio, but not because the college hoops season is reaching its climatic grand finale, although we’re sure there’s plenty to be ‘upset’ about following a mammoth tornado that destroyed several mobile homes, killing three people. According to the National Weather Service, the half-mile wide tornado pummeled the area surrounding Indian Lake with punitive…
Tornadoes can strike anywhere without warning. Although most tornadoes occur in the Midwest and Deep South, no area of the nation is without a tornadic precedent. Even Alaska experienced a rare tornado in spring 2005, ending the state’s century-long tornado hiatus. While Mother Nature doesn’t discriminate when it comes to when or where to strike,…
Hold onto your hats: the 2024 tornado season is ramping up. With the shifting weather patterns of El Nino adding warmer air to the already supercharged Gulf of Mexico, weather experts believe the Deep South and Florida could see a record number of tornadoes. The surge in tornadic activity in southern states is nothing new.…
We knew how it would end. Still, we hoped some starry-eyed newcomers would save us from the inevitable showdown of two aging politicians once again taking endless jabs at one another with the same vitriol as before. With the 2024 election still nine months away, the matchup no one wanted is already amping up the…
Humans have become adept at picking up the pieces. Even in the face of unspeakable tragedy, we overcome adversity to coalesce from the deepest of wounds. Whether its a byproduct of evolution in overcoming insurmountable odds, or a general propensity to help our befallen brethren, civilization knows how to recover from fraught calamity. Few tragedies…