[BC] Very quiet...

[Mike McCarthy]

Present scientific theory no longer considers ground factors when
modeling/profiling thunderstorm winds.  The amount of air getting pulled
into a vortex of that size cools tremendously and eventually falls out on
the NW flanking side at 90 deg. angle to SW inflow with or without water.

What usually happens in twisters like those is the twister's wind field
ocludes and downstream new twisters develop...or try to.  It's likely a
2nd twister tried to form.  But as the storm approached/reached the coast
line, the cooler ocean water inflow from LI Sound replaced much warmer air
passing over NJ and NY states. Thus cutting off the storm's heat fuel.

The vaccuming of the lake would mimick a heavy precipitation tornado. In
the case of this storm, there was enough upward wind flow to hold a lake's
worth of water and contents for 15 miles.  While that's a LOT of mass to
hold in the air, consider the amount of rain/hail which falls out of any
given strom.  Not at all surprising.

In so far as lightning reflecting tornadic development, there is much
research in progress.  One observation made a while back is lightning
switches polarity in BIG twisters.  In most of the BIG one's the past 25
or so years since lightning detection became scientifically viable, the
lightning flips from "-" to "+" polarity about 20 minutes prior to the
twister developing. And when they do that, the current flow easily doubles
to something more than 200KAmps. BIG hits.

HOWEVER, the correlation stops there. There are many storms which flip
polarity and do not produce twisters of any kind. So...just because the
lightning flips doesn't mean the big one is coming.

That said, those who have heard it all agree.  If you start heading a
sizzling/twizzling sound behind the individual strikes down at 540-600Khz,
that immediate area is in one of extreme activity and twisters have been
known to develop at that time in close proximity to that area.

MM

> In the northeast, there is so much radiation from power line corona that
> one can't hear atmospheric noise anymore. Fortunately, we don't have too
> many tornadoes although there was one in New Braintree, Massachusetts, two
> years ago. It wiped out a tree!
>
> The "big one" was the '53 Worcester tornado. It is still the topic of
> conversation amongst weather watchers. After it destroyed many towns,
> starting at Petersham, through Barre, Rutland, on to Worcester where it
> wiped out Assumption College, and took out many other neighborhoods, it
> ventured out to Lake Quinsigamond which it sucked dry. The fish, frogs,
> etc., from that lake got deposited on lawns in the town of Northborough,
> about fifteen miles away!
>
> Near the lake was the White City amusement park. It had a wooden
> roller-coaster, second only to the famous one at Revere Beach. It became
> kindling and was never rebuilt. It took over two years for Lake
> Quinsigamond to refill.
>
> Some weather scientists think that if it had not been for that lake, which
> cooled the cumulonimbus cloud, forcing the tordado to dissipate, the
> tornado would have followed US Route 9 out to Boston and done billions in
> damage and killed many thousands. This is because the tornado was still
> building in intensity when it hit the water!
>
> That is in the days when a billion dollars was still a lot of money.
>
> Cheers,
> Richard B. Johnson