Tornado????????

[Michael Morgan]

We had a big storm about two weeks ago, Lots of hail, heavy rain, and wind. Besides the hail and the strange colors in the sky I didn't think much of it till this evening. I went for a ride on the four wheeler and discovered at least a 100 trees damaged or totally blown over in my woods. Only about 75 feet wide but the damage stretches about 700 yards on and off. the trees on the tops of the hills are knocked over stump and all and the ones in the bottom of the valleys just have the tops gone. Have a small stand of Norway Spruce about 100' tall, now about 8 of them are only 70' Tall Alot of soft maples got hit and some real nice cherrys. The good news is I will be able to use the cherry for saw logs. Some pretty nice ones. Should I contact the weather service or something or don't you think they would waste their time to look at it?

[Pat Germain]

Sure sounds like a tornado, Michael. We had a tornado recently which damaged trees exactly as you describe. Likely there aren't any doppler radar systems around which would have shown a tornado in your area.

I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in it. You might try emailing your local TV weather guy. He might be interested. If not, he would know whom to contact, if anyone, about the incident.

[Justin James]

Take a careful look at those cherry logs before sawing. I work at a sawmill, and from what I've seen of tornado-damaged trees, they often have a great deal of fracturing from the effect of the winds. Good luck!

[Jim Becker]

There are a number of things that could have caused this effect including a tornado, straight line winds, etc. The weather service may be able to tell you what transpired.

[Michael Morgan]

Straight line winds? Never heard that before but it makes sense. All the trees damaged are knocked over or broke off in the same direction.

[John Schreiber]

A meteorologist could tell based on the direction which things are knocked down whether it was a straight line wind or a tornado. You might call your local NOAA office and they might send somebody over. But then again, the trees are down. Doesn't make much difference whether the wind went round and round or just a big spectacular whoosh.

Now that I started thinking about it, I found a web page about how to evaluate the difference. It's not completely straight forward.

[Bill Lantry]

One of the strangest things I ever saw was when a tornado hit our house in Nashville. The neighborhood was full of trees... mostly 80' hackberries. Well, that tornado came sliding in, but didn't quite touch down because of the wind resistance the trees provided. But it sucked them right up, roots and all, and dropped them in one piece where they'd stood. Imagine a bunch of huge trees, lying on their sides, roots and all, completely intact. The neighborhood just to the east of us got creamed... it was newer, and didn't have many trees...

Anyway, if you see many trees like that on your land, you can be sure there was a tornado... straight line winds can't do that...

Thanks,

Bill

[Dennis Peacock]

Straight line winds? Never heard that before but it makes sense. All the trees damaged are knocked over or broke off in the same direction.

Yup....straight line winds can do some pretty serious damage. Used to, many people just wrote it off as a tornado. Times and technology have advanced and we've all learned about "straight line winds".

Also, Justin does bring up a good point about the damaged trees. Straight line winds and tornados can do some really weird things to trees and leave some unexpected things to the internal trunk. I have lived through a LOT of twisters in my life and have seen the awesome results.

[Joe Chritz]

While I don't live in tornado alley I have inspected a fair number of homes and properties damaged by tornadoes as well as high winds.

Almost all tornado damage had some evidence of rotational wind. I have seen an oak tree bigger around than my arms yanked out of the ground and spun in a circle. There was a trail of branches stuck in the yard. Same house had the garage walls popped off the foundation and an old rotting corn stalk stuck through the aluminum siding corner.

A check with the weather services should give you an answer. No rotation on doppler then there was no tornado. They show up really nice on radar, even before a funnel forms. Thats why there are warnings with no funnel clouds.

Joe

[Lee Schierer]

Be cautious when cutting tornado twisted trees. They often have considerable internal stress which can be relieved when you cut the wrong limb and the tree unwinds.

[Michael Morgan]

Lee, Although I have never heard of straight line winds until today, I think it was something like that. We had a big Tornado in 1985 I mean huge the damage isn't like that at all nothing twisted off just all laying in the same direction tops and entire trees. The trees that I will saw are fine, I just have to be very carefull when cutting off the stump. They can stand right back up very quickly.

[Ryan Myers]

Not that I am an expert, but I live in tornado alley. So I have see some pretty extensive damage done by these storms. I have also seen straight line wind damage. In fact I was in central Vermont in early May where tornadoes are uncommon too. They had trees in various paths completely ripped out and damaged very badly. It was determined that it was straight line wind damage caused from a strom in April. Tornadoes usually mangle the trees and/or move them, not just knock them over.

[Kyle Kraft]

We had an incident in Kalamazoo County a few years back that caused a lot of damage along a pretty long path. The NWS asserted that the damage was caused by straight line winds, as the trees etc were all laying in the same direction. The NWS said to be considered a tornado, the debris would have to show some evidence of a swirled pattern.

[Craig D Peltier]

Was the ground moist? Up here in the Seattle area last Dec we had a wind storm that caused 600 mil in damage. There trees topped and also laid over like dominoes. There were telephone poles chopped off at three feet from top. Winds were 70 and under but ground was wet.I lost 3 trees on a little 1/3 acre and a fence.

[Justin McCurdy]

I was witness to the damage from straight line winds in Greensburg, PA during the first week of buck season last year, and it was incredible. The whole thing lasted for 5 minutes and was accompanied by rain that was so heavy that it actually caused a white-out. From my father's deck you can see for about 15 miles when it is clear, including most of the neighbor's yards. When the white out cleared, we could see all the limbs ripped off of a maple, 1/2 fence that had been standing for at least 20 years toppled, a shed missing all of its shingles, my dad was out the peak shingles on his roof, it was just surreal. I am glad we decided not to go hunting that day.

We took a drive about an hour after the incident and I was speechless. Within about 5 miles I saw more destruction than I had ever seen from anything before. There was one house in particular that had an 80-100' pine in the front yard that was tipped over onto his house, roots and all. The scary thing was that the roots had spread all the way across his front yard, so the tipping of the tree also removed his front yard. Downed power lines and trees were all over the place. One guy had three large evergreens take out his entire polebarn, just crumbled the thing to the ground.

I only saw 1 tornado in Western , PA. From the window of a 7-11 for that matter. Straight line winds are just more common for some reason. Probably all of the hills and mountains.