Oklahoma City deadly tornados
 

I hope no one from our community was affected


Oklahoma Tornado: At Least 37 Dead, 'Horrific' Damage - ABC News

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...1999-05-03.jpg
Just insane, also found this huge picture where you can see the path through the whole town.

It's a terrible shame, I fell really sorry for them.

I'm watching this on the news right now. Can't believe the amount of destruction that wind can cause. :(

How many have died so far?...

I hear the death toll is up to 91 and 20 of them were children.

The confirmed death toll is 24, but they're still searching for survivors so that number is likely to go up.

90? jesus...

yeah, they changed it a few mins ago and it's being reported way lower

It is insane. When I volunteered for cleaning up after the Joplin Tornado part of my daily commute was driving through the area that was ruined. Tornadoes are frightening things, even if they are strangely beautiful from a distance.

Respect on volunteering to clean up!

I'd like to know WHY

Why what?

This was a tragic event. Inevitable, unfortunately.

Because nature was like "FUCK YOU, OKLAHOMA!" that's why.

I laughed for a solid minute at your post. Who the hell looks at a natural disaster and just says "WELL I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHY THAT HAPPENED. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT? SHEESH!"

Me.
Yeah and I laughed @ it too. . .
Seriously tho, why?
I want to understand tornadoes!

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activi...ornado_map.jpg

Hopefully this sums it up.

No, we all know it was cause God was punishing the gays there, believe me... I heard it from Fred Phelps :p...

Seriously though. Because Mother Nature is a cruel cruel mistress.

I'm glad to hear that the death toll has been revised downwards, but even so it's terrible that anyone died. Tornadoes are terrifying things; I would never want to have to face one. Hope everyone here is okay and that their loved ones are also okay.

Think the Republicans will try to find some way to blame this on Obama? :rolleyes:

May "God Forgive You" for your insolence.

The Brotherhood Doesn't! :laughing:

Was chatting to a friend of mine who lives Oklahoma City last night.
He said this girl he was friends with was stuck at work the whole day unable to leave because of the tornados. When she finally did get home she found her whole house had been flattened.

Actually,

President Obama signed Oklahoma disaster declaration due to deadly tornadoes. Republicans say he did it too slow and calls it the next Benghazi. "He should've acted sooner," said one prominent Republican, "Had he intervened and stopped the tornado, maybe 24 people wouldn't have tragically lost their lives."

I had to sig this. Great comment.

LOL, why? o.O

Not this one but I do not have to like him or. the. way. he. talks.

I can't help but feel like they're being picked on for some reason. A saying I live by is 'everything happens for a reason'.

OMG that is awful, I'm so sorry to hear about this.

RIP to those dead and I am sending love to the families affected.

I can't even imagine losing my entire home to a tornado.

At least your friend is safe and unhurt by the disaster itself ;), Thank God for that. It is a constant threat and worry with concern for a lot of citizens here in the States especially in the deep south and Mid Western States as well. Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and so on, with hurricanes to contend with as well every year. I guess it might seem like just a way of life for some. An everyday day thing. :(

Well, I'm not sure if you mean Obama, Republicans, or Oklahomans are being picked on, but I can state without any hesitation at all that there is no reason beyond that we happen to occupy a planet that is it's own living (if you will) entity, and part of that living planet means that when hot air meets cool air in a certain way, tornados develop, and nowhere in the world does this happen more frequently than the stretch along Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas. Northern Alabama and Mississippi. This is so prevalent in this area that it's known as Tornado Alley. In a similar fashion, when Mt St Helens erupted so violently almost exactly 33 years ago, there were some that pointed to this as God bing angry with us or mother earth or whatever they wanted to call it, either unaware or ignoring the fact that Volcanoes abound here in the northwest, that St Helens got there in the same way, as did Rainier and Hood and Shasta and Crater Lake in particular. That is why, because compared to the planet we live on we are tiny specks of matter.

It is pretty magnificent.




Depends on what you mean by a reason. This is nature, it is unpredictable. If you think the reason applies to this particular community then I have to disagree strongly, nature doesn't pick a group of people and say "I'm gonna tornado all over them today". Are you somehow trying to say that they might have deserved this?

With tornadoes, we know the conditions that can produce them, but we can't ever tell when or exactly how a tornado is going to hit a certain area. We do know that the "tornado belt" in the midwest is most likely to produce a tornado, and that it's based on pressure fronts, but there's still no exact science as to when or how significantly a tornado is going to touch ground.

The best we can do is identify conditions which have previously produced tornadoes in the past, and posting warnings from this. Supercells are a big indicator of possible tornado activity, but one never knows. A supercell isn't even necessary for a tornado, although, history indicates that it certainly helps.

I am certainly devastated for the Oklahoma victims of this violent storm, but I'd like to be able to chase and discern more precise patterns for the storms, to better predict where they're going to hit, and, ideally, when. I have observed two tornadoes in my life, one in NC (an F0) and one in rural KY (an EF1) but have been fascinated as long as I can imagine.

If there was something I could do to make it more predictable, less traumatic and sudden for people in affected communities, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Last summer, there was a severe tornado in West Liberty, KY, and my best friend has family there. They were all okay physically, but all of them lost property and peace of mind. I'd like to find a way to - not prevent property damage, because that is inevitable - but predict the storm, the path of the storm, and make it so people could go to safety or evacuate in a timely manner.

We personally had a durecho, and I seriously thought I was going to die. I was at my mom's, and she lives in a double-wide, with my, at the time, fourteen-year-old sister. She was crying and freaking out, and the trailer was shaking, but I stayed calm, directed her to the bathroom with no windows, and said, "I promise, we're fine in here. We just don't want glass to hit us if the windows shatter, but nothing is going to happen to us in here."

I got both of the dogs and all three of the cats in there as well, but I really thought we were going to die. The trailer was tipping, and I was convinced it was a tornado. I just knew I had to stay calm to reassure her, so that she wouldn't be in a panic. I'm an agnostic, but personally was praying to God, Abraham, Alllah, Cthulu, and any other deity that popped into my head.

Our power was knocked out, and the temperature dropped over thirty degrees in fifteen minutes. I was convinced we were dead at that point.

^^^ I honestly think part of the problem is overuse of the emergency system. Tornado warnings occur with such frequency that they lose meaning and import. Stopping everything in the middle of your day, turning off all the electric, and huddling in a small room in the basement for half an hour isn't fun. It's downright ****ty when it happens at night.

If we use Joplin as an example, they predicted that the storm system would produce Tornadoes a full twenty four hours in advanced. But, the people had been so inundated with meaningless warnings that a large swathe of the population just up and ignored all the warnings.

You know I'm not your biggest fan but that sir is truly amazing of you to do that and I now have so much more respect for you.

I concur!

Deserve it no (what is your problem, Po?) but God needed them for something IMHO
Phantasio admits there's no exact science yet. This is exactly what Im talking about.
On the other hand i like the idea Earth is an entity.

ON the subject of Mt St Helens, didnt that erupt in 2006?

I have no problem at all, I am just trying to understand your logic. I don't know if "God" needed them for anything, they were just killed by a freak act of nature. I believe everything has already been decided, or set, therefore this would always have happened, and every horrible and wonderful that will happen has already happened, the future is just as assured as the past is. Where god comes into this, I don't know, whatever that is.

Hmm. This is getting very metaphysical. Natural disasters are just that: natural. You can of course choose to believe that God (if he/she/they/it exists, and cares) has a plan, and so everything happens for a reason, but if you do, then you have to start questioning why earthquakes, cot deaths, AIDS and a whole host of other things happen. And if you go down that road, bring a map and a torch with plenty of batteries because it's a long, hard way back...

No, no I don't get into extremes when it comes to Jesus or the Bible.

A couple hrs before Mt St Helens erupted in May of 2006 I was lying in the dark, staring up at the ceiling and the walls got REALLY close. I began to panic and then a flash of an erupting volcano came to vision. I thought I was going crazy but then the next day it was on the news!

What happened in 2006 was a puff of steam, what happened on May 18th 1980 was closer to a nuclear detonation

Wow, this thread is starting to seem like some weird publication of The Weekly World News. God calling people home by killing them off with a tornado and prophecies in the night. Getting a little odd for my tastes.

I have a hard time swallowing either pill.

I do not think that "God" (I would like to tell me exactly what God is, and why he would need people to come back to him)

This was just a work of nature, there is no bigger spiritual play at work. It is just nature being nature, and doing what it does. No reason, other than the fact it is nature.

Myself and everyone except Vegn is saying the same thing

The tragedy in Oklahoma is really a testament to the idiocy of Obama. He wants to take measures to protect the environment when in reality, nature is what's trying to kill us! If Romney were president, there would have been a declared war on the environment within his first hundred days of his term rather than letting nature take the lives of so many Americans.