WELCOME TO MY PAGE ABOUT TORNADOES and THUNDERSTORMS

Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms have always fascinated me since I was a small child. I can't really decide what got me started to liking these weather phenomena. There was never an organized storm spotter network in or around my town, so I was just basically alone while in high school. It wasn't until I went to college at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas that I discovered a solid spotter network for the county, there. That peaked my interest, and I took the spotter training course offered by the National Weather Service out of Memphis, TN. Below left is the official SKYWARN logo. If you see this logo on a vehicle, they are a well trained, official spotter for the NWS(National Weather Service) and the local authorities. Below center is a picture taken near where I live here in Jonesboro, Arkansas. This particular tornado was considered "considerable", as an F2. To the far right is the official NWS logo. You can click on the logo to visit the NWS official website.
Why the need for a spotter with all of the current radar technologies? Well, the technology has greatly advanced over the years, but still nothing beats a trained pair of eyes out in the "field". The Meteorologists can often get the best preparation by combining the radars and data with the visual information provided by the spotters. The spotters can see some things a radar cannot, i.e. estimated windspeeds, size of hailstones, how heavy the rain is and the frequency/type of lightning. Just for viewing, below is a 1996 picture taken in Oklahoma of baseball size hailstones falling from a Severe Thunderstorm. Hail this size causes catastrophic damage to homes, autos, field crops, etc.
Dr. Theodore Fujita(1920-1998) has done more for knowledge of Tornadoes and Severe storms than anyone else in history. Before his arrival in the United States in the early 1950's, storms had been studied only as total, large systems. Dr. Fujita began studying thunderstorms as individual systems. He termed these individual systems as "mesosystems". Dr. Fujita created the idea of "Tornado Families", the idea that a thunderstorm could spawn more than one tornado, each with a different path. Before this, it had always been thought that damage was caused by a single tornado. He also was the first to discover the "multiple vortex" tornado...a large, outer funnel which had several, smaller vortices inside it. In the 70's, he again innovated a new idea. He developed a system that linked tornado damage with tornado windspeed. Before this, all tornadoes had been seen as the same. This system, known as the Fujita scale, is now the benchmark used my Meteorologists everywhere to classify a tornado. Below is the Fujita scale for viewing:
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