Tornado Tales

by Nora Cleland

Jay Antle, a member of the Kansas Humanities Council Speakers Bureau, recently showed videos of tornadoes and exploded several myths about tornadoes while sharing tales of his tornado chasing adventures with a group of Douglas County F.C.E. members.

"Tornadoes are actually rare in Kansas," he pointed out. "Despite what most people believe, one estimate suggests that each square mile of Kansas experiences a tornado just once every 3,000 years."

"And Kansas, as a state, records an average of 55 tornadoes annually," he continued. "These storms range in size from only a hundred or so feet wide while on the ground to as much as a mile wide."

He described the Greensburg tornado in 2007 as a unique weather event in the history of the world.

"It was a mile-wide wedge, which was wider than it was tall. It was not the usual funnel shape dipping down and then ascending into a wall cloud," he said. "The Greensburg supercell actually spawned other tornadoes which were also more than a mile wide. Meteorologists are still trying to figure out why the Greensburg tornado produced two additional tornadoes and was so freakishly strong."

The National Weather Service in Dodge City had issued a moderate risk warning for tornadoes earlier that day May 4, 2007. The tornado hit Greensburg about 10 p.m. following the weather service's warning that a violent tornado was on the ground in Kiowa County which includes Greensburg.

"The use of the term 'violent' by the Weather Office in describing the tornado and the phrase 'tornado is on the ground' should have been enough to alert the residents of Greensburg that this was an unusual event. But remember that at this hour of the day, it is dark and the only way that you can spot a tornado is by the lightning flashes."

He turned his attention to the myths about tornadoes.

Early settlers had little respect for Indians, but they were afraid of tornadoes, didn't understand them and they created their own stories and later attributed them to Indians' past knowledge of storms.

"According to the 'Indian' stories no tornadoes had ever struck in a certain area, such as in a valley or below a hill or close to a river. One of the myths was that rivers or bodies of water draw tornado strikes, " Antle said.

"About seven years ago while doing some research at the Kansas State Historical Society newspaper archives, I found an old Clay Center Dispatch newspaper with the headline, "The Indian Was Wrong." Seems that for years the old-timers had passed down the Indian myth that no tornado had ever struck in the location of Clay Center because of its topography. According to the news story, a tornado had recently hit Clay Center, nullifying the Indian myth."

He said the old tales about tornadoes persist. The Kiowa Indians, who inhabited Oklahoma and Kansas, hunted on horseback. Once when the tribe was short of horses, they created horse figures from clay and according to their medicine men, the horses were given life. Their story was that tornadoes were the horses' tails sweeping the ground as they galloped through the air. The story persisted in legend until the late l9th century. In other words, Indians were talking about tornadoes but they were not talking about topography.

"How much does topography count in the location of tornado occurrences,?" Antle asked the audience. "There is no scientific evidence that small-scale topography of the earth influences where tornadoes form and dip to earth. Most of those theories stem from Indians and early settlers who were struggling to explain the weather phenomena. People have a dire need to understand and know how these things work. The only things they have to rely on to make a judgment about tornadoes is what they can see and past weather occurrences.

He pointed out that the science of meteorology in the 19th century was primitive. In 1844, John Teis of Washington University in St. Louis devised an experiment to estimate the speed of tornadic winds.

"Knowing that tornadic winds often removed the feathers from chickens, Teis shot a chicken from a cannon. From that experiment he determined that the speed of wind in a tornado was about 500 miles an hour," Antle said. "Actually he wasn't too far off."

Tice did not do the experiment himself. The experiment was done by amateur scientists.

Even as recently as 1948, meteorology was limited. At Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma a tornado struck a small Army Air Force Base causing considerable damage to the planes.

"The commanding officer was angry that the planes were not in the hangers when the storm struck," Antle said. "He told his base meteorologists that they were to tell him the next time a tornado was imminent. They were to document all weather data for the day of the storm, so they could tell him when another storm was coming. Fortunately, they were able to predict another storm, although we know that it was only a coincidence. No two tornadoes are alike and they are unpredictable."

Antle debunked several myths about what to do in a tornado.

"Don't open your windows," he said. "Use that time instead to get to your basement and get under something substantial. It is most important that you cover your head. If you are on the road, don't get under an underpass or under a culvert. it doesn't work. Instead, lay flat in a low place, a ditch is good.

"As for the southwest corner of a structure being the best place to go, that's also wrong. Studies show that an interior room with some reinforcement, such as a bathroom with its pipes, is best. It is true that most tornadoes move from the southwest to the northeast."

He said that storm chasing is becoming very popular, but he fears that some chasers may be injured because some are ill prepared and poorly educated about the violent storms. However, he said that storm chasers with their video cameras provide useful information for meteorologists trying to understand more about tornadoes.

Why does this American history college professor chase tornadoes?"

"I just love being around huge storms," he explained. "They are awe-inspiring and besides, I get to visit places I ordinarily wouldn't visit and get to meet people that I would never have known. I love hearing the sound of the storm with all of its power."

Text Only