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That's because tornados tend to follow distinct corridors over a number of decades.
An excellent example of this is immediately northwest of downtown Birmingham, which has seen four different F4s and F5s churn through that area over the past 50 years. We're talking the same basic neighborhoods. The same is true of some other Alabama cities in northern and northwest Alabama. Heck, Cordova was hit by two different tornados on the same day on April 27, 2011.
The first sentence is extremely misleading and scientifically false. If 4 or 5 tornadoes churned through a specific area, it is a coincidence and not because one corridor somehow attracts tornadoes. Today, Cordova would be at no greater risk than a neighboring town.
For people living in the mid-west, how often, have YOU PERSONALLY (not on the news, not told about, but personally seen with your own eyeballs) seen a tornado (or the results of a tornado within a 5 mile radius?)
Just trying to gauge how often a cyclone personally affects a person in their lifetime.
Note, I mistakenly set this as a multi-select poll, please vote once.
Only once. When I was living in the Evansville area, I drove across the Ohio River and past Ellis Park maybe 10 minutes before this happened.
What are the derechos? I've never heard of them before.
We get those every few years here in Chicago. Would get about one a year or so in Iowa as well. They're exhilarating to go through. We had one back in 2007 in Chicago that was amazing. Black as night, blew through with around 100mph winds for about 15 minutes.
They're basically huge bowed super-storms that sweep through from anywhere from 20 to dozens of miles long and sweep over the land. They tend to ebb and flow, and when they get their really strong moments there's a bulge that will stick out of the main line of storms with extreme intensity. Those are what you look out for, when it starts to bow out. The weather people here are always talking about the "bows echos".
I've never seen a tornado living in Indiana for 36 years. I have a friend of a friend who I've met a few times who's house was hit by a tornado a few years ago, leveled half of it and destroyed both their cars. I have been in some really bad storms, though, including one with a microburst that recorded winds of 93 mph, knocked down a ton of trees, ripped the roof of a hotel less than a mile from my house, knocked down a sign on a bank and kept power out for 3 days. A friend of mine further outside the city didn't have power for over a week. That's the one time in my life I really thought a tornado was hitting because I've never heard a house creak and moan like it did in that storm. A couple years ago I just missed driving through baseball size hail that struck a couple miles from my house during rush hour. A good friend's house was right in the middle of it. The windows on their cars were all shattered. Amazingly none of the windows on the house were damaged but the siding was beat to crap and the roof had to be completely replaced.
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