A possible tornado made a direct hit on St Louis Lambert Field last night, pushing a Southwest jet away from a gate (the immediate aftermath seen in the video above), shattering windows, crushing a roof, and causing enough damage to shut down the airport. More »
Here’s a close-up look into the Tornado Intercept Vehicle, a heavily-armoured, modified Ford F-450 that was used in the famous Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers. With its plates, small windows and top turret, it looks like a cross between a B-17 Flying Fortress, a Panzer tank and a Mad Max truck. The new version of the Interceptor, however, looks like it’s out of a Batman movie:
Two weeks ago today, a tornado ripped through Illinois. At points it was up to 400 metres wide, and it did enough damage, cracking giant powerlines like toothpicks and yanking old-growth trees right from the ground, that it completely closed the major highway I57 for a 56-kilometre expanse south of Chicago.
I was lucky enough to be travelling that day (on the way to the airport for WWDC) and pulled off the road just in time to intersect with the tornado at its worst. Inside a gas station with no basement and plenty of active fuel lines, it was the first time in a long time–maybe ever–that I genuinely feared for my life, that I thought things were over. Watch that video above. Then know that I was a lot closer.
But as I’ve played the scenes back in my head over the last several days, it’s not the storm that’s proven to be the most haunting. It’s the way the people reacted. Because in the gas station, I watched a group of 20 scared people not take shelter, but stand in front of a wall of glass to record the event–to make some YouTube clips.
Last Tuesday, Lori Mehmen looked out her front door in Orchard, Iowa and this is what she saw. She had a digital camera handy, and somehow managed to take this photo before crapping her pants and taking cover. This, my friends, is why always having a camera nearby is helpful. Oh, and no one was injured during this tornado, fortunately. [NY Times]
newVideoPlayer("indoortornado.flv", 475, 376);It’s far from destructive, but the indoor tornado set up at the Mercedes-Benz museum is cool nonetheless. Using the museum’s 144 air intake nozzles, they set up a smoke machine on the ground below, had air blowing in from the sides causing a swirling effect and let the nozzles suck up the smoke. The Guiness Book of World Records officially declared it the largest indoor tornado. I think want one of these in my house. [Pop Sci] More »
