[ewing]

Prayers up for the missing, hopefully they are safe in a concrete basement shelter

[homeschool mama]

Oh my........prayers heavenward <><

[DCPatriot]

How in creation, can 150 people be "missing".

Because they didn't answer their Nextel? IMO, misleading and sensationalist.

[Conservative4Ever]

Ohio was slapped around too with this storm front. Have kids outside of Columbus...they are all OK. FNC is showing damage in Van Wert, OH. Very bad. TN was hit hard too I know. Prayers for the families who lost loved ones, and all our help to those who have to rebuild. Whatever you think of the Red Cross, this is the area where they shine.

Red

[Salvation]

Prayers sent. There must not have been a tornado warning here.

[SamAdams76]

Very strange weather out there. After a month of cold weather, it shot up into the 60s in New England. The temperature was still 60 degrees at six o'clock last night and it began to rise all night. Leaving the house this monrning, it was 69 degrees, close to a record high at 7AM!

Looks like some thunderstorms are headed our way this afternoon, though certainly not as bad as what they got down South.

[GreenLanternCorps]

Driving to work this morning, I heard on the news that Seneca County in NW Ohio got hit. I immeadiately called one of my closest friends up there, to make sure he and his family were all right. He and they are, and he saw the funnel clouds drop down before they hit the South end of Tiffin.

[Pushi]

Osama must be in charge of the weather now. This is terrible. I feel for these people. But, that's why I live in the Middle Rio Grande Valley in NM. No tornados, hurricanes, forest fires, floods (at my level), disabling blizzards, etc. Could have an earthquake, I guess--but not likely to do much damage.

[texpat72]

I may be mistaken, but I think a CNN reporter just snickered while interviewing 3 men who were in the Pentecostal Church in Mossy Grove during the tornado. The older gentleman kept repeating "We were praising the LORD and praying, and he saved us". Did anyone else hear this?

[Vol2727]

My friend's son and brother live in Mossy Grove. She has been trying to get a hold of them since last night. They are two of the missing. We hope it's just a matter of the phones being down or something else.

My husband's friend's mom lives in that area as well. She was not at home at the time of the storm and they won't let her back in so she has no idea if her home is still there.

Prayers for everyone affected by this catastrophe.

This is indeed a big deal here in Tennessee. This area is just forty miles west of Knoxville where I live.

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

In Ohio we went through this very storm last night and were spared where I live.

My thoughts and prayers to all. It is horrific while devasting!

[jbstrick]

Here is what an F5 will do

May 3 1999, Oklahoma City

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

I hope there's 150 missing because they're in a place where they can't answer the phone. Prayers for everybody there!

[justme346]

I have lived in East TN for over 20 years and have never seen such spooky weather in my life. We were not in the path of a tornado, but the straight line winds were unbelievable. I love storms, so I went outside around 11:30pm to watch them come in. It wasn't long before I was making it back to the house because I could barely stand due to the wind. I thought our house was going to blow away, and a tornado touched down 20 miles from us! I cannot image what those people in the path of the tornados had to deal with.

One of our kids plastic toys was left outside, and the neighbor found it this morning buried about 2 inches in the side of their house.

I have been praying for those 150, but sadly believe there is no way they could live through that. Just my two cents.

[WFTR]

If my first post to DCPatriot was too strong, I apologize. I'm certainly glad that the death toll will be nowhere near 150. However, I still think that it would have been better for him to have started a vanity in the chat area to talk about his TV show than to distract those of us who had an interest in the news on this thread.

The real point of this post is to mention a few facts about tornado warnings in this area. I lived in Cookeville, Tennessee for three years after having lived in Oklahoma City for six years. To be honest, I thought tornadoes were scarier in Cookeville than they were in Oklahoma. I've taken the official tornado spotter class from NOAA twice, and there is some interesting information that I don't think most people know.

The problem with tornadoes in this part of the country is that they are much harder to track. Typically, a tornado in the west grows out of a low precipitation supercell. These "dry" storms are fairly easy to see, so spotters can triangulate from their favorite spotting positions and give an accurate picture of the storm's path and speed. In the east, there are more tornadoes that come from a high precipitation supercell. In these storms, the funnel is hidden in the thick clouds and rain. I was living in Louisville in '96 and saw the big one that passed just south of town. I saw a huge, black cloud about ten miles away, but I never saw the tornado in the cloud. Because the tornado is hidden, spotters cannot get as accurate a position or be as certain that a tornado is on the ground.

Another problem is that hills mask the tornado from Doppler radar. I once complained to someone from the weather service about the fact that tornado warnings around Cookeville were never as precise as those in Oklahoma City. He told me that the Doppler radar used to track these storms is usually based in Nashville. As the radar signal goes east and hits the beginning of the Cumberland Plateau, it is reflected and cannot "see" anything below a straight line passing from the tower to the highest points on the plateau. Therefore, the Doppler radar is blind to many tornadoes in that area when they are close to the ground.

The result of these factors is that it is much harder to predict a tornado on the Cumberland Plateau than it is on the plains of Oklahoma. When I lived in Oklahoma City, it seemed that the emergency weather broadcasters could almost track tornadoes by street address. If the tornado wasn't on my street, I felt pretty good. In Cookeville, the sirens would sound, but no one seemed able to give the location of the tornado within even a couple of miles. I suspect that the towns hit in Tennessee weren't so much without warning as they were without a specific enough warning to know what action to take.

I once read a book on tornadoes, and the book said that someday an F4 or F5 will hit a major city directly. It will topple some big buildings, and the scale of destruction will be similar to what happened when the World Trade Centers fell.

Part of the solution for mountainous areas might be for more people to take storm spotter training. I don't know what assets they had available last night, but better spotting likely could have helped. Another part of the solution might be that some public or civic group in some of these areas could buy the used Doppler Radars that big city news stations discard when they upgrade their equipment. This equipment wouldn't be the best, but it would be better than having no warning at all.

WFTR
Bill

[Kev-Head]

I Pray that all will be found & be safe.