Weather -- or not?

By Mark W. Danielson

Lately, the news has been filled with tragic weather-related stories, and more will certainly follow.  Unfortunately, the United States is subjected to some of nature’s wickedest storms, year ’round.  The good news is drought, tornadoes, hail, flooding, unseasonal temperatures and hurricanes can inspire great story scenes.  To help get it "write", I’ll provide some weather facts that can add tension and realism to any story.

With winter now an afterthought, it seemed a good place to start.  Besides the obvious problems associated with snow and ice, a “Blue Northern” cold front can easily drop the temperature thirty degrees in two or three hours.  Could your character survive if he or she is caught in the open when one of these Arctic blasts blows through?  Add the chill factor from near hurricane-force winds while being cold-soaked from rain or snow and it seems unlikely unless they can find shelter and heat.  Could wrapping them in a freshly killed deer carcass be enough?  Open your mind and put yourself in their shoes to make it real.  If you want to make weather scene more severe, add thunder snow.  Yes, it does happen.  I’ve seen it first-hand. 

 

While on the topic of thunderstorms, the most intense ones will normally form along the southern-most portion of a squall line.  Squall lines are well-defined fronts like in the photo above that can divide the United States with cloud tops exceeding fifty thousand feet.  These fast-moving fronts produce tornadoes and large hail, even at night.  F-5 tornadoes spinning their two hundred mile-per-hour winds can rip up asphalt, level homes and toss semi trailers like toys.  Add grapefruit-sized hail to this and you have absolute terror.  The tornado that tore a mile-wide swath through Moore, Oklahoma killed twenty-one, yet in spite of its destruction, pets managed to emerge unscathed from the rubble.  My heart goes out to all who are affected by such storms, and yet the resulting oddities such as tables still set when the walls are gone can make any novel pop.  Before you write about tornadoes, I recommend you listen to a recording of one passing overhead.  You will never forget this fearful sound.

Unlike earthquakes, thunderstorms give plenty of warning.  Besides news broadcasts and warning sirens, the sky provides many clues about a storm’s intensity.  Super-cells produce Cumulonimbus Mammatus clouds shown in the above photo.  If you see these clouds, be prepared for large hail or tornadoes as these clouds are the result of a very unstable storm.  A green sky means hail is on the way.  A sky that turns day into night means the air is saturated and severe downpours are likely.  Thunder is the result from energy discharges we call lightning.  Hearing thunder at the same time you see the flash means the storm is directly overhead.  Counting the seconds from the flash to the boom gives the storm’s approximate distance away.  One second per mile is a good rule of thumb.   

Dissipating thunderstorms can produce damaging concentric winds.  To illustrate this, try squeezing a full water bag an inch above a flat surface with maximum force.  Filming this will let you see the water shooting out in every direction.  Isolated thunderstorms can lose their shape quickly once their have dumped their rain, just like the water-bag model.  However, squall line storms can continue to grow even while delivering a killer deluge.

Having dealt with weather throughout two flying careers, I could write volumes on weather and never do it justice.  As a writer, I am sharing this information because when it comes to antagonists, nothing beats Mother Nature.  When writing your scenes, be sure to include her or be prepared to face her wrath.     

Research That Blew Me Away!

by Jean Henry Mead

I was working on my latest book project when a tornado abruptly blew onto the page, forcing me to do some storm research.

Tornadoes are infrequent here on the high plains but whenever they’ve happened, the after affects have usually been deadly. One of the most notable occurrences was when several residents of Wright, Wyoming, living in a mobile home park, were killed by a tornado. Last year a woman pilot was killed while attending a baseball game near Casper. But the most widely reported tornado was the one that blew the spout from Teapot Rock, which has symbolized the infamous Teapot Dome bribery Scandal of the Warren Harding Administration in 1921.

From my research, I learned that the U.S. has more tornadoes than any other nation and that the only country that hasn’t recorded them is Antarctica. That doesn’t mean they haven’t happened but the Penguins haven’t reported them.

I happened upon a report from Germany, which stated that America has twenty times more funnel clouds than Germany, Austria and Switzerland combined. The statistics were gathered from 1587 through 1999, although, admittedly, some had gone unreported during the early years.

Most tornadoes happen east of the Rocky Mountains during spring and summer. In an average year, according to the Department of Commerce, some 800 are reported nationwide, which cause an average 80 deaths and over 1,500 injuries. The DC calls them the most destructive storms on the planet with wind speeds in access of 250 mph.The damage paths can exceed a mile wide and up to 50 miles long. To illustrate a tornado's power, a motel sign in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, was once carried 30 miles and deposited in Arkansas.

But what causes tornadoes? Thunderstorms which develop in warm, moist air collide with eastward-moving cold fronts. Large hail, strong winds and tornadoes are usually the byproduct. However, tornadoes that develop in winter and early spring are often caused by strong, frontal systems that form in the Midwest and move eastward. Sometimes, a large outbreak of tornadoes occur during the cooler months and several states may be affected.

During the spring in the central plains, thunderstorms frequently develop along a "dryline," which separates very warm, moist air to the east from hot, dry air to the west. Tornado-producing thunderstorms may form as the dryline moves east during the afternoon hours.

Along the front range of the Rocky Mountains, in the Texas panhandle, and in the southern high plains, thunderstorms frequently form as air near the ground flows upslope toward higher terrain. If other favorable conditions exist, the thunderstorms can produce tornadoes.

Before I put my readers to sleep, I’ll abandon further research to return to my struggling novel characters as they crawl beneath a wagon to escape the storm. Little do they know that they may blown to Kansas. But that's another story . . .