Tornados out Bush??
Submitted: Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 02:19
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Member - Davoe (Widgiemooltha)
Driving back from Eperance I came accross an area about 5km in length south of Norsman that had been fine when I went down (I think) but had been devastated with trees down some up rooted and others snapped in half - many trees not every one but it looked like a bleep guy in a dozer had gone beserk.
I have seen it once before going to work a couple of Ks Out of kalgoorlie towards
Coolgardie with a trail of devastation a few hundred meters wide that tapered off but affected mayby a km. Are Tornados more common than I realize or what??
Certainly wouldnt have liked to have been camping there with large salmon gums and Gimlets laid waste
Reply By: Snowy 3.0iTD - Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 08:23
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 08:23
Davoe
I am not sure at what point a large whirly/dust devil (whatever you want to call them) becomes a small tornado, but I have on a couple of occasions seen what I believe to be small tornados. The first was when I was living in the
Pilbara, driving along the main road through Karijinni National park, driving through a large thunder storm, and saw what I thought was a large dust devil, only thing was it went right up to the base of the clouds and had a horizontal kink in it about halfway up. So I don't know statistically how common they are, but we do get them in Australia. A search of the Bureau of Meterologys website may help.
Regards
Snowy
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Reply By: Scubaroo - Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 08:56
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 08:56
While travelling through Utah a few years ago, I saw dust devils that reached hundreds of feet into the air - but were literally only a few feet wide. They were like long skinny columns of dust reaching skywards, not at all funnel shaped. I think it was the fact that there were about 20 visible at any one time and they were moving as fast as the car doing 65-70mph is the disconcerting part!
Also saw a funnel reaching out of a cloud forming in Maryland, but it didn't touch the ground.
In Oz I've only seen the whirlwinds that whip up dust and leaves. Anyone remember the footage of the water spout filmed during the
Sydney to
Hobart a few years ago that was something like 1km wide at the base? Waterspouts seem common here.
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Reply By: Motherhen - Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 11:01
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 11:01
I have seen strips of damage like that in the SW, sometimes quite narrow, and large trees stripped down to just the trunks. There is a definitive line on the edge of the damaged strip. A strong "willywilly" is i suppose a tornado. Sometimes they only last for a few kms or less. Many years ago on a perfectly still day, we got
home to the house to find the corrugated iron shed roof in little curls scattered all through the sheep yards. The shed had been in good condition and the roofing was
well secured. No neighbours noticed any wind or damage - just our shed. I suppose its a bit like the chance of being struck by lightning. I wouldn't stop going camping for fear of a "whirlwind" though.
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Reply By: StephenF10 - Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 12:00
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 12:00
Tornados are different to dust devils / willy-willys. Tornados develop from the base of cumulonimbus (storm) clouds and eventually reach down to the ground. They are driven by the circulation in the parent cloud and can be very destructive. Dust devils are caused by local heating of the ground by the sun and are usually fairly harmless.
As a former BOM employee we became tired of the "mini-tornado" tag that the media traditionally trots out to describe any sort of strong, damaging wind. A tornado by definition must some show some
sign of rotation. If the wind was linear it wasn't a tornado, even a "mini-tornado".
Stephen.
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Follow Up By: Member - Davoe (Widgiemooltha) - Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 12:07
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 12:07
I suspect the damage isnt actually caused by a genuine tornado because of the areas involved but can you get very distructive localised gusts? I would suspect the winds would have to be around 120kph?
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Follow Up By: Mad Dog (Australia) - Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 15:24
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 15:24
Yes Davoe downbursts and microbursts can snap trees. These are very destructive downdraft winds that don't rotate like a tornado.
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Follow Up By: StephenF10 - Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 15:37
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 15:37
Mad Dog's right. Thunderstorms have very powerful updrafts and downdrafts in their mature stage, so anywhere there's a thunderstorm there's a chance of damaging winds. Individual thunderstorms are single large clouds so have only a fairly narrow ground track, but they can affect a much larger area when they form into lines of multiple storms.
Stephen.
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Reply By: Member - Jeff M (WA) - Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 14:48
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 14:48
Yeah mate, HOW BIZZARE! I was just having discussion with my missus about this last night! We used to call them Willy willy's even though it kind of down plays them a little. Had one go through
Marble Bar when I was a kid, came out of no where and ripped the roofs off 4 houses in our street (including our next door neighbour). And these where the houses that we'd been through many many cyclones in without any damage. It even wrecked the street
sign out the front of the house! Used to see them all the time, especially around nulligine and
Newman. Actually you might remeber a couple of years ago Radiowest in Kalgoorlie went off the air, it was a Willy Willy that went through the transmitter site. (my dad was the Cheif Engineer for the network before he retired). It actually took the entire antenna mast down! It blew the transmiter building up, like it actually exploded and the only thing left was the concrete pad, a 20kva Generator and the 5KW Harris Transmitter. These old school transmitters weigh MEGA amounts, like 5 tonnes or somthing (not sure exactly) and it had slid from one side of the pad to the other!! It took them ages to rig up somthing to get them back on the air, using a sea container and backup mast.
My wife used to spend 1 week a month up in the pilbra for work driving between Karatha, Port Headland,
Newman etc etc. She recons she used to see them all the time, sometimes only little ones but sometimes massive ones off in the distance, she recons it used to scare the crap out of her by herself out in the middle of nowhere. She go hit by a little one on the highway once and it almost caused her to crash, it threw the car one way, then the other and she only just managed to hang on as it buggered off on it's merry way.
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Follow Up By: BenSpoon - Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 15:17
Thursday, Jan 12, 2006 at 15:17
Yeah- driving the run between canarvon and
karratha they are a regular sight. I thought because they were relatively small it would be safe to drive my car thru- bad idea. I saw one approaching a highway as I was driving down it, and sure enough we both got to the same point at the same time. I couldnt see bleep for a few seconds and everything went dark, then when I came out the other side I was on the wrong side of the road and heading towards the gutter.
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