To be fair, the tornado was a very narrow tornado. Which is good and bad. Think of a figure skater who is spinning. If their arms are extended, they spin slowly. Once they bring their arms in and are compact, they spin faster.
Very susceptible until roof is decked. And yes, wall sheathing, or wind braces need to be cut into the walls
I would agree but also I HIGHLY doubt they have done much if any in depth survey analysis in Greenfield itself. They essentially go door to door evaluating the damage and the build quality of each structure.
I'm not sure if this is one path, two paths, or just a cell that was throwing funnels willy nilly. What I could gather from flipping the local channels is that a funnel was verified north of Waukee, it progressed to near the Grimes area and crossed Saylorville just south of the mile long bridge. From there is passed south of Huxley and hit White Oak. I'm unsure whether this is the same funnel that flipped the semi's at the I-35 rest area or not. Probably so. From there it passed Cambridge and crossed US30 just east of Nevada. At that point I had to disengage for other distractions.
The answer is it depends. Level of training, knowledge, assistance on navigation just to name a few factors. There are a TON that go out for the fun of it and that is okay if you know what you are doing. I saw a picture that a chaser took yesterday. With the amount of headlights on what is likely a normally lonely rural highway it looked like University Ave after a night game.
Yeah it's a real mix of glory chasers and serious. Similarly, I've found the weather discord to be quite useful in that they also catch some of this "before" NWS (I don't think it's quite accurate to say) but they can give context I don't hear on broadcast. Like with yesterday, there was a lot of chatter that if that cell by Red Oak got organized, it was going to be on the ground and dangerous for a long time.
It could bump up to EF4 but EF3 is still no joke and it wouldn't shock me if it stayed there. An EF3 may leave your house halfway standing, but it's still going to be damaged beyond repair and you've probably lost your roof.
That is a general physical aspect of increasing speed. Another view of large well-supported tornadic formations is that they can form very wide, large tornados developing individual powerful vortices within that are essentially part of but, though separate in actions. These don't "seem" to operate as an individual spinning focus like a skater.
Through a serious of connections, I had a convo once with a legit chaser from OK/TX. The dude was as interesting as he was weird. Clearly a very very smart guy. But he definitely had a screw loose. I assume most of the legit ones are extremely intelligent and I respect that.
Yeah, that was a long harrowing trip, no doubt. Victim ID still pending, per WHO-TV. Lone passenger.
I agree. These recent storms have had as many as 50 verified chasers after them.
