Tornado Passage at a Weather Station

There has been a lot of coverage of the recent tornadoes, but here is something not covered by the press. Yesterday a tornado passed extremely near or over the Oklahoma Mesonet weather station at El Reno (several people died unfortunately in this event). Here is the observation--amazingly the instrumentation survived! (click for bigger image)

The tornado passage was at the end of the period. The winds gust to 151 mph (light blue shading). The pressure (brown) fell sharply in ( or very near) the funnel, and the wind directions (green) shifted with the rotation. This is really amazing. Here is what the station looked like after the tornado passed over:

Collected some debris, but still working.

Also amazing is the video of some storm chasers in Reno at roughly the same time (see below):


Now switching from amazing to really heart-warming, the tower for the coastal radar is now complete and they are now preparing the antenna and radome to be placed on top. Here is the picture:

A number of you has asked about the important memorial day weekend forecast, and since KUOW won't allow me to give it there, I need to find a different approach until KUOW changes their mind or I switch to another station. Anyway, I will have an update on this blog by 10 AM on Friday--just when I would have done it if I still was on the air.

KUOW Firing Update

I am still hoping these folks will change their mind. The attempts of management to do damage control has generally made things worse (the Stranger calls the whole incident Weathergate). KUOW keeps on pushing a story line that both Steve Scher and I know as incorrect (that I insisted on talking about non-weather topics on the weather segment). A petition to KUOW is found here.

Today there were several articles on the subject:

Very supportive commentary by veteran PI writer Joel Connelly

The Stranger editors have been highly supportive and asked my to write up my side of the event. Found here.

The Geek Wire had a story.

Lots of updates on the Facebook pages.

KUOW has one of their own news staff (Deborah Wang) working on a story about all this that will probably air tomorrow. Seems strange to have one of their own employees do this, with all the inherent conflict of interest, but we will see.