Tohoku Earthquake/The Storms Came A Rumbling

Well hello everyone, what a long time it's been since I've last posted. It's almost been a year! So much has happened during that time. I graduated from Kean University and now I'm attending Howard University pursing a Ph.D.

So much weather has occurred as well. More recently back on March 11, 2011, the Tohoku earthquake which was a devastating 9.0 earthquake. It struck off the coast of Japan and triggered a major tsunami which caused a tremendous loss of life. There were over 1021 recorded aftershocks, in with more than 63 of them were over 6.0. On the one month anniversary of the disaster, a 7.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan and tsunami warnings were issued, but later cancelled as the threat diminished. The Fukushima I Nuclear power plant has recently been rated level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. Level 7 is the highest level on the scale and the only other disaster to reach this level was the Chernobyl disaster back in April of 1986. A nine-month plan has been set to move the plant into a more stable state. More information about the plan can be read here.

Yesterday we received some intense storms here in Maryland. These storms were part of severe weather pattern which caused an outbreak of tornadoes in the Southern states, over the last two days. So far 55 tornadoes were confirmed and there were over 243 tornadoes initially reported. The maximum recorded tornado was an EF3 and 40 people have lost their life. No other outbreak in the United States, before this occurrence resulted in this number of fatalities since the Super Tuesday tornado outbreak. This event occurred February 5–6, 2008 and killed 57 people.

Of the reported tornadoes, the National Weather Service is estimating it would take a few days to confirm these cases. Why you might ask? Well much of the damage may have been caused by straight-line winds and not from a tornado. With many thunderstorms there will be wind gusts, and distinguishing what type of weather phenomena occurred can be tricky. Especially for insurance claims.

Straight line winds can reach up to speeds of 130 mph which is around the same as an EF2 tornado and are caused by downbursts or outflows from the thunderstorm. The debris pattern from straight line winds, spreads out in one direction. Tornadoes are categorized as rotating columns of air caused by unstable air, lifting and moisture in the low to mid levels of the atmosphere (in summary). The debris pattern from tornadoes spreads out in different directions and is often rotational. The debris field for straight line winds can cover miles as the debris field for tornadoes tends to be more narrow, though some fields have gone out for miles.

Below is a radar image of the system I obtained from RAP Weather. The time is 2023 UTC or 4:23 PM EST (to get eastern standard time, 5 hours is subtracted from the UTC time).

The line of storms are very well defined. Here is the base reflectivity image taken from the WSR-88D Radar that I obtained from NOAA. It is of the storms for the Baltimore MD/Washington DC area. The time is 7:19 PM EST or 2313 UTC.

Notice the strong band of storms west of Washington, DC? These storms later moved further North towards Westminster.

I felt really compelled to start this blog up again. The wait is over. I'll be updating more with weather events and happenings. If you have Twitter follow me @Weathersavvy1. Stay tuned!