Wind Theory: Straight Line vs Tornadic Winds

What are straight line winds, and why are they so dangerous?

Everyone,

Last month on the night before Easter I was watching the very end of “My Cousin Vinny” at 9:57 PM when the lights flickered a few times, there was some lightning flashes outside, and the wind sounded like a freight train roaring over top of my house.

There was no severe weather or tornado warning and the entire sequence of events took less than 2 minutes. Nothing seemed to be damaged on the house or immediately around it, so we went back to bed. But in the morning we found that our 125 ft tall Tulip Poplar tree in the back yard had been uprooted! The tree trunk near the base was 5 ft in diameter, and the root ball was more than 16 ft wide!

What was it?

I thought a tornado had hit the area, but my friend Karl, who is a citizen meteorologist, said it was a straight line wind event. I really didn’t know the difference, so I sent some pictures to our local television station’s weather team in Washington DC, and they ran a really informative 4-minute segment on the differences between Tornadic and Straight-Line winds.

So why are straight line winds so dangerous? Well, there’s little or no warning and they can reach up to 125 MPH wind speeds!

Watch and learn…

So the next time you hear about a straight-line wind event, you’ll have a better understanding of exactly what it is.

Let’s play safe out there… Mike