Tag: Southeast

Some Thoughts on the Super Outbreak of the South

I am in a rather turbulent state of simultaneous awe, amazement, appalled shock, and horror at what took place in the South yesterday, and I do not have the slightest compunction in calling it the Super Outbreak of the South, as the title indicates.  As a meteorologist-in-training, I can’t deny the amazement and almost religious awe that I feel at the sheer force of nature.  (In fact, I’m reminded very much of Job 37.)  By themselves, these phenomena are utterly spectacular.  We can read about the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, a storm which dwarfs anything on Earth, and feel nothing but awe, because there are no living things there.  I was watching WCBI News out of Columbus, MS on Wednesday, and I doubt I will ever forget the moment that the meteorologist switched to the Tuscaloosa SkyCam and caught the monstrous, violent tornado dead center as it entered that city.  But that, of course, leads in to the dark side of these events.  However awe-inspiring they are in and of themselves, it is when they enter human areas that they become tragic.

Some thoughts, now, on that human tragedy.

Funding the National Weather Service

If there are still any Congressional Representatives out there who want to decimate the National Weather Service or NOAA’s weather-related operations, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.  That goes double for those representing states that were impacted in this event (or in any of the events this month).  As bad as the casualty count is, it would have been far worse 100 years ago when the Weather Service (Weather Bureau at that time) was rudimentary and people depended entirely on whatever local “private sector” warnings were available to them, typically based on whether a tornado or bad storm system was already known to have occurred somewhere upstream.

Don’t get me wrong; the private sector plays a critical role here.  I will guess that most people outside the meteorological community received their information yesterday from private sector sources such as radio and TV broadcasts.  The private sector is the link between the government and the public, and it is a crucial link.  However, the private sector simply cannot do everything that NOAA does in the background.  Yesterday’s event was, in effect, a “perfect” forecast, in forecasting terms.  It was as good as we could possibly do.  And what went into that forecast to make it so good?  Here’s a short list:  satellite data, real-time radar data, radiosonde observations from dozens of sites, weather station observations from dozens of sites across the U.S., numerical weather model predictions run on supercomputers in Maryland, and human forecasters combing through these data at numerous facilities.  For this type of work to be done by private companies, there would either be a single entity owning all the data in a monopoly, or there would be broken, fragmented sets of data that some companies had access to (having gathered it) and others did not, and the weather just doesn’t work in a discrete way like that.  The atmosphere is a fluid.

The government has to run all this in the background for it to work well.  That does not mean that the private sector, even outside of broadcast media, cannot exist. If I wanted to get some NOAA computer model data, repackage it through some graphical post-processing of my own, add commentary of my own, and sell it for a profit, I could do just that.  If I wanted to download a copy of the government- and academia-created WRF model, run it on a machine of my own with my own configuration, and sell that for a profit, I could.  Many sources have done this with public data.  AccuWeather Professional comes to mind, but there are others.  The very fact that this is all public data means that private sources can do other things with it and sell it for a profit entirely legally.  This would not be possible if the backend were all privately owned.  It is in the interest of human life and free enterprise for the data to remain public.

I sincerely hope that this outbreak of severe weather signals the end (at least for several years) of this short-sighted call to go after NOAA in the name of balancing the budget.  There are plenty of government programs that are nonessential that can be cut.  This sector is not one of them.  Wednesday’s tornado outbreak probably would have resulted in ten times as many fatalities 100 years ago.  Anyone who wants to cut funding to the NWS or to any of the branches of NOAA that have operations that go into making a weather forecast, or researching the weather, needs to read a book about the history of weather forecasting in the U.S. and then tell me again what they think.  I have an inkling that, over the past year or so, my political views became rather less liberal than they used to be, as I have become more cynical about the abuse of welfare, the inadvisability of government to support one point of view (by funding nonprofits) over another with respect to solutions to social problems, and the ill effects of federal bureaucracies in some sectors such as education, but this is a case where I firmly come down on the side of government funding for a service, and I do not foresee that changing.

Storm Shelters and the Southeast

I have harped for years on the disasters that will befall the Southeast if something were not done about the lack of proper shelter in this region.  The Plains states and (to a lesser extent) the Midwest learned from their own tragedies, such as the Woodward tornado, the Tri-State Tornado, and the Super Outbreak of 1974, that people simply are not safe above ground in EF4 to EF5 events even in well-built houses.  Those who live in trailers are not safe even in EF2 tornadoes.  There are some communities that have storm shelters; they are to be commended for this.  Tornado sirens are also more common in the Southeast than they used to be; this is also a good thing.  Perhaps there is some recognition that Tornado Alley is far larger than just the Plains, and that the “alley” for long-track violent (4 and 5) tornadoes is, in fact, the Deep South, by a long shot.

And I suspect that the tornado responsible for a plurality of Wednesday’s deaths will be the long-tracked violent (probably EF5, definitely EF4+) tornado that hit Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama.  My local TV meteorologist, Rob Smith, reported that this monster had a velocity couplet on radar of 290 mph over Tuscaloosa.  As far as I am aware, there is no well-established vertical profile of tornadic winds, unlike the winds in hurricanes, where this information is well-known enough that surface winds can be extrapolated reasonably accurately from flight-level winds.  However, velocity couplets of that intensity are not common, to say the least.  Furthermore, Roger Edwards, a meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center (reputedly where the best forecasters in the U.S. work), said that the swirling horizontal mesovortices that snaked around this thing had never been seen by him except in violent tornadoes.  What do you do when a beast like that is coming at you?

Get out of town?  I did that yesterday, taking only my cat, my computer, and a couple of sentimental items, when it looked like a confirmed large tornado with a debris ball was going to hit my house or my town.  (It shifted its path south.)  But then, I know something about the structure of storms, I knew how fast it was going and could judge how fast I needed to drive to get completely clear of any path shifts it might make, I knew what was in front of me (nothing for at least 50 miles), I knew what was coming the way I was driving (again, nothing), and I live in a rural area where this was a reasonable option.  It is not a reasonable option for people who live in a city and will easily lead to traffic snarls.  I hope this did not happen yesterday.  Being in a car in a violent tornado, or any tornado, is worse than being in a building by far.

Head to an interior room on the first floor?  Staying above ground is not a death sentence in an EF4 or EF5, but survival is a matter of chance and Providence if this is what you do.  Go to a basement?  A copyrighted image on CNN depicted homes in Pleasant Grove, AL (outside Birmingham) that had the basements exposed after the tornado.  This has happened before in the Parkersburg, IA EF5 tornado.  Having an underground shelter directly below the building probably isn’t sufficient either for this exact reason.  The best design is probably the “fallout shelter” type of storm cellar, with the main room somewhat removed horizontally from the entrance to the cellar.

The South needs more of these, and yet I am opposed to making it mandatory under the law.  I am even opposed to it if funding were provided in the form of vouchers.  I don’t think it’s the responsibility of the government to make people take care of themselves.  However, I do think that there should be some financial “reward” for getting a shelter, perhaps in the form of a tax credit or even a tax rebate. Mississippi’s EMA had a program of this general type not long ago, but evidently there was a lack of public awareness, because I don’t know anyone who took advantage of it.

I was horrified in 2008 after the Super Tuesday outbreak, which killed 57 people, mostly in the South.  I had no idea that I would live to see something very similar to a repeat of the Super Outbreak of 1974 in my region, and definitely not the casualty count of that terrible event.  Yesterday’s event was well-forecast, and information was disseminated spectacularly well over the news (live footage of the Alabama beast) and the Internet.  There is plenty that we don’t know about tornadoes and thunderstorms, but these unknowns are not responsible for the tragic outcome of yesterday’s event.  Public awareness and information dissemination may be responsible for some of the fatalities, certainly, especially those in small towns where broadband Internet access may not be available and the tornadoes do not have live TV coverage.  However, these are isolated cases.  The problem was the magnitude of the tornadoes and the insufficiency of shelter options.  Unfortunately, the South will continue to see tragic death tolls as long as proper shelter is not available.

The EF Scale and Urban Tornadoes

Violent tornadoes have struck the outskirts of cities numerous times, such as the “Moore tornado” of 1999 that hit near Oklahoma City.  Tornadoes of various intensities have also struck the downtown areas of cities.  However, I am not aware of an EF4 or EF5 tornado (or their counterparts on the Fujita Scale) that struck the downtown area of a city of 90,000 people or more at the violent intensity. I don’t know what the Tuscaloosa-Birmingham tornado will ultimately be rated.  I have seen enough pictures that I have my own opinion, but I’m not on the survey team, and as this event is either very rare or is without precedent, they will certainly conduct their survey with the utmost care and professionalism.  However, the possibility of a “5”-rated tornado striking a densely populated urban area opens up an interesting question about the EF scale.

The scale is an improvement over the Fujita Scale in that it offers damage criteria for a variety of buildings.  However, the most well-known criterion for distinguishing between an EF4 and an EF5 is the one that relates to “well-constructed frame houses.”  If the house is blown down, it is EF4.  If it’s blown away leaving a clean slab, it’s EF5.  But how can there be a clean slab in the middle of an urban center?  Not to be callous here, but it will be much easier to get empty foundations in a subdivision a few acres across, surrounded by other subdivisions (or rural land) and lacking the structural congestion of urban environments.  I just find it hard to imagine how this type of damage could possibly occur in a city.  There will be much more debris in these situations than in a suburban, small-town, or rural violent tornado, and I would make a guess that it would be much harder to get clean slabs in light of that.  The damage pictures out of downtown Tuscaloosa seem to bear this out.  There are mounds of debris, some identifiable, some not.  There are piles of bricks from buildings that were certainly reduced to their foundations, but I haven’t seen clean slabs in McFarland Boulevard or any of the other downtown areas there, nor do I expect to, given the amount of construction that had been there.  Will the EF scale work for violent tornadoes in highly populated, highly developed urban environments?  We’ll have to see.

Why Southern Moderates Should Run as GOP

I’ve never been able to understand why everyone to the left of Pat Robertson chooses to run for office on the Democratic ticket in the Southeast region. It’s inadvisable in this region (except for those positions that are specifically for Democratic districts, like the absurdly gerrymandered Congress) as a personal electoral strategy, because—again, with that noted exception—the Southeast in general votes Republican by default. And it’s foolish as a long-term strategy for anyone who is troubled by the dominance of Religious Right theocratic politics in this region.

Let’s go ahead and get a few things out of the way. First, since this is unfortunately usually associated with Southern politics in some way, the recommendations I offer are not specific to any given race of people—but rather, to moderates of any ancestry. Secondly, I am not talking about voting. I’m talking about those with political ambitions. I’m talking about running for office. Third, I am not necessarily singling out moderates to the exclusion of others, but my advice is addressed to them because I have yet to meet a self-identified liberal who also would consider running on the Republican ticket. If you’re one of those endangered creatures, then you can take this advice too.

I think that a major shift is needed in the way political candidates are recruited in the Southeast. Specifically, I think it is LONG past time for moderates to run in Republican primaries rather than Democratic ones. All too often, we end up with elected representatives who are utter embarrassments, because no one runs for GOP nominations except the Pat Robertson crowd (or hypocrites who pretend to be of that mold) and the South defaults Republican.

The theocratic ideology has no place in U.S. politics or law. I have always felt this way. I recall writing an essay for school at age 15 or 16 explaining why school-led prayer was unconstitutional. My reasons for it are more sophisticated in understanding now, but the views themselves have not changed.

The idealized purpose of law is to set out standards of morally acceptable behavior. Naturally, this ideal often becomes corrupted in practice, but in the exists-only-on-paper view, this is why we have laws. The idea is that moral behavior keeps a society stable. I think that part of the reason why so many Religious Right types don’t get it is that they don’t understand what the source of that morality must be. In the U.S., the moral basis for a law must be secular. Certainly there can be overlap between a religious basis of morality and a secular one, but a law (or potential law) is defensible only if it has a basis in secular morality. For instance, bans on murder and robbery can be defended on a non-religious basis. A ban on, say, same-sex marriage really can’t be defended on a moral basis unless you invoke religious dogma. (Yeah, I went there.) This is the problem with the Religious Right: It wants to have the church involved in governing. Don’t believe those who use the scare tactic that so-and-so wants to “ban religion.” No one with remotely mainstream political beliefs would consider it right to prevent churches from promoting their agenda through private venues. Let them speak on the media, let them use free speech and free assembly to push what they want, but keep their moral opinions out of government unless those moral opinions can be successfully defended without invoking holy texts. And, incidentally, it goes both ways: Keep the government out of the church too unless it breaks a law.

The governing philosophy of the Religious Right—the Religious Right as a political movement—is antithetical to the form of government that we have in the United States. The framers of the Constitution made it very clear. They did not put any restrictions on government interference in economic matters, but rather, left it up to future leaders and citizens to determine how much government involvement in the economy that they wanted. Libertarianism and liberalism are therefore both Constitutionally valid economic philosophies. But for moral matters—social policy and law—it is very clear that religion cannot be the sole basis. The Religious Right as a political movement is arguably dangerous to our form of government, and they have taken over a major political party.

With this point, I return to the original subject of this post. I’ll reiterate it: An antidemocratic ideology has taken over a major political party. In large part, this was caused by a massive recruitment drive in the 1980s and 1990s by Religious Right organizations. Those entities encouraged theocratically inclined people to run for office as Republicans, and over the years, they managed to change the makeup of that party. To reverse this damage will require a lot more than voting Republicans out of office. That is not a true reversal because it does not address the change that really happened, and it keeps that major political party in theocrat hands still. Moderate and non-theocratic Republicans were “primaried” out of office or gradually retired until only the theocrats were left. To undo the theocratic revolution, moderates must regain a voice within the GOP.

Since the South is the GOP stronghold of the nation, it makes sense that the change should begin here. Primaries in general, especially at local levels, have an uncanny tendency to be personal rather than ideological. They are decided quite often by who put out the most signs and advertisements, who has the best network, and who has the best get-out-the-vote operation. Since it usually is not about ideology, moderates stand a fighting chance at being nominated. And the Republican tilt of the Southeast gives them an automatic advantage in the general election. Certainly, some primaries would result in a theocratic person being nominated anyway, but a major change like this would take time to effect. However, the “everyone knows everyone” aspect of local primaries could also result in a weeding out of some of the Religious Right hypocrites who have skeletons in their closets. It’s a win-win.

It’s important to protect the political process from belief systems that are antithetical to our Constitutional government. This could require some people to take actions that they would see as very cynical and manipulative. Southerners who identify as something other than conservative (or even who do identify as conservative but not Religious Right—i.e., libertarians) may have psychological aversions to calling themselves GOP, but if they’re considering going into politics, they will have to deal with real-world strategy soon enough. Might as well begin immediately.