Twister facts!

[Suzi Q]

Twister facts and info (since it is my passion!):

The word tornado may have originated from a merging of the Latin “tornare”, which means to turn, and the Spanish “tronada”, meaning thunderstorm.

Outside of Tornado Alley proper, Harris County, Texas (meaning moi!) has over the past 20 years, had the greatest chance of having one or more twister touchdowns.

In a normal tornado season, about 700-800 confirmed twisters touch down.

The worst tornado disaster in the world occurred north of Dhaka, Bangladesh, of 4/26/1989. At least 1, 109 were killed, 15,000 were injured and 100,000 left homeless.

Professor Theodore Fujita had to wait more than 30 years before seeing his first live tornado.

On 4/26/1994 a tornado swept through a turkey farm in Barron County, Wisconsin, destroying the farm and killing approximately 10,000 birds.

In the movie “Twister”, Dorothy was an instrumented package that a team of mets were trying to place in the path of an F5 tornado in order to obtain the first measurements inside a monster twister. This was a take-off on TOTO-the totable tornado observatory developed by NOAA and university scientists. Scientists designed this portable wend-sensing system that was meant to be dropped in the path of an oncoming twister, but since they aren’t as nutso as the characters in the movie, TOTO was NEVER deployed with complete success.

More bizarre and useful facts as the season continues!