Yesterday's horrific devastation got me on a Wikipedia kick reading about processes behind tornadic activity (Was curious if they ever happen elsewhere in the world, given we never hear about anything like this outside North America.) I'm sure the news has mentioned this a billion times already, but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_recordsCodell, Kansas
The small town of Codell, Kansas, was hit by a tornado on the same date three consecutive years. A tornado hit on May 20, 1916, 1917, and 1918.[28] The U.S. has about 100,000 thunderstorms a year; less than 1% produce a tornado. The odds of this coincidence occurring again is extremely small.
Moore, Oklahoma
Moore was hit by devastating tornadoes in 1999, 2003, 2010, and 2013, all of which were of F4 strength or greater.
Four impossible tornadoes in less than a decade and a half, one town. We understand incredibly little about tornadoes, despite all the data and simulations in the world, but obviously they are strongly influenced by geography and surface quirks. Like a line of hills surrounding a town, being in the 'wrong place' where upper level winds get funneled, whatever. Seeing things like this, it seems to me that they (NOAA, NWS, whoever.) really ought to make an effort to combine tracks and data on all historical tornadoes and produce some form of increased danger zones.
I get tornadoes can be ridiculously random and impossible to predict (The Codell snippet I included seemed particularly bizarre.) Even though our area has historically been spared the brunt of severe ones, we could have an F3 hit next week (There have been some historic tornadoes in DC. Namely one which might have changed the course of the city, during the War of 1812 and the Burning of DC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Washington,_D.C._tornadoes )
But four F4s in 14 years on one town... All that horror and death, it's tragic to imagine if future events there and elsewhere might be avoided by simply analyzing data and either avoiding certain locales during building, or not rebuilding on the exact same spots. Likewise, how many millions live in LA or SF where the next 'Big One' earthquake could happen any day, and will happen eventually, yet folks continue to think it 'can't happen here.' I dunno, maybe Moore is just a horrible coincidence and fluke, but that just seems an extreme oddity in a very short time period to be entirely written off as meaningless.
Me? I'm just thankful to have woken up today and seen the fatality estimates cut in half. Last night when I went to bed, it was 50+ and expectations of many more, so thankfully that was wrong.
Edited to Add: I had remembered reading about the War of 1812 Tornado years ago, dug up the Wikipedia link just for those who hadn't. Reading it after posting, I found this especially bizarre and bizarrely on topic:
November 17, 1927: At around 2:30 p.m., a tornado touched down southwest of Alexandria, Virginia. After damaging Alexandria, the tornado crossed the Potomac River and injured several people at the Anacostia Naval Air Station. The tornado crossed the Anacostia River and continued through the Navy Yard. From there, the tornado continued northward up Eighth Street Southeast and then turned a bit to travel north on Fourteenth Street near Lincoln Park. The tornado continued through the neighborhood of Kingman Park, where it demolished several homes.
How insane is it that the most historic tornado in modern DC history hit there? Imagine sitting at Nats Park and watching a tornado zoom by.
