Nicole Misencik/SkyTrak Weather
In late January 2008, unseasonably warm temperatures slammed by a cold front sparked an EF1 tornado on the west side of Indianapolis. Another tornado killed a mother and daughter in southern Indiana. Its force flipped over their mobile home near Poseyville.
A week later, an EF1 tornado tore through Greene County and damaged several dozen homes. Both these storm systems packed intense straight line winds, some up to 100 miles per hour.
"And I'm watching this hard wind come out of the west. With a snap of a finger, it's coming out of the east just as hard. I've never seen straight line winds change like that," said one witness.
The winds were so intense and unpredictable, it rained ducks and geese in Avon.
"They were like missiles all over the whole place. There was a geese laying in my bedroom that came through the window," said a resident.
It was an excellent example of how powerful winds can pack the damaging and deadly force of a tornado. That's why it's vitally important to pay attention not just to tornado warnings but to severe thunderstorm warnings as well.
Live radar, like SkyTrak Doppler 9000, and the National Weather Service's radar look for rotation in thunderstorm cells that would indicate a tornado. However, straight line winds are impossible to see on radar.
On April 2nd, 2006, John Mellencamp played a free concert on Monument Circle. Just as it ended, severe storms forced thousands of fans to run for cover.
"I thought a plane had hit the building," said Willie Smith, witness.
Windows broken, metal twisted and offices exposed: 70 mph straightline winds ripped around the Regions Bank Building.
"There's lots of instances where the straightline winds can be causing damage comparable to a tornado and more significantly over a larger area," said Dr. Jeff Trapp, Purdue University.
Dr. Trapp tracks straightline winds, and the storms that spawn them. "What we're trying to do is get a combination of the weather conditions that will lead to the formation of these things in the first place and link that to what we can see on radar and come up with a picture that will help give more advance warnings," he said.
Unlike tornadoes, straightline winds are not seen on radar. Dr. Trapp studies changes on radar and watches for patterns in storms that produce straightline winds and tornadoes. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
"We can have these systems of thunderstorms that span an entire state the entire state of indiana and it comes down to a county that we're really interested in," he said.
Half of the tornadoes we see in Indiana are spawned from squall lines of thunderstorms, the same storms that produce damaging straightline winds.
"One of the things about tornadoes is that they can be really intense really focused over a small area and so that makes them dangerous in their own right but the straightline winds can be dangerous is that it's damage that's spread over a really large area," said Dr. Trapp.
But how to you warn that large area they're in danger? That's the problem Dr. Trapp will continue to study as he watches storms roll in and out of Indiana, looking for clues in the radar and the damage that's left behind.
Surviving the Storm
