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Rewriting the Record Books
Rewriting the Record Books
Rewriting the Record Books
By Todd Strandberg
The United States has more tornadoes than any other place on planet earth. America has a unique geography that allows cold air from the Arctic to directly interact with warm air from the tropical Gulf of Mexico. With no major east-west mountain range to block airflow between these two zones, we are the perfect stage for dramatic weather.
In the past few weeks, we have seen a level of tornadic activity that has shattered numerous records. We normally average about 1,000 tornadoes per year. We have already seen about 1,100 twisters this year--and there are still eight months remaining. The record of 1,820 tornadoes in 2004 can now be surpassed if the rest of the year just has normal weather.
April is certain to stand out in the history books. The Storm Prediction Center says there were 871 tornado reports from last month. These are preliminary numbers, so many will be dropped as investigators remove any storm damage caused by wind not directly related to a tornado. We should still easily break the old record of 543 set back in May 2003.
Another record broken is the one for the most tornadoes in a single, twenty-four-hour period. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there were 312 tornadoes during the Super Outbreak from the 27th and 28th of April. The previous record occurred from April 3-4, 1974, with 148 tornadoes.
I've studied weather all my life, and am amazed to see the 1974 record fall by such a huge gap. During the '74 outbreak, the low pressure was up in Minnesota, which allowed unstable air to stretch from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. During last month's outbreak, the low was in central Missouri , which only allowed for unstable weather to reach into southern Kentucky. In just half the area of the 1974 outbreak, twice the number of tornadoes were generated.
Tornadoes have traditionally been a rare phenomenon, and they require the right ingredients to come together in order to form. This rule was suspended the night Alabama was hit by a swarm of twisters. I looked at the national radar with disbelief as nearly every thunderstorm in the state had some type of tornadic hook echo.
The death count from the outbreak surpassed many longstanding records. The storm system that ravaged the South killed 340 people. It was the deadliest single day for tornadoes since the March 18, 1925, tornado outbreak that had 747 fatalities across seven states.
With improvements in radar and warning systems, we shouldn't be seeing these types of death counts. One meteorologist for theWeather Channel said, "I thought the days had long gone where I would see a tornado kill more than 100 people." Unfortunately, some of the tornadoes were so powerful, there was no safe place to hide. Many of the people who died were sucked out of their basements.
The same frontal zone that brought tornadoes to southern states is now causing record flooding along the Mississippi River. Bob Anderson, an Army Corps of Engineers spokesman based in Vicksburg, Mississippi, says that there has "never been a flood of this magnitude on the upper Mississippi." This flood is being compared to the great 1937 Mississippi River flood. That flood was so nightmarish that it changed the whole way the U.S. government approaches floods, but now this flood is surpassing the record levels set back in 1937 in many areas.
We are at a point when skeptics of Bible prophecy need to take a good look at the statistics for natural disasters. The law of averages cannot explain why we are seeing so many today.
Even the most stubborn minded would have to wonder what is going on. The month prior to this tornado outbreak, Japan was hit by the most powerful earthquake in its history. If everything came to a halt, people would someday look at the recordbooks and say, "Wow, 2011 sure was an unlucky year."
You folks in Tennessee have plenty of reason to wonder what is going on with Mother Nature. Last year, the eastern part of that state was hit by a five-hundred-year flood. A year later, we have another five-hundred-year flood lapping at the western end of the state.
The only way to make sense of all these calamities occurring at the same time is nearness of the end times. These are the birth pains that God predicted, and more of them are on the way.
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