More Use For Drones: Gathering News At Disaster Zones

This post is sort of a bleed over from my sister blog, Matt's Weather Rapport, which has been focused on the nation's tornadoes this week.  

A drone took this image of tornado destruction in Arkansas.  

I just find it interesting that drones are becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives. Including news gathering.

They're not just for weapons in murky overseas war zones anymore.

They launched a drone over Interstate 40 in Mayflower, Arkansas after a deadly, scary tornado passed through on Sunday.

The result was this fascinating footage:

Great Song, Great Video About The Importance of Photos In Our Lives

Over at the other blog I operate, Matt's Weather Rapport, which caters to anyone interested in the weather, I touched on efforts to return photographs to their owners after the momentos were scattered far and wide by tornadoes that struck the Midwest last month.

This man saved a wedding photo from the wreckage
after a tornado hit Washington, Ill. last month.
Other people lost important photos in the storm.  

All the more reason to store our photos in "the cloud" so if our houses burn down or get blown or washed away in a disaster, we don't lose these important documents and touchstones.

In my Weather Rapport post, I included a wonderful music video by Laura Marier for her song "Running For Photographs" which is a great song and great video in its own right, whether or not you're interested in the weather.

So I decided to included it here, too, because the song is definitely worth listening to and the video is totally worth watching.

Scariest Moore, OK Tornado Vid Yet: Seen Overhead From Shelter Window

This video just popped up from that huge tornado in Oklahoma.

Somebody had a small window in their storm shelter in Moore and filmed what went on. They were just outside the outer edge of the huge tornado.

You can see that although it wasn't hitting them directly, it was causing quite a bit of damage in their neighborhood. But at least the houses are still (sort of) standing

Tornado Victim Explains Storm to TV Crew as His Ceiling Collapses

I bet the reporter and camera operator for television station WIAT had mixed emotions when the story they were covering this week unexpectedly got more dramatic.

Clint Thornton was standing outside his front door, explaining to the news crew what happened as the tornado smashed into his home the night before.

As he was talking, a steady rain was falling on his badly damaged roof. Suddenly, it all caved in inside the house, just a few feet from where Thornton and the news crew were standing. Family members were in the house.

Luckily, nobody got hurt, and Thornton said the family will be OK because they're in God's hands.

As I said, the news crew must have had mixed emotions. On one hand, boy did they get a more dramatic story than they bargained for! That's always fun for a journalist.

On the other hand, they were in no mood to see people suffer or get hurt. I know first hand what it's like to be a journalist when people are caught in disasters. The victims want their story told, so they are more than happy to answer your questions.

But you still hate that these perfectly nice people have to go through this, when they clearly don't deserve it. In any event, Here's the video. Yikes:

Inviting a Tornado to a Wedding

As many of you know, I'm getting married in August, and we're in the thick of planning it.

The ceremony scheme is pretty much worked out, and it's going to be beautiful.

But it won't involve a tornado, unfortunately.

I say that because a video popped up of a recent Kansas outdoor wedding, at which a tornado crashed the party. No worries, it didn't actually go through the ceremony itself,  so everybody's fine.

Here's the vid, then read, if you dare, more verbiage below:



Isn't great how nonchalant everyone is? Yeah, there's a tornado, so what? They react to the storm the same way the rest of us would react to a few, tiny puffy clouds on a spring day. s

I love the commentary toward the end of the video:  "It's an honest to goodness Kansas wedding," a woman is heard saying.

She sure is right on that point.

A question for wedding experts: If a tornado appears at your wedding, is that a good omen or a bad sign?

I'm a huge weather geek, and a key person in my wedding party is also a hardcore weather geek, so the tornado would have been a nice touch at the nuptials.

But my intended, Jeff, does not want a tornado at the wedding. And I see his point. He is a set designer after all, and he knows how to make things look just right. So I trust his judgement that a tornado just won't work.

Our wedding is going to be indoors, in an historic theater building, so we'd hate to see that get damaged.

And we're wearing white, so we don't want windblown debris marring our clothes. There's candles involved, and we don't want those to blow out, either.

Also, it would probably be rude to have people who we invited, after taking the trouble of doing their hair and wearing some nice outfits, have to deal with a tornado.  People will want to eat during the reception, and there's no sense of having guest hunt and peck for hor d oeurvres that were scattered to the wind.

The bottom line: No tornado at the wedding. I'm not disappointed.  I get Jeff as a lifelong prize, so a tornado is hardly anything that matters. Besides, Jeff, especially when he's on a roll, is a human tornado.

That's all I'll ever need.

Security Camera Tornado Footage

Over the weekend, some dramatic footage of one of those awful tornadoes early this month in the Midwest came out.

We're used to videos of dramatic tornadoes rampaging through towns and across the countryside, but in recent years, we've gotten inside views of the fascinating chaos inside these storms thanks to the proliferation of security cameras.

A tornado begins to dismantle a Kentucky neighborhood
in this still from  a home security camera.

Seen from the outside, the giant funnel clouds are graceful, in their violent way as they tear through. The security footage shows just how terrifying they are, because these "eyes" can stay put through the tornado, unlike humans would.

In the past few years, we've borne awestruck witness to: (Click on the hyperlinks to view the videos:  a tornado laying waste to the inside and outside of a bank in Parkersburg, Iowa, 2008; a view from that same bank's ATM surveillance camera of a house blowing apart; cars being tossed by an Alabama tornado,  and inside a middle school last year in Joplin, Missouri, among others.

I wonder if these videos help people understand the dynamics of tornadoes, and how to build structures to resist them better, or are they just weather porn, the term I use to describe exciting storm videos that give you a bit of an adrenaline rush.

In any event, they're fascinating. The home security videos of the tornado in West Liberty, Kentucky earlier this month are really telling. The tornado, or at least the edges of it, didn't have that dense funnel cloud that obscures visibility. The sun appears to be even shining into the chaos, giving us a clear view of a neighborhood, the house and surrounding woods disintegrating in the chaos. Fascinating, but sad. Watch:

At Least There Are No Tornadoes in Vermont

We here in Vermont have been complaining about the weather, as usual.

A large tornado roars into Raleigh, N.C.
Saturday afternoon.

This weekend featured wind, cold rain, and a little sleet and snow. Today is supposed to be showery, windy, cold, maybe some hail. Lovely.

But at least we haven't been getting tornadoes, so we have nothing to complain about. Those storms over the past few days have been incredible. And they really have been attacking cities.

It was amazing to watch a feed from WRAL, a television station in Raleigh, as they filmed a large tornado sweeping through the city's downtown. They have an amazing time lapse video of the tornado coming at WRAL's building.

Just scary stuff.

The Charlotte News & Observer also has a lot of tragic, incredible photos of the storm and damage. 

Here's a video of one of the tornadoes in Sanford, North Carolina around some shopping centers.  Go to the mall, get a tornado, apparently.