Tornado: In the Eye of the Storm

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It reminded me of a story my dad told me while I was growing up. He grew up in Australia but moved to the USA for university, fell in love with my mother, and stayed. They were living in Kansas City at the time and there was a tornado warning. My parents shared a house with another couple, a man from New Zealand and an American woman from the Midwest like my mother. I’m overwhelmed with trying to do so much and not making much progress and yet as the tornado rips through my life, I find myself staring unflinchingly into its eye. There’s this quiet calm that I can sense.

Yes, if one takes the common meaning of the term "eye of the storm" to be the area of relatively low wind speed near the center of the vortex, most tornadoes can be said to have eyes. Cyclostrophic balance describes a steady-state, inviscid flow with neglected Coriolis force: I’m here today, so obviously they survived. And later my dad told me it was one of the most incredible things he had ever experienced. There was this painfully loud noise and then suddenly, nothing. Silence. But an empty silence. An eerie silence. It was as if they had entered the void. These small, but to me satisfying, successes in my writing life do seem the seed of a new beginning, but it’s more a feeling of something on its way. Something I can’t yet see but will help me get through this difficult time.This clear space is surrounded by a ring of heavy rain and debris that is often moving outward, away from the tornado’s center. That’s because the winds are spinning incredibly fast and creating centrifugal force that pulls these objects away from the middle of the storm. Sometimes areas of heavy rain that are a little farther removed from the tornado spiral inward toward the area of rotation, like the spiral bands that extend outward from the eye of a hurricane.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January . I read this for #girlsinwhitedressesbookclub. It was a beautiful book, and it was one of those times in which I read the right book at the right time. I don’t know how many times I tried reading this book before and just couldn’t get into it, but this time I devoured it. I wouldn’t say I adored it. It didn’t make it to my favorite books of all-time list. But I did appreciate the beauty of the writing and certain characters and their stories spoke to my heart. There are things I wish had been different about the book. Overall, it’s a 4 out of 5 star read! Hurricanes consist of three major parts: the eye, eyewall, and rainbands. The eye is the calmest part of the hurricane, located in the center. Rain bands extend for hundreds of miles around the storm, carrying rain, clouds, thunderstorms, and sometimes tornadoes. This is the hurricane area that begins to move in a circular motion around the rest of the storm. The eyewall is closer to the center, which begins to form as the storm becomes more robust due to the formation of convection and upward-moving air. This eyewall is where the winds are strongest and heavy thunderstorms occur. In the very center of the storm is the eye of the hurricane. In fact, it is the formation of the eye of a hurricane that allows weather forecasters and meteorologists to determine that the hurricane is gaining strength. The eye appears clear with few clouds and has lower wind speeds than the rest of the hurricane. However, it is not as calm as it appears. In a Sydney suburb, two nurses, a housekeeper and a solicitor attend to Elizabeth Hunter as her expatriate son and daughter convene at her deathbed. In dying, as in living, Mrs. Hunter remains a formidable force on those around her. It is via Mrs Hunter’s authority over living that her household and children vicariously face death and struggle to give consequence to life. The sky was a vicious shade of greenish grey, the wind was unbelievably loud, and my mother and the other American woman did what one does when a tornado is possibly about to uproot your home. That is, they sought shelter in the basement of the house. The Aussie and the Kiwi on the other hand, ran to the front porch to watch this incredible force of nature, all while their loves screamed at them to seek shelter. Once inside the swirling cloud, Keller said that everything was "as still as death." He reported smelling a strong gassy smell and had trouble breathing. When he looked up, he saw the circular opening directly overhead, and estimated it to be roughly 50 to 100 feet in diameter and about a half a mile high. The rotating cloud walls were made clearly visible by constant bursts of lightning that "zigzagged from side to side." He also noticed a lot of smaller tornadoes forming and breaking free, making a loud hissing noise. The tornado then passed, skipping over his house and smashing the home of his neighbor.If we placed cameras in the path of a tornado, they would either be damaged by the strong winds and swirling debris, or become so caked with mud and water that they wouldn’t produce any useful pictures. And of course, it’s not safe for humans to try to observe tornadoes at close range. It’s important to always seek shelter when tornado conditions develop. From a visual standpoint, looking up from within the eye of a tornado can offer a surprising view. Some survivors have reported seeing blue sky or a 'stadium effect' of clouds arched upwards in the clear sky. This peculiar sight is due to the low-pressure center and the way the intense, inward-spiraling winds shape the clouds. The video of "Eye of the Storm" tells the story of an anonymous airship pilot, whom we see in a very dark, simplified form deciding in his melancholy to steer his airship into a massive (and possible ether-driven) storm. Throughout the video we see him preparing his craft, setting it on "autopilot", and saying goodbye to his one companion- a dragon.

I try to reach my dad through the veil to ask his advice, but he is silent. Samhain is still a ways off after all. But he’s always with me in my memories of him. In his stories. His stories tell me that I can get through this storm. That I can look at it with wonder and awe and see the quiet center. Generally speaking, the smaller the eye of the hurricane, the faster it spins. Think of a dancer spinning on the dance floor. A dancer will spin slower when their arms and hands are extended out. When the dancer pulls their arms and hands closer to their body, the dancer spins faster. It’s known as the conservation of angular momentum, and the same physics apply to hurricanes. A smaller eye typically means stronger winds. Hurricanes with pinhole eyes are most common in the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico. You can see why I barely read anything this month but as I’d like to continue with my end of month reading updates here is what I did read in September: The Eye of the Storm' Wins at Melbourne International Film Festival". Yahoo! TV. 8 August 2011 . Retrieved 14 December 2015. In summary, the inside of a tornado, while calm and eerily beautiful, is a place of immense danger. It offers a unique perspective on these powerful natural phenomena but is a viewpoint best left to remote sensing tools and simulations. After all, the best place to be during a tornado is as far away as possible.For the first time in their lives, the meaning of compassion takes the children by surprise. During a ferocious storm Mrs Hunter finally dies, not through a withdrawal of will but by an assertion of it. In the process of dying she re-lives her experience in the cyclone. Standing on a beach, she is calm and serene as devastation surrounds her.