conuly | There was a tornado in NYC today

This is unusual, but hardly unprecedented - there is a tornado in NYC about once every five to ten years. The last one, which twisted off our gutter from the roof and destroyed half the trees on our block, was apparently six years ago, so that's about right.

So why is it that every time there is a tornado, right on schedule, the news acts like it's a flabbergastingly unprecedented "Wow, you may've scoffed at the silly tornado warning, but aaaaah turns out it wasn't misdirected!" freak occurrence instead of a totally predictable event, made even more predictable by meteorology?

Once every five to ten years. That means two or three times between starting kindy and graduating college. Surprising and unusual, but actually not that unexpected. The guy running our sim has kindly turned off "Godzilla attack", but accidentally left "tornado" activated on the natural disasters tab. (Also, he forgot to use the cheat codes, which is why we don't have cold fusion yet.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

redbird

I think that's another bit of climate change: the newscasters are talking to people who grew up with "we may have blizzards and hurricanes, but at least there are no tornadoes here." The first tornado warning I remember I was around 30, so somewhere in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Googling to check my recollection of them being rare in New York City, but not as rare as they used to be, got me a New York Times article on the one that just occurred; after the "people were joking about it" the article gives historical background saying there were exactly zero from 1950 to 1974.

We pick up beliefs about the weather as children, so it's not just older New Yorkers thinking "tornadoes happen somewhere else," it's younger people whose parents or teachers assured them they didn't need to worry about tornadoes because they don't live in the Midwest, or the like. Tornadoes were Somewhere Else's Problem, like earthquakes and volcanoes.

From:

conuly

Maybe... though I'll point out that we have earthquakes too, including one just a few months ago that shook my house. Don't we actually sit atop a fault line?

From:

redbird

I slept through a lot of very small quakes when I was living in New York, and definitely noticed the one centered under Virginia that shook the whole Northeast. So yes, we have quakes, but I don't worry about that the way I did in Seattle, where I paid much less attention than previously to the hurricane season forecasts.

From:

altamira16

East Coast weather is magnified in a way other weather is not because so many news people are based there.

What kind of coverage have you seen of any of the fires covering 30,000 or more acres in The West this year?

From:

gingicat

Lots, here in Boston.

From:

conuly

Lots, actually, so much that I despair of posting any of it. That one story with the children calling their great-grandfather just before... no. No, no, do not want to hear more.

From:

bibliofile

Right now, lots about the ones in Northern California. Earlier, definitely following the ones in Colorado and Arizona.

Then again, I pay attention to national news (e.g., The News Hour).

From:

altamira16

I was visiting Utah while there were pretty large fires there, and it seemed like the Utah fires were not mentioned anywhere else because they were happening during the Colorado fires that may have been bigger. The Dollar Ridge fire in Utah has burned nearly 60,000 acres and just did not get much coverage outside of that area.

From:

wpadmirer

I have to admit that I'm always surprised by the idea of a tornado in a big city. It just doesn't seem right.

From:

conuly

They're just taking in the sights like any other tourist

From:

wpadmirer

LOL! Now that I like.

From:

conuly

Damn tourists.

From:

cactuswatcher

Here in Phoenix, the TV weather folks scream about tornadoes every time there is a funny looking cloud over head. (It's the stormy season now.) There is actually one in the general area about every ten years, and they rarely touch down. We have microbursts that do serious damage, if in limited areas, about every other year, more often than we had them when I was living in tornado alley back in the Midwest.

From:

conuly

Microbursts?

From:

stardreamer

Microbursts. Like a very localized not-quite-tornado.

From:

conuly

Learn something new every day.

From:

zyzyly

The news and weather--it's like they get all hopped up on speed or something. We have it every fall when the big rains come (provided they do come). You'd think it was the biblical flood.

From:

conuly

Is it Biblical-esque, at least?

From:

stardreamer

Same thing with Nashville and snow/ice. When I was living there, we had some snow every winter, serious snow (as in, having to get the snowplows out) every few years, and an ice storm every 4 or 5 years. And every damn time, you'd think the world was coming to an end.

From:

conuly

Some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice....

From:

spikethemuffin

Can I just say the last paragraph on that was particularly brilliantly written?

From:

conuly

I try.

From:

bibliofile

It was.

But with hindsight, why wasn't there a Trump option in there (and, now, how to switch it off)?

From:

conuly

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Trump IS Godzilla. It's gonna be yuuuuuuuge...!

From:

spikethemuffin

Oh, God, now I'm envisioning MechaTrump.

Headcanon: he's actually Ghidora, with Sanders and Stein refusing to team up with Clinton (not voicing an opinion on who is Rodan and who is Mothra) against him. Can our beloved monsters save the earth?

From:

conuly

I'm actually getting more of a Captain Planet vibe from this headcanon....

From:

mommy

I imagine it's the same shocked response people in Des Moines have at the idea of flooding when we experience major floods every 10 to 15 years. Tornadoes are expected, but floods? When we've built our larger communities around rivers? Unthinkable!

From:

conuly

Maybe they should have reconsidered building all their larger communities around rivers.

From:

stardreamer

When these cities were being built, rivers were some of the most important travel and communications routes. I don't blame people in the 18th and 19th centuries for building along rivers. I do blame developers here and now who build expensive condos in an area that anyone with eyes can see is a floodplain.

From:

conuly

I do blame developers here and now who build expensive condos in an area that anyone with eyes can see is a floodplain.

Oh, wait, it's the rich? Well, then, fools and their money...!

(Okay, not seriously, but I do roll my eyes a lot harder at this than at developers throwing up slums/prisons/shelters in disaster-spots. Those people can't complain. The rich can just freaking move.)

Edited Date: 2018-08-04 08:25 pm (UTC)

From:

mommy

Downtown tends to be newer, expensive apartments and condos, and downtown also tends to be right where the river is. Add in the underground parking garages these newer buildings have, and you get a recipe for wealthy people who just don't understand why this unexpected event hurt them so badly.

Suburbs and smaller towns put poorer people in older buildings in the flood zones. It's mostly the cities (Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, etc.) that encourage richer folks to "enjoy" the weather.

From:

the_siobhan

Toronto has much milder winters than counties just an hours drive north - it still gets cold but we get less snow and once we get past about mid-March it tends to be rain rather than snow. But we always always always get one last heavy snowfall in March or April and once that's done I know spring is finally ready to start.

And Every. Single. Year people are shocked. Flumoxed. What the hell? It was so mild last week! I took my snow tires off!

We missed it one(1) year and the year following everybody was talking about the unprecedented weather. I mean I'm glad that people are talking about climate change but I'm kind of scratching my head over how that conversation is coming about.