"On This Day" In Engineering History

If anyone is wondering about the engineering connection to this day of destruction by nature, it lies in Ted Fujita. He started as a civil engineer in Japan. He was working with the occupational forces after WWII, and he found a discarded weather map in a trash can. That sparked his interest in weather.

Later, he used his engineering knowledge to identify downbursts and distinguish them from tornadoes. He again used his engineering knowledge to create the tornado damage scale that bears his name. The scale had already been introduced when the Super Outbreak occurred, but it proved useful in describing and assessing the damage. Dr. Fujita conducted one of the largest aerial damage surveys after the Outbreak.

Two years ago, the National Weather Service adopted the Enhanced Fujita Scale, after engineers and meteorologists reviewed the original scale.

Thanks for the comment, 3Doug. Sounds like Ted Fujita deserves a biography in CR4's Great Scientists and Engineers blog. When I can scrape some time togther, I'll write something up.

Weatherwise magazine had a bio on Fujita after he passed on. That magazine is a great resource on weather history.

The history of meteorology is marked with the names of great or well known scientists and engineers, from Aristotle to Newton, to Pascal, to Ben Franklin, to Joseph Henry. Two of the big names in severe weather meteorology today with engineering backgrounds are Charles Doswell and Tim Marshall. Both are veteran storm chasers.

Tim Marshall also works as a forensic meteorologist, where he combines his knowledge of meteorology and engineering to assess weather-related damage and investigate how weather could have played a role in accidents.

Doswell is a veteran storm researcher and meteorology professor at Oklahoma University. He has written extensively on supercell storms, and produced diagrams of supercell structure years ago and they are still used today in storm spotter training.

Nice! Stories about severe weather seem to do well here on CR4, so these folks would be worth profiling, too. Thanks again!

Ain't life grand Red sky at night

I recall rumours that weather modification experiments might have been responsible for the large number of tornadoes. Strange coincidence or X-file ? :)

I doubt it, Edgar. The state of weather modification research in 1974 involved cloud seeding with dry ice or silver iodide crystals. Most experiments in that field are inconclusive because no one can tell for sure what a system will do without modification. Today, someone might come close with the supercomputers currently available, but still no guarantee.

Considering the size of the area covered by the Outbreak, it would have involved a large amount of equipment, supplies, and personnel.

Excuse me I didn't consider cloud seeding as a weather modification module. Yes cloud seeding has been used for many decades. Though the necessary elements for tornadic activity are well beyond the scope of cloud seeding.

The thought has been proposed that cloud seeding could stabilize a storm, and reduce the potential for severe weather, including hail. Some experiments might have been done. But as I mentioned earlier, no one can say for certain what a storm would have done without the seeding, so no one can conclude if the experiments did any good.

But as I mentioned earlier, no one can say for certain what a storm would have done without the seeding, so no one can conclude if the experiments did any good.

In the United States, cloud seeding is used to increase precipitation in areas experiencing drought, to reduce the size of hailstones that form in thunderstorms, and to reduce the amount of fog in and around airports.

Checkout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioprecipitation

Well, we are thinking about this different ways.

Many, if not most, people in the general public think you have to have a tornado or hurricane for severe weather. But the criteria for severe weather includes winds of 58 mph or more, and hail the same diameter as a penny or larger. Actually, these criteria are too low, but we don't have much chance of getting them changed.

I have seen and reported on storms that produced damage, but no tornado. One knocked out the electricity to my house, the other knocked out power to the place where I worked.

So, cloud seeding to reduce hail size counts as weather modification to mitigate severe weather.