Here in the midwest, we are proud that we have the most extreme weather on the planet. The hot is hot, the cold cold, and the storms the strongest. Last night we had a strong thunderstorm roll through St. Louis – the light show was fantastic. Not only did we have some huge ground strikes, but the cloud to cloud bolts were awesome.
Of course, the wind does the most damage, so the National Weather Service has put together a wind damage fast response team to rate the severity of tornados. Needless to say, the strength of the tornado that strikes one’s town is source of pride around these parts, so the locals don’t always take kindly to a low score on the Fujita scale. Charles Doswell, team member and veteran stormchaser, still recalls the ire of a town that wasn’t impressed with his F3 rating on a local tornado – T-Shirts with “F-3, my ass” became quite popular there. The team has been called out to evaluate the tornados that struck across the midwest last Sunday night. Maybe I should open a cafe press store with weather related T-Shirts. Somehow, I don’t think “F-3, my ass” is copyrighted.
UPDATE: My T-shirt dreams are gone with the wind: The most destructive ones in Missouri from last Sunday have been rated as F-4s.
