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Explore the hows, whys and history of tornadoes.
Get safety tips on what do before and during tornadoes.
WRAL Chief Meteorologist Greg Fishel talks about what to do if a tornado strikes.
Until recently, the guidelines for how to take shelter during a tornado were pretty widely accepted, if a little odd in the details. Your best bets have always been to be underground, or at least in an interior room on the lowest level of a sturdy building or other structure with a foundation. A mobile home, even one that is "tied down",has never been considered a safe place to be. All of the options inbetween, however, are varying shades of "not good", and it's in that gray area where there has been some controversy in the last few weeks.
Our friends at the National Weather Service have assembled a mappable archive of all the tornado tracks in the United States, dating back to 1950. You'll need Google Earth to display the data. What's cool about this is how you can display the tracks. You can display the tornadoes by state, by year, by month, or strength. If you have a quick computer and network connection, you can also pull down all of the tracks and animate them over time.
Tornado! Perhaps no meteorologically-related term strikes as much fear into the human mind than this word. And, with good reason. In terms of raw wind power potential, there is nothing the atmosphere produces that can rival it. While North Carolina is not in the proverbial "Tornado Alley", we are certainly not immune to these monsters.
WRAL.com: Raleigh, Durham, Fayetteville
6:55 p.m. • 2-12-12
Weather Forecast for Raleigh
- Mon: Partly Cloudy.
- Hi: 50° F
- Tue: Rain.
- Hi: 53° F
- Wed: Partly Cloudy.
- Hi: 57° F
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