Good afternoon! Thanks for checking out today’s hazardous weather blog, brought to you by Mr. Quik Home Services out of Indianapolis! You can rely on Mr. Quik’s team of professionals for all your heating, cooling, plumbing, and electrical needs in your home! With the spring storm season here, basements and crawlspaces are prone to flooding. It would be a great time to get your sump pump inspected, or possibly get a new one installed to handle all the downpours this spring and summer! Call Mr. Quik at 317-468-9170. Read more about it at mrquikhomeservices.com. Be sure to “LIKE” Mr. Quik on Facebook, where BAM Wx provides daily updates: https://www.facebook.com/MisterQuik/.
With it being severe weather preparedness week, wanted to discuss more above severe weather and safety. The #1 weather related killer outside of tornadoes and heat waves is flooding, more particularly flash flooding.
Flash flooding is the main cause of flood-related deaths. Remember a flash flood occurs when intense rainfall occurs over an area in a short duration where waters do not have time to recede and go straight into run-off. As populations and cities grow, more and more pavement is taking over land once covered with woodlands. This will increase flash flood risks as these impervious surfaces can not absorb water. Remember to never drive over flooded roadways. You never know what is happening to the actual road surface as it can be washed away.
Here locally, I’m sure many of you remember the flash floods of June 7, 2008 that struck central and south-central Indiana. Some areas received 8-10″ of rain in just 24 hours. That was on top of already saturated soils. The worst flooding took place in Spencer, Paragon, Martinsville, Franklin, and Columbus. This event caused 3 deaths, and caused many hundred of millions (if not billion) dollars of damage to the state from farmland to homes to businesses.
Lightning is one that can catch people by surprise. It can strike you up to 10 miles away. The distance is when you just begin to hear thunder, which is why it’s a safe rule of thumb to avoid outdoors if you hear thunder. Lightning is caused by a big difference in electrical charge that develops inside a thunderstorm. As warm and cold air meet to develop a thunderstorm, the cold air inside a thunderstorm has ice crystals, and the warm air contains droplets. The ice crystals and and water droplets bump against each other in the cloud creating electrical charges. The positive charges populate at the top of the cloud, with negative charges below. When the negative charge gets strong enough at the bottom, it causes the cloud to let out energy. The bolt that is sent out is caused a “leader stroke” and will travel through the air to an area with an opposite charge. Sometimes they travel to another cloud, and at times they travel to the ground, where positive charges are found.
The rapid expansion of air caused by the lightning causes what we hear as thunder. If you are every outdoors during an imminent thunderstorm and your hair becomes static, that is a sign that positive charges or a “positive leader” is rising up to make the connection to the negative “leader stroke” emanating from the cloud. This is a classic photo below from a teenager hiking Moro Rock in California in 1975. This is a photo of Mary McQuiken, taken by her brother Michael. They thought it was hilarious that their hair was standing up, but little did they know they were becoming the connection for the lightning strike. One of the teens was knocked unconscious and suffered third-degree burns. A good reminder that if your hair starts standing up during a storm, you are in danger of being struck!!
You can also use the 30/30 rule for lightning, which is a decent method for safety If you see a lighting strike, count how many seconds after the strike you hear thunder. If it’s 30 seconds or less, that means the lightning is within 6 miles of your location. Although rare, you can also be struck by lightning in your home from a telephone or using a shower during a thunderstorm, as the metal pipes conduct electricity. It is rare, but it does happen.
I think it’s also important to know when severe weather is most likely based on climatology. Looking at tornado probabilities from early March to early July, the “highest” probabilities occur from late May to early June in Indiana.
Here are the average number of tornadoes by month from April to July. Indiana averages 4 tornadoes in April, 6 in May, 5 in June, and 2 in July. The reason for the decrease in tornado activity in summer is due to the jet stream energy shifting north, which is crucial for tornadic development.
If a tornado warning is ever issued this spring, we want to make sure you know what to do! We repeat it every year but is your family truly prepared in case of a tornado? Do you know what to do if ever in a vehicle during a tornado? Here are some tips:
-In your home, get to the lowest, most interior room in your home away from windows and doors. A basement is preferred if you have one.
In a vehicle there are no safe options, but there are things to consider. If the tornado is far enough away and only if traffic is LIGHT, you can try to escape the tornado’s path by moving at right angles to it. The average tornado is 1/10 of a mile wide. You should try to find the nearest shelter if you are in the tornado warned path. If the tornado is approaching and there is no way to get to a shelter, seek shelter as low as you can down into a ditch along the road, covering your head a cushion or helmet. If the tornadic winds are hitting you in your car, or debris is breaking the glass, do not get out of the car. Fasten your seatbelt and duck your head below the window level, covering your self with a jacket or anything to shield from the flying glass and debris.
NEVER ever seek shelter under an overpass! Thinking an overpass is safer is a common misconception that could have a deadly consequence. Winds will be accelerated through the opening, and be a pathway for debris to fly through and trap you. Also consider that the overpass may collapse from the tornado, crushing you.
When planning a severe weather kit in your home….remember HELMETS!!!! This can save your life by protecting your head. This is a must. Also remember shoes!! You want to plan for the worst case scenario where your home is destroyed and you need to walk out without stepping on broken glass and debris.
With spring and summer season approaching, things are about to get busy when it comes to outdoor activities! Does your business revolve around weather and need an accurate, personable weather forecast? Here are some reasons why you should look into what we offer vs. everything else:
Why would I pay for a weather service when I can get free weather on my phone? Relying on free weather information such as free, automated weather apps is not practical if you want to run a successful business. They are solely based on raw computer model output with zero human element. These free apps also have a tendency to send you erroneous alerts about rain or snow coming, even when there isn’t a cloud in the sky! I can’t count with my own fingers how many times I get incorrect snow/rain alerts to my phone. I have more examples than this picture below, but I think you get the point.
What our service can provide you:
24/7 on-call meteorologist support: This is the HUGE benefit of our service!! Having your own personal meteorologists to contact 24/7 is key for sound business decisions whether it’s 3pm or 3am. We alway have a meteorologist on duty to get in immediate touch with! We truly enjoy communicating with our clients whether it’s a high-risk weather event or sunny and 75! We can assist you in every weather situation Mother Nature can bring us. The goal of this is to make your job easier! Stop stressing over a thunderstorm popping up on radar during your event. Have us on-call to tell you what to expect throughout the event.
Accuracy: We HAVE to do our very best to get every detail in a forecast correct. Every member of our team has a keen knowledge of weather patterns in the Ohio Valley. Each storm presents its own challenges. We strive to get every detail in a forecast correct from snow and ice accumulations down to freezing drizzle and fog, and of course, severe storms. We wouldn’t have a business if we didn’t hold ourselves accountable for getting the forecast correct. Knowing the fine-details in the forecast can be the difference between making $5000 or losing $5000. The time has come to quit guessing which local television/radio/app forecast is correct and waiting to check the latest local television forecast. This can take too much time and cause frustration. Think of it this way, it would be wiser to spend $1500 now on a weather service like ours than to lose $50,000 later because you were trying to guess the outcome.
We can also set-up a Thor Guard lightning prediction system at your event. This is better than most systems as this predicts conditions favorable for a lightning strike to alert you ahead of time, instead of other systems that alert you for a lightning strike that has already occurred.
You can inquire at bamwx.com/contact-us or [email protected].
Our commercial personal subscription will get you a daily, detailed local weather forecast (available anywhere in the central/northern Plains to the Ohio Valley), and a long-range forecast. Monthly outlooks out to 6 months always available, and long-range forecasts are updated daily with forecasts based on research and not just pure models. This + the on-call option gives you an amazing package of information and your own personal meteorologist which means you always know what to expect. It’s so much better than any weather packages you have seen before!
For weather enthusiasts who are just looking for updates during active weather, we also offer a $50 per year Midwest Extreme Weather subscription to keep you updated during active weather in the Midwest!!
