By CEDRIC COLLINGE,
GREG MINOR JR.,
BRYANT VENOSDEL
Does Alva’s geography make it tornado proof?
Absolutely not, according to a tornado expert, who said just plain luck is the reason no tornados have been recorded in at least the last 100 years.
David Payne, chief meteorologist at News 9, has been storm chasing for years and knows what it takes for a tornado to form and then touchdown. “Tornadoes cross valleys, tornadoes cross mountains, tornadoes cross rivers, tornadoes cross lakes,” Payne said. “Tornadoes come from thunderstorms. It’s what happens with the moisture and what’s happening several thousand to many thousands feet up, a tornadoes formation is not determined by whether it’s over a valley or it’s over a lake.”
Alva won’t always be safe, Payne warned. “Alva will eventually have a tornado, whether it be this year, five years, 20 years, or in a 100 years,” Payne said. “Alva will see a tornado eventually.”
Tornadoes are one of the most common natural disasters that occur in Oklahoma because Oklahoma sits in Tornado Alley.
This term is generally used by the media to describe the area that has a frequent number of tornadoes. The moniker Tornado Alley was first used in 1952 to describe parts of Oklahoma and Texas. Tornado Alley refers to the southern plains area in the central U.S.
Payne said the reason Oklahoma is considered Tornado Alley is because the state is east of the Rocky Mountains and close to the Gulf of Mexico, making it a prime breeding ground for tornadoes. “Our moisture source is from the Gulf and is really intense,” Payne said. “If the Gulf were not here, you and I would be living in a desert, my friend.”
Despite expert opinion to the contrary, many people think Alva’s geography keeps tornados out of town.
“You can see it yourself,” said Chuck Lightfoot, a retired pastor from Alva. “You drive in from any direction into town and you’ll notice that you’re driving downwards into a bowl. You’ll see high winds and storms coming through all day long, but nothing’s formed in Alva, and if some tornado did form around here, it’d likely divert to a leveler ground.”
Even though Alva has been tornado free for many decades, it is still important to be prepared if one does happen to come through.
Phil Murry is a farmer who has land he lives on south of town. Besides his livestock, being able to protect him and his wife is the most important thing on his mind.
“I grew up out here, and on the side of the old farmhouse we had, there was a basement we would get in if any bad weather came our way,” Murry said. “When I eventually inherited the land and had a new house built, a storm shelter was something that was a must.”
Murry isn’t a doomsday prepper by any means, but he does have a sturdy underground storm shelter that he keeps stocked with canned food, water jugs, flashlights and an emergency kit among other things someone would need if trapped and help wasn’t near.
“If a tornado does come through, you need to be able to have supplies that can last you at least a week,” Murry said, “Disaster situations like tornadoes are something no one expects will happen to them, but thinking like that is foolish.”
Not everyone has a storm shelter right outside their front door, so people may have to go to a designated public storm shelters in Alva that are at the Alva Nazarene Church, 728 College Ave., and Alva Methodist Church, 626 College Ave.
If you do end up in one of these shelters during a storm or tornado, you will want to hope that Chris Eckhardt just so happens to be there too.
Eckhardt is a teacher from Alva High, who has been in the Army and knows how to handle stressful situations, just like what a tornado would bring.
“The key to prevailing from any type of situation like that would be to remain calm and collected,” Eckhardt said. “Panicking is going to show weakness in a time when you need to be strong, and that is really going to bring down the morale of the people you are with. In a situation like a tornado, your first priority is to find shelter first and stay away from windows, “keep low and also keep a head count of the people you are with so everyone is accounted for.”
Anatomy of a tornado
Tornadoes don’t care what town they are going through or how much damage they cause because they are on a path of destruction every time they touchdown.
It has just recently been the anniversary for the deadliest tornado to come through Oklahoma that touched down just an hour southwest of Alva. On April 9, 1947, the F5 tornado came through Woodward, killing 116 people.
A tornado is a violent, rotating column of air that extends from the base of a thunderstorm to the earth’s surface. People may have called them twisters or cyclones, but they are all the same thing.
A tornado is categorized by its wind speed, how wide it is spread in its area and the distance it will travel before dissipating. An average tornado will have wind speeds less than 110 mph, stretching about 250 feet wide and traveling up to 3 miles before the tornado begins to wind down and dissipate.
Tornados are determined or rated by using a tornado scale known as the Fujita Scale or F-scale, created in 1971 by Tetsuya Fujita and Allen Pearson. The scale’s purpose is to rate tornado wind speed and damage intensity.
The scale has six different levels— F0 up to F5— with F5 being the most violent types of tornadoes. In 2007, the scale was modified and renamed the “Enhanced Fujita Scale.” The wind speeds and damage indicators were revised, but the six levels remained the same.
The United States averages 1,200 tornadoes per year with 80 percent of them being F0/EF to F1/EF1. Only less than 1 percent of the tornadoes that occur reach the disastrous stage of F4/EF4 or stronger. The most disastrous tornado recorded in United States history was a tri-state tornado that traveled through Illinois, Missouri and Indiana. The deadliest tornado in recorded world history killed more than 1,300 people in Bangladesh in 1989.
Though it is nothing to boast about to people around the country, Oklahoma holds an abundance of records statewide related to tornadoes. Oklahoma has the record for most tornadoes in a single day at 5, which happened May 31, 2013.