City Twisters Beat The Odds
Fort Worth joins a growing list of urban areas of the United States to have taken tornado hits. CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that while the odds of a twister hitting a downtown area are long, there's special danger when one strikes the glass canyon high rises of a big city that's rolled snake eyes.
About 1,200 tornadoes touch down in the United States every year, but few hit densely populated areas.
"Mathematically, the United States will see an urban tornado once every year, once every other year," explains Joe Schaefer, director of the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center.
Jim Thacker, Nashville's emergency management director, thought downtown areas were generally twister-free until a tornado tore through his city's central business district. Believe that if it can happen it will," he now says. "That was the biggest lesson I learned there."
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According to the National Storm Prediction Center's Dan McCarthy, "There are many wives' tales out there about tornadoes in general, and especially about tornadoes and downtown areas."
When it comes to explaining the relative barrage of recent city twisters, the experts have a rather simple response. "It's more coincidence than anything else," McCarthy says.
Big cities are still small targets when compared to the open prairies tornadoes mostly roam. Unfortunately, the people of Fort Worth landed on the wrong side of those odds.
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