- #1
Dotini
Gold Member
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I thought this story was a serendipitous twist on quakes and clouds. It gets me to thinking about the coupling of the lithosphere to our atmosphere.
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/2583-harrisburg-tornado-seismogram.html
The deadly storms that struck the Midwest and South last week were so strong that they created seismic waves.
One of the twisters that struck southeastern Missouri and southern Illinois on Feb. 29 passed through a seismic detection array that includes more than 100 state-of-the-art digital seismographs across the U.S. heartland. While seismographs have been known to detect seismic activity related to tornadoes, it is highly unusual to have the instruments recording information so close to a tornado, the researchers said.
"In examining the seismograms, we recorded unusual seismic signals on three of our stations in southern Illinois," said Michael Hamburger, a geologist at Indiana University and one of the researchers conducting the experiment. "The seismograms show a strong, low-frequency pulse beginning around 4:45 a.m. [local time] on Feb. 29. Our preliminary interpretation, based on other seismic records of tornadoes, suggests that we were recording not the tornado itself, but a large atmospheric pressure transient related to the large thunderstorms that spawned the tornadoes."
Respectfully submitted,
Steve
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/2583-harrisburg-tornado-seismogram.html
The deadly storms that struck the Midwest and South last week were so strong that they created seismic waves.
One of the twisters that struck southeastern Missouri and southern Illinois on Feb. 29 passed through a seismic detection array that includes more than 100 state-of-the-art digital seismographs across the U.S. heartland. While seismographs have been known to detect seismic activity related to tornadoes, it is highly unusual to have the instruments recording information so close to a tornado, the researchers said.
"In examining the seismograms, we recorded unusual seismic signals on three of our stations in southern Illinois," said Michael Hamburger, a geologist at Indiana University and one of the researchers conducting the experiment. "The seismograms show a strong, low-frequency pulse beginning around 4:45 a.m. [local time] on Feb. 29. Our preliminary interpretation, based on other seismic records of tornadoes, suggests that we were recording not the tornado itself, but a large atmospheric pressure transient related to the large thunderstorms that spawned the tornadoes."
Respectfully submitted,
Steve
