F5 Tornado Hits Dallas, Texas

An interesting series has appeared on the Weather Channel - "It Could Happen Tomorrow". It describes the worst events that could happen, with low probabilities and high destruction. Last week it was a Category 3 hurricane hitting New York City, flooding the city and destroying many homes in the area. That one was good, although it jumped quickly from scene to scene and showed Hurricane Isabel over and over again in rapid time-lapse satellite photography. They said the next episode would consider what would happen if an F5 tornado hit Dallas.

Well, now it happened. An F5 tornado struck Dallas in the Weather Channel's second installment of "It Could Happen Tomorrow". It started with Oklahoma City instead, with that tornado in Moore with its 318 mph wind. It imagined what if that were to occur in downtown Dallas. It did point out some interesting things. The same weather that generates the tornado also would generate flash floods and large hail, and that would by itself cause huge traffic jams. Then the tornado would strike and send shards all over the place, including entire cars. It showed battered buildings afterwards and said it would take Dallas years to recover from it. But I felt it did not show enough of the damage that it would cause - no pictures of huge flocks of flying cars striking skyscrapers and gouging them out.

Further, the story ignored tornadoes that hit Nashville, TN, and Fort Worth, right next door to Dallas, in recent years. That Fort Worth tornado produced some rather battered buildings. Further, it dealt with a less than 1 percent chance multiplied by the area of central Dallas divided by the area of then entire Great Plains - something like one in several million at least.

But I think it did show with some effect what would happen if this event were to happen.