83rd Annual

Monday, 10 February 2003
Radar wind speed and housing damage during the F-5 tornado at Moore, Oklahoma
Donald W. Burgess, NOAA/NSSL, Norman, OK; and G. Stumpf, J. Wurman, D. C. Dowell, Y. Richardson, and M. A. Magsig
A violent tornado occurred at Moore, OK, on 3 May 1999. Previous research by the authors has documented the damage (in a GIS framework) and estimated maximum wind speed from Doppler on Wheels (DOW) radar observations. This paper/poster will relate the location and distribution of DOW winds to the housing damage in the area of southwest Oklahoma City/Moore where F-5 intensity was briefly estimated. The DOW observations are complicated by the fact that the DOW was moving during the time period that the observations were collected. A technique of ground target recognition has been used to orient the DOW observation of high wind speed. Details of the technique will be shown, including incorporation into GIS coordinates. The rectified DOW data are compared to GIS-rectified aerial survey images that locate each house and its F-scale estimate.

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