Tornado weather

This photo of the sky over downtown Kansas City, MO, was taken today at around 1:00 pm Central by Gary Lezak, a local television meteorologist.

Meanwhile today, tornadoes plowed through the Oklahoma City area, killing four. (Thankfully, from my perspective, the neighborhood where my Dad lives was spared.) Two more people were killed in the small town of St. John, Kansas. And, while I can't find news confirmation on this yet through Google, I have friends on Facebook saying that Joplin, MO, is in the middle of another tornado warning.

Stay safe, everyone. This is getting ridiculous.

EDIT: In the comments, some people have pointed out that this photo wasn't taken by Gary Lezak, but by photographer Scott Cook. According to the comments on Facebook you can buy 8x10 prints of it, with proceeds going to Joplin tornado relief efforts. Apparently, if you want one, you should contact Cook through his Facebook account, or via email at Scott Cook Mail (at) gmail (dot) com. (No spaces in the email. Spaces added in probably vain attempt to keep Cook's email from being flooded with spam.)

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

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TombKing

While I really do miss thunderstorms since I moved out to Seattle I do have have to agree that it is getting ridiculous.

I will stick with earthquakes and volcanoes.
- Anonymous
  
  And the biggest tsunami in the world predicted to hit Seattle giving less than 10 minutes of warning time and with a wall of water that could be as high as 100 feet also predicted. I’ll stick with the tornadoes here.
napstimpy

Aim for the flat-top, and if someone asks if you are a god, you say “yes.”
meehawl

It’s like Bruce Sterling’s Heavy Weather, a couple of decades earlier than expected:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Heavy_Weather_%28Sterling_novel%29
Anonymous

There are a bunch of cyclical oscillations going on in the Pacific that repeat with various frequencies. If you have exactly the wrong set of oscillations (or right set depending on your point of view) you could probably get some insane weather conditions with or without AGW/ACC.

Anyways, that looks like HDR photography. Nice shot
Anonymous

i live there!! here!! i love KC :D
Glindie

I live in Siloam Springs, AR and thus Joplin shows up on my Doppler Radar when I type in my zip code (something I’ve been doing quite religiously all day, what with the tornadoes and all), and while I’m not Google, I can tell you that Joplin is currently sitting under a giant red blob.

In other words, yes, they’re in the middle of another tornado warning. (So are we, for that matter, there go the tornado sirens!)
Anonymous

SF dude who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama who is moving to Arkansas in two days chiming in here:

That green sky fits perfectly with my memories of green tornado skies growing up. I last remember seeing that as a young teenager in my grandmother’s backyard in Center Point. Then my uncle made us all get in the hallway of the house and he piled all the mattresses from the house on us.

I miss lightning, thunder, all that, and am moving back into the belly of the beast. It’s going to be an interesting second half of my life!
Anonymous

That is impressive. I want to show this photo to fellow Kentucky folk when they say the sky is green and it’s actually just dark blue. Not that we don’t get some bad weather around here, of course, but this is really something. The weather seems to really have it out for Missouri this year.
Nimdae

I think the severe weather has passed us now here in Texas (it stretched down that far south). I know there was one confirmed tornado and a bunch of other possible tornadoes, probably all EF1 at most. No info on injuries nor damage. I only saw hard rain, high winds, and lots and lots of lightning, thankfully.

Interestingly I heard the new talking sirens for the first time. They didn’t use to talk, at least not until this year. It scared me because the first sirens I heard, I looked outside and it was really calm. I turned to go back in the house and heard a voice and thought someone yelled, possibly for me, so I turned to find no one was around (strangely quiet even on the main road in front of my house). Then I heard it again “TORNADO WARNING” and then echoing around as other sirens repeated it. Was a bit creepy.
Maggie Koerth-Baker

Yeah, it’s entirely possible that there’s been some color enhancement on this shot. But while I don’t usually have the skill to tell a ‘shop by the pixels, I have seen quite a few tornado skies in my time. That sense over-saturation of color—not just the green of the clouds, but everything—actually fits with my experience of being outside under storms like this.

In other words, it could be ‘shopped. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t.
Jake0748

After living in the Midwest for many years, one thing I learned is that a green sky is never good news.
- PlaneShaper
  
  Yep, I haven’t seen a green sky like since I lived in Nebraska. Such an amazing picture of it here.
cortana

Having grown up in and gone through the 1974 Xenia, Ohio tornado, I don’t really get afraid of storms anymore, I’m just cautious. If I saw this sky, I’d run like a scared rabbit into someplace with a double-basement.
Nimdae

BTW, if you don’t have a weather radio already, I would highly recommend investing in two way radios with the feature (I have a Motorola set). They’re really useful outside of emergencies as well as in case of emergencies such as this.
Anonymous

“What did you do Ray?”
robgonzo

That is a NICE picture. HDR I am assuming.
Here is my photo from Tuesday evening in the DFW area. http://flic.kr/p/9LGFPy
We had large hail and tornadoes in several parts of the DFW area last night.
Interestingly I also took a panoramic shot that I attempted to do some manual HDR on. When I boosted some of the values a green tint emerged. I would have loved to post that one but being a panorama the clouds lost their definition.
tyger11

While I don’t miss thunderstorms since moving from KC to Seattle, I do miss electrical storms. And fireflies. And free parking. Still wouldn’t move back for the world.

Well, maybe for the _world_…
xtalman

I highly doubt that is shopped. Having seen the sky in OK last night the colors really are that surreal looking during a storm out break. When the sky is that color you know to start looking for shelter and get ready to hunker down for a while. They also are pretty surreal after the storm clears out too.
Anonymous

this picture and the asperatus cloud picture have been treated very differently in post-processing. i am a professional photographer and retoucher and would say that this has not in fact been processed much. in fact, contradicting what the many of you are saying about the green in this photo being enhanced, colors work the opposite way. if you look at the buildings that are supposed to be white/limestone, you’ll see there is too much orange in them (which probably means the white balance wasn’t set right). but even then, if you were to take out the red and yellow (orange), the picture would become *even more* green and blue–in other words, the green would be even more vivid!
Bluebottle

The tornadoes ARE the rapture…jump in!
Anonymous

For those that think all weather is a surprise. Thunder storms moved into California last night. Depending on their track they should be over the middle and eastern part of the counrty in two to three days. When looking at weather reports in the northern hemisphere look a little further west than the doppler radar screen to get a heads up.
Anonymous

I have seen green clouds several times in the midwest. I googled
and there are several pages that try to explain them. One thing
for sure…they are GREEN…and they are SCARY
Anonymous

Well-wishes from Georgia. We’re still cleaning up around Ringgold. I hate to think how bad it must be around Joplin, OKC and everybody out there under a tornado watch in the midwest.
buzlink

Nice photo, had to take cover here in KC on the other end of town.
sam1148

I’ve seen the ‘green sky’ before tornado outbreaks.

I would be interested to see what science causes that color, and how it’s associated with tornadoes. Ice crystals, layers of dry and humid air? Etc.
Hanglyman

“Somebody… get me the Ghostbusters.”
chgoliz

In my experience, the process is:

- hot, close air (no wind, kind of hard to breathe);
- sky turns pea green;
- get to shelter NOW.
Enormo

Pressure drop! Oh Pressure! Pressure gonna drop on you!
EH

Surely there are some homespun aphorisms that apply to this image…”Green skies in spring…” what comes next?
- Anonymous
  
  Green skies in spring… honey, take the kids down to the cellar and crouch in the corner with your hands over the back of your neck until the noise stops.
Anonymous

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Enormo

Oh yeah. And… take it away Toots!
- obdan
  
  Nice.. thanks
3William56

Hmmm… how’s all those climate change sceptics doing today?
Would be nice to send a few of them twisters to swing by GOP HQ. A few cadillacs parked on the roof might open some eyes (who am I kidding – they’d just give themselves a tax break to armour their own houses and laugh at the rubes being blown past).

Not a decade to be investing in trailer park homes, methinks.
- NatWu
  
  Yeah, even if a number of mile-wide multiple vortex tornadoes hit us down here in Texas I don’t think it’d be attributed to global warming. Remember, down here the number one cause for things we don’t understand is god. As evidence of this, know that instead of seeing the past winter’s record ice and snow as evidence of climate change, many people saw it as contradictory of global warming. Because a lot of Texans just don’t understand science. I’m sure that goes for a lot of Republicans in other states too.
- greebo
  
  @3William56 – I’m not a climate skeptic, indeed I normally show up on BoingBoing threads just to point out the climate change connection that people seem to be ignoring. But on this one, there’s not enough data yet to demonstrate a link with climate change. That doesn’t mean there’s no link, just that we can’t identify a clear trend yet. See NOAA’s site for a good overview:
  http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/article/2011/noaas-csi-team-investigates-tornado-outbreak
  - Maggie Koerth-Baker
    
    I will second greebo (and the NOAA) here. I’ll be posting something (tomorrow or Friday) about tornadoes, climate change, and the burden of nuance.
  - Enormo
    
    I tend to think that most people (climate change skeptics in particular) attempt to frame the question in terms of causation of a single event rather than an increase in probability that the frequency and intensity of all these events are on the rise.
    
    Given the changes in population density, emergency alert systems, architecture, measurement, and prediction models any comparison of yesteryear to now will probably be apples to oranges. We may have to wait a while for a definitive answer.
    
    That said, I don’t know how an increase in atmospheric energy couldn’t contribute to the increased frequency and intensity of tornados over time.
Anonymous

The green tinge to clouds most often occurs because they were part of a touchdown into vegetation (trees, green fields, etc.) prior to reaching the point of observation. If the clouds are thick, the bottoms are very dark, and the green tinge is enhanced. I too have seen clouds that actually were this color. There is no need to enhance them. As for the insistence that only RAW photo files are valid representations, that is nonsense. While a conversion process may enhance or detract from color values, it does so uniformly. No digital representation is going to be perfect, even RAW. What you look for in order to detect “photoshopping” is uniform pixel wash and pixel size differentiations. Someone mentioned a ‘halo’ effect around objects, and yes, those usually can be seen as well. Few people looking to create sensationalist photos will go to the trouble of matching everything precisely. It’s just too much work. Just IMHO.
robulus

Wait, what? That sky is for REAL? Jeezarz. I’d crawl into the cellar instinctively if I happened upon that. It is not right at all. No sir.
- Anonymous
  
  The color is scary, sure. But the way the temperature goes from 90F at 90 percent humidity to 60F in a matter of seconds kind of makes you want to stay on the porch and enjoy the free AC a little while longer.
Sekino

This sky would be absolutely gorgeous if only there wasn’t a city lying underneath it…

Scary, scary sight.
Anonymous

Gary Lezak didn’t take this. Go to his Facebook page and you’ll find the history. This is the land of the Wizard of Oz, and welcome to the Emerald City.
awjtawjt

OK, I am happy to stand corrected. I’ve seen a green or orange cloud canopy before, but not like this, and not in the Midwest. But if you say it’s so, then I’m on board.
Cowicide

Fact or Fiction?: If the Sky Is Green, Run for Coverâ€”A Tornado Is Coming
- Ugly Canuck
  
  many times I have seen
  the sky take on the colour green
  but no tornado has there been
  - Cowicide
    
    the sky take on the colour green
    but no tornado has there been
    
    I think the folks at that Scientific American article I linked to would agree with you, as would I.
Mister44

And we are just now revitalizing the downtown.

The first wave is over, but the second one is coming. It looks much milder now, but who knows when it finally gets here.
Ignatz

There’s an old Ozark magical tradition about storms: stick a knife in the earth with the cutting edge towards the storm, and the storm will split in half and pass around you. Though for something like this you’d need a knife about two or three stories tall.

Heavy weather has always been a risk in Missouri, more so in the western part of the state. It’s something you live with and plan for.
PTLafferty

According to comments on Gary Lezak’s Facebook page, Gary didn’t take the pic. It comes from photographer Scott Cook, who is evidently selling 8×10 prints of the pic with all proceeds going to the Joplin tornado relief effort. http://ow.ly/5310J
Ito Kagehisa

Any perfectly safe G.E. boiling water reactors in the area? I sure hope not.
AverageJane

The sky was a freaky shade of teal that day. Here’s an unprocessed photo I took from my iPhone around the same time: http://www.flickr.com/photos/averagejane/5761633924
Anonymous

It might be touched up a little, but that’s really what downtown looked like yesterday. The clouds and the hail polarize the light or something and make everything weirdly clear and weirdly colored. In real life, everything looks like it’s been run through an HDR filter. It’s a hard effect to capture in a photo.
opmaroon

RAW or it didn’t happen : )
Anonymous

Actually that was at 1pm *eastern* time, noon local time. By 1pm the sun was shining, and everything was back to normal.
Anonymous

I’ve lived in various parts of the midwest all of my life (Michigan, Wisconsion, Iowa, Illionis), and, like everyone else so far, I can attest to the bizarre colors the sky turns before a tornado appears on the horizon. I’ve always referred to it as a ‘bruised’ sky – I’ve never seen a sky that terrifyingly green – more the unpleasant greenish-yellow with hints of purple and blue – the color a bruise becomes as it heals. I grew up on Lake Michigan, and the sight of diseased sky over gray-blue water will be with me forever!
Anonymous

This is totally doctored. Yes, our cloud cover looked like this yesterday in KC, but the sky WAS NOT green; even if there was a little greenish tint, that green is ridiculous. Here is an undoctored photo from 1pm on May 24th (though it is a wider scope shot, you can tell that Gary Lezak’s photo is extremely exaggerated): http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r137/NJSloan212/Storm2.jpg
rAMPANTiDIOCY

This is what happens when you give the climate-dragon a sex-change.
Thorzdad

When you grow-up in the midwest, tornadoes are never far from the back of your mind, especially at this time of the year. I can’t begin to count the number of boiling green skies I’ve stood under and said a little prayer to myself that the bad stuff would pass us by this time. I’ve watched funnels form and touch-down. Luckily, I’ve never been near a monster like the one that rolled-through Joplin. I just can’t imagine it.

Oh, and we have the occasional earthquake, too. We’re wayyyyyy overdue for another big one.
penguinchris

If nothing else the contrast/black level has been greatly increased, which will accentuate colors like this without actually changing any of the color settings. I don’t disbelieve that this is similar to what it actually looked like, but this is certainly not straight out of camera or minimally processed (I’ve experienced that weird IRL feeling of everything looking oversaturated and computer processed)… but that’s just not how photography works these days.

Straight out of camera photos typically look like the photo Anon #69 posted, and that’s not what the world really looks like either!

A professional photographer will shoot in RAW (typically) and do adjustments later to either make it look realistic or to accentuate things. There’s a fine line there, and it’s pushed at least a little bit to the “accentuated” side here. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a cool shot, but hard to call it documentary photojournalism, exactly.
awjtawjt

I’d like to see the original photo that wasn’t color-enhanced. It’s probably not quite as vividly green.
- JonStewartMill
  
  That was my first thought: “Wow, cool use of HDR!” I have seen green skies before, but nothing that vivid.
  - Caroline
    
    If it’s HDR, it’s been very carefully done. There are no telltale “haloes” around the buildings like you’d usually see in HDR.
    
    I’ve never seen a sky like that, but I’ve always lived in NC.
    
    I always figured when people said the sky goes green, they just meant a vaguely greenish light under dark gray storm clouds. Here, before a tornado hits, it just looks like a particularly nasty thunderstorm outside. Husband & I were actually out driving when the last big tornado hit a few miles away. We had the radio off, so we didn’t hear the storm warning. Until pieces of roof started falling from the sky, I thought it was just a spring thunderstorm — that’s what it looked like.
    
    But apparently, when people say green, they mean green. That sky looks like Judgment Day to me. I’m with robulus — I’d instinctively hide from that, figuring the world was about to explode or aliens were about to invade or something.
    - chgoliz
      
      But apparently, when people say green, they mean green. That sky looks like Judgment Day to me. I’m with robulus — I’d instinctively hide from that, figuring the world was about to explode or aliens were about to invade or something.
      
      When you grow up with it, you know the signs. Yes of course, you get to shelter immediately, but it’s not *alien* to your senses.
      
      Conversely, I don’t know how anyone can live in an earthquake-prone area. That’s what’s alien to me.
- Don
  
  awjtawjt and opmaroon: the picture isn’t exaggerated. The sky really does get that color before a tornado. I’ve seen it several times with my own (wide as saucers) eyes.
opmaroon

Cool shot, wayyy over processed though. I don’t believe for a second that this is an accurate representation of how the scene appeared to the human eye.
- Anonymous
  
  I’m wondering if this photo has been enhanced too. My office is about a mile away from where this photo was taken and all I saw were scary gray clouds.
- jasonq
  
  Cool shot, wayyy over processed though. I don’t believe for a second that this is an accurate representation of how the scene appeared to the human eye.
  
  I can’t speak to this particular photo, but I can say that I’ve seen skies that appeared that color more than once.
- Mister44
  
  Are… are you calling Gary Lezak a liar?
  - Maggie Koerth-Baker
    
    In my imagination, your face asking this question is the same face Mark Twain uses when he asks, “Is … is he dead?”
  - opmaroon
    
    I’d love to be proved wrong but it looks very much like heavy over-processing to me. Much like this famous shot of the recently-named Asperatus clouds.
    
    Massively over-processed.
    
    http://cdn7.wn.com/vp/i/ca/77a8b4e4f0018e.jpg
Anonymous

Where can i find a higher resolution of this picture ? I thinking it looks awesome on my dekstop.
Anonymous

I was on the western edge of downtown yesterday. It did look like that.
jphilby

Nicely done site which posts timely summary of watches, warnings all over: http://wickedwx.com/
awjtawjt

I’m wearing technicolor glasses,
Making the sky appear green like grass is.
I’ll remove them when a tornado passes.
Enormo

If the ocean water is relatively clear and there are waves breaking, try swimming under the waves and look up just after they break. You get much the same effect as the photo.
Anonymous

This is getting ridiculous, I’ll stick with earthquakes, volcanos and the Rapture
Lino

Looks like a modern day version of El Greco’s ‘View of Toledo’
http://frmarkdwhite.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/view-of-toledo.jpg
Anonymous

Nice reference Lino…
BigErnKC

Gary Lezak did NOT take that photo. It was taken by Scott Cook out of Kansas City. %100 authentic on the rooftop downtown KC.
gwailo_joe

Mercy, what a pic. Awesome and terrifying at the same time…

I’ll stick with earthquakes.
Anonymous

Sorry, all you “color enhanced” folks – THIS WAS THE SKY – no color enhancement, no joke.

While I did not take this picture, I DID see this sky.

Keep lying to yourselves.

Repeat after Rush “There is no climate change… There is no climate change… There is no climate change…”
cinemajay

I won’t deny that green sky doesn’t always = tornado, but I’ve never seen anything less than full on shit storm when there is one (hail, torrential downpours, fire, brimstone, etc.).

Also, that photo is accurate, even if it’s been processed. I always thought of it as the sky getting “sick” before it let loose all over humanity like the side of a boat.
VICTOR JIMENEZ

I agree. And that sky looks positively cool.