Tornadoes in Duluth?

No, probably not.

But not impossible, either.

I don’t actually think much about the possibility. But when NOAA put out a cool new graphic mapping the frequency and intensity of tornadoes in the US, I thought about the axiom I’ve heard – that Lake Superior protects Duluth from tornadoes, and I wondered if it held water, historically speaking.

NOAA reviewed the previous 56 years of tornadoes touching down, it looks as if the North Shore has in fact, been spared of too many touch downs:

Click to enlarge. Image via data.gov. Data courtesy National Weather Service.

Isn’t that a cool graphic? Makes you wonder what’s happening, meteorologically speaking, that splits the country in half. Mountains, sure. Same thing over along the Appalachians. But what do the mountains do exactly? How do they affect the air? Hmm, a question for another day.

But what about us? Of course, NOAA isn’t particularly concerned about Duluth. But we are, so let’s zoom in a little closer:

Interesting. As I look at this, I see maybe a couple close to Duluth, and neither of those particularly large (heavier line indicates stronger tornado).

A little more searching shows that, since 1950, Duluth has had 9 tornadoes at level F2 or higher:

Data from usa.com

And of course, who remembers the details of the F-Scale? Not me – here was the original:

• F0 (Gale)
• F1 (Weak)
• F2 (Strong)
• F3 (Severe)
• F4 (Devastating)
• F5 (Incredible)

I love the adjectives.

Slightly less exciting, and perhaps more understandable:

And to really geek out on the metrics of a tornado, you can visit the Enhanced Fujita scale site: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/efscale/

So do we get tornadoes? I suppose we could. But in the same way that really good winter storms seem to have a tendency to miss us with depressing regularity, so too do tornadoes.

Kind of fun to do a quick little research on something that strikes your fancy, isn’t it?

Springtime in Lester Park

Took a stroll through Lester Park in the morning, instead of my normal afternoon/evening. Cool to see things in different light.

Here’s a nice big white cedar down in the main playground area:

Lester Park is great, because there are some really big old trees that seem to have escaped the logging that was happening all around this area early in the 20th century. Common wisdom says that this lower section of Lester Park is old growth, although I wonder about that. I suppose it’s possible that these are actually second growth trees that are 100 – 150 years old, and that have been growing after first being logged when the Duluth area was initially settled. It’s just hard for me to imagine that so much lumber, so close to the lake would have been left. Doesn’t seem like forbearance was  part of the culture of that time. On the other hand, everyone seems to agree that this is an ‘old growth’ forest, from the city of Duluth to NRRI to local historians.

Maybe my definition of ‘old growth’ is too exclusive?

White pine seed dispersion, via the foamy Lester River:

Over on the other side of the park, the Amity Creek wasn’t as foamy:

Old growth, second growth, or just good growth, I can certainly say that I am lucky to be so close to a treasure like Lester Park.

Deer Leg

I’m guessing wolves or the coyotes got this one.

What’s interesting is how they pulled off the easiest meat, and then were done. Okay, I guess no surprise, really.

I was surprised with how soft were parts of the hooves. I was also surprised at how disinterested the dog was in this leg. I would have guessed she’d have wanted to gnaw on it for a while, but she sniffed it and moved right along. It was also interesting how, when I came back a few days later, someone had hung the leg up on a tree branch. I’ve seen a lot of deer legs on tree branches. Something in our collective psyche about that. I’ve gotta say… our collective psyche is a little weird.