Scott Offerman Tornado Case Study

“I just remembered while running to the bathroom, the windows all blew in and the second my dad closed the door everything went to grey. No idea how long after that I regained consciousness, but I finally woke up in the rubble of the house and everything was just gone” said by Scott Offerman as he recollects horrific memories of the day his house went up by the Plainfield tornado of 1990. On August 28th, 1990 an F5 tornado had blown through Plainfield, Illinois with no warning or sirens. Scott Offerman’s family wasn’t the only family to lose everything they had that day, hundreds of stories could be told by families as many were affected. After the Plainfield tornado of 1990, many weather researchers had looked into why no sirens or tornado

On August 28th, 1990 no tornado watches or warnings were released, until several minutes after the tornado had brought havoc onto Plainfield. For the NWS to release a tornado watch, merely means the conditions are possible. Typically severe thunderstorms produce tornadoes, and when the watch is released the atmospheric pressures are favorable to the storm producing tornadoes. On the other hand, tornado warnings are much more serious and requires immediate action. When the NWS releases a tornado warning, there is information either that a human observer had spotted the tornado or the rotation had shown on their radar with a low level rotation, but powerful, when atmospheric conditions has the ability to conduct tornadoes. But, on August 28th, according to “Will County Winds of Fury” published by The Herald News, the Plainfield tornado had actually started it’s path near Pecatonia, in Winnebago County when Illinois State Police reported the tornado on the ground at 1:42 p.m. At 2:08 p.m., golf ball sized hail had struck Rockford and numerous funnel clouds were now being sighted. Then, Dekalb County reported marble sized hail in the northwest part of their county at 2:30 p.m., when the NWS issued the first severe thunderstorm warning for the day at 2:32 p.m., only for the northern part of Kane County. By this point, meteorologists were intrigued with the storm as if it had a mind of its own. Typically, storms travel from the southwest to the northeast, but this particular storm cell was traveling northwest to the southeast with extreme power. But by late August, tornadoes at this time of year are weak. At 2:54 p.m., in northern Dekalb tree and crop damage was reported but by 3:10 p.m. three-fourths of an inch of just rain had fallen in Dekalb. As the storm continued southeast it continued into Aurora which was hail reported again and the storm sabotaging 30 airplanes