McNeel Middle School Visit

13News Weekend Meteorologist Justin Gehrts and I made a trip to Beloit today to talk weather with the 6th Grade students at McNeel Middle School. We talked about everything from snow to hurricanes to tornadoes.

As always, we took a few questions to answer on the air (and blog). Javion Peacock asks "What is the most tornadoes a state has had in one year?" We had to do a lot of digging to find this answer Jaivion! ...actually Justin did the digging. According to the Storm Prediction Center Texas had 232 tornado touchdowns within its state borders in 1967. Keep in mind, Texas is a pretty big state. Even though Texas always tops the list when it comes to tornadoes you are more likely to see a tornado in Oklahoma!


Kylie Newland, a fellow 6th grader at McNeel, had a great question. She asks, "Can there be a day with nearly every type of weather?" Looking back through weather records we can find one circumstance where a tornado actually touched down over snow-covered ground. It happened in December of 1970 when a tornado touched down in the mountains southeast of Salt Lake City, Utah. It was up to a quarter mile wide with eyewitnesses reporting that "snow was spiraling around within the funnel." Just last week an odd weather event happened in Abilene, Texas. A Winter Storm Warning was in effect with the temperature around 30 degrees. Moderate snow was falling. However there was so much lift within the cloud that lightning and thunder was observed. Even more rare were the reports of golf ball sized hail! The Weather Service issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for the area...even though the temperature was below zero!

Great questions from all the students at McNeel. We had a great time visiting! -ERIC