Friday, November 23, 2007 Tornado unlikely: weather bureau
A TORNADO reportedly struck Olango Island at the height of tropical storm Lando last Monday afternoon, cutting off power, uprooting some trees and destroying six houses.
But a weather specialist in Mactan said a tornado is very unlikely at the height of a storm because it is dependent on the atmosphere and a steady cloud formation.
The Australia severe weather website said tornadoes develop from large, very severe thunderstorms or from lowered rotating bases known as wall clouds.
Nobody was injured in Barangays Talima, San Vicente and Tingo where the weather phenomenon struck. But the houses of Junel Abais and Benjie Arong in Sitio Rubber in Tingo were damaged after a gmelina tree fell on them.
A roof of another house near the shore of Tingo was torn off by the strong wind.
In Talima, three houses were also wrecked when a gmelina tree smashed on them.
Electricity in San Vicente was not yet restored as of 2 p.m. yesterday after one of the electric posts of the Mactan Electric Cooperative was toppled by the strong wind. “The wind was so powerful,” Josephine Maloloy-on, a resident, said in a phone interview.
Maloloy-on, an aunt of Arong, said that when they noticed the strong wind, she asked Arong and his family to take refuge at her house, which is made of concrete.
Tingo liaison officer Melchidech Dagatan said part of the house of Norma Adolfo in Barangay Talima was destroyed when a coconut tree fell on it.
The waves at the time were also huge.
But Al Quiblat, a weather specialist of Pag-asa, said the cumulonimbus cloud has its own characteristics. It acts like a giant vacuum, producing turbulence as soon as its accumulated temperature differs from its surrounding atmosphere.
But its coverage is less than a kilometer and the time span of its devastating strike is very short.
“If the strong wind covered three barangays it was not ipo-ipo (water spout) or tornado. What happened in Olango was because of tropical storm Lando,” Quiblat said. (AIV)
