Here's a quick hit. Apparently a tornado touched down at DIA today, landing about 5000' off of the east terminal. Word is that it took out the NWS Doppler Radar station, which relayed a radar picture showing a clear-centered tornado core just before it went dark.
There are tornado shelters in the airport; I'm guessing a direct strike on the main terminal would result in severe loss of roof canopy, though.
PS - Updates: the doppler that caught the nice tornado core image was apparently the terminal radar system, not the NWS system. Reports are "no damage", so perhaps the NWS weather station survived and was just knocked offline...
Posted by Scott Fricke on June 18, 2013 at 11:41 PM
John and Les, I used to design and build architectural fabric structures like DIA's roof. They are actually very stable, inherent in the shape of the roof (anticlastic surfaces) and the fact that they are prestressed. Some of the ones I was involved in were designed to withstand winds of over 300 MPH which is about the record for tornado winds speeds like the one recently in OK and classified EF-5. On top of that they are over-engineered with safety factors as high as 7 times the design load. Now a direct hit right over the top would in all likelihood create a collapse, just as almost any other roof system would. The biggest weakness of fabric structures in a tornado scenario would probably be the risk of flying debris slicing into the fabric (the 'fabric' is fiberglass mesh coated with multiple coats of teflon).
Why take the Dopplers to the Tornado when the Tornado comes to the Dopplers? I guess it wanted its Demille closeup.
Seriously, that looks wicked and scary. Good to hear no injuries. While the structure is strong, I am fairly sure an airport would not be a place to be.
Awesome scary image Les. I flew into DIA last night around 9:30 so we missed the tornado. We did get to sit on the tarmac for 45 minutes after landing because of lightning. Apparently nobody wanted to come out to the pad to "marshall" us in. I did see on the news this morning that several passengers had to de-plane and go to the storm shelters when the twister was hanging around. Guess I shouldn't whine about waiting out the lightning.
No shot from me, I was at work, but even if i hadnt been i probably would have been farther south. This was a non-mesocyclone tornado (landspout, similar to the florida waterspouts) and as such you really cant predict them in advance or even see much on radar as they are developing. My friend Cameron did get a good shot of it though--his photo was on the Weather Channel the other day. My weekend was spent doing the post i just posted
Discussion
10 repliesHere's a Twitter pic of the funnel for those who are interested. http://t.co/xQfod3JzST
Surely that airport was built to withstand tornadoes given it's location. Anyone know for sure?
PS - Updates: the doppler that caught the nice tornado core image was apparently the terminal radar system, not the NWS system. Reports are "no damage", so perhaps the NWS weather station survived and was just knocked offline...
Seriously, that looks wicked and scary. Good to hear no injuries. While the structure is strong, I am fairly sure an airport would not be a place to be.