Oklahoma – Wind, humidity and rainfall combined precisely to create the massive killer tornado in Moore, Okla. And when they did, the awesome amount of energy released over that city dwarfed the power of the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima.
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Meteorologists contacted by The Associated Press used real time measurements to calculate the energy released during the storm’s life span of almost an hour. Their estimates ranged from 8 times to more than 600 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
Scientists know the key ingredients that go into a devastating tornado. But they are struggling to figure out why they develop in some big storms and not others. They also are still trying to determine what effects, if any, global warming has on tornadoes.
A ridiculous comparison by the media. The Hiroshima bomb killed with the heat & force of a thermonuclear reaction. Not wind & pressure. The bomb killed 75000 instantly and a similar amt died from radioactive poisoning over the next year. The tornado had the power of an ant compared to the A-bomb.
I concur with #1 ; the comparison was asinine!
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were never abandoned. While parts of the city were uninhabitable because of the damage, people worked near and in the city immediately after the bombings.
this is because of the nature of the explosion. While there was a release of radioactive material secondary to the explosion, the amount of material was relatively small. And of that material a significant fraction was converted to energy. Of the remaining material it was spread over enough area to reduce the intensity of radioactivity at any one spot. The people who died later of complications of radiation did so because of genetic damage at the time of the explosions, not because of ongoing exposure.
To #4 -Benjey- If you would read accounts of what occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you would note that there were streams of thousands of refugees, who were abandoning those cities, because they were totally uninhabitable! Nearly half of the victims died from direct exposure to radiation. At the time, the victims had no idea what radiation was, and their injuries puzzled local doctors, who had never dealt with such injuries before.