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A professor of physics in the US has proposed building massive walls in the region known as Tornado Alley to prevent the violent wind-storms that cause so much death and mayhem.
The walls, tall as skyscrapers and 50m thick, would help stop northbound warm fronts colliding with southbound cold fronts – the fateful clash that gives birth to deadly tornadoes.
Tornadoes form from “supercells” caused by the clash of warm and cold fronts (Wikimedia Commons)
They would cost around $160m per mile to build but the savings, in terms of human lives and billions in property damage prevented, would be worth it, argues Professor Rongjia Tao, of the Department of Physics at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Tornado Alley is a tornado-prone area running north-south in the middle of the US, encompassing northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.
The devastation wrought by tornadoes was exemplified in May last year when one struck Moore, Oklahoma, killing 24 people, injuring 377 others, obliterating more than 1,150 homes and causing an estimated $2bn in damages…
Read the rest of the article at GCR
