Keeping a weather eye on Chattanooga's horizon

An occluded mesocyclone tornado. This tornado was forming while the new circulation was beginning to form the tornadoes which preceded the F5 Oklahoma City tornado.

I heard it just the other day while walking past North Shore's Collective Clothing: "Our mountains protect us from tornadoes, since we're surrounded by them."

Each time I hear that, I'm taken back to my 6-year-old self: Petrified, clutching a metal basement banister in East Nashville with one arm, my father's leg with the other. I'm screaming over the mounting pressure in my ears, refusing to let him step one foot farther up the stairs. He debates whether or not it's safe to leave the basement and see what remains of my childhood home. Just shy of my seventh birthday, all I know is that out there, above ground, is not where I want to be. We'd already made one run through the barrage of glass from shattered window panes that came hurtling toward us as we raced against time to safety, the tornado rolling in like a freight train.

"Yeah, the tornadoes can't really get to us," another voice along Frazier Avenue calls out.

I'm back in my former basement again, desperately screaming "NO," my father moments away from opening that door. Then comes the second boom - that same formidable, ear-splitting sensation caused by the first cylinder of wind as it wrought unfathomable destruction. It feels like hours, although I'm sure it has been only seconds. The second wave departs. With it goes our roof, our toys, our trees and our other worldly possessions.

My mind's eye flashes to a vision of myself driving back to Chattanooga from Nashville, years later, on April 27, 2011. The day a similar tornado devastated so much of Apison, Harrison and the surrounding areas. It took trees, it took cars, it took homes - it took lives.

"Our mountains protect us." It's a saying residents are all too familiar with. And it's certainly a nice thought. But as we learned five years ago, tornadoes can - and do - cross mountains.

"Since I've been here, I've constantly tried to say it isn't true: The mountains don't stop thunderstorms, and they don't stop tornadoes either," says Channel 3's Chief Meteorologist Paul Barys. Even now, the fifth anniversary of the April 27 F4 tornado looming, not everyone listens.

For outdoor enthusiasts, this myth can be particularly dangerous. An unsuspecting paddler, hiker or camper can be caught by surprise, unprepared for a weather emergency.

And tornadoes aren't the only such emergency. Much more common - and just as dangerous - are lightning strikes, which kill an average of roughly 50 people per year in the U.S. and injure an estimated 500. Lightning can hit five or six miles away from a storm system, on occasion striking nine or more miles from the storm. With bolts heating up beyond 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, "a lot of the time, the people who don't die wish they had," says Barys. "It can be extraordinarily painful and have lasting effects."

The biggest problem, he says, is the belief of "Oh, it won't happen to me." But it can. It happens every day.

At one point, it nearly happened to Barys himself. While watching his daughter's soccer game one day, he saw her hair stand on end, a telltale sign that a lightning strike could be imminent. "It wasn't raining yet," he recounts, "so the coaches didn't want to stop the game." He took his daughter off the field anyway. Moments later, rumbles of thunder began to roll in with the rain.

When lightning strikes

Cars provide somewhat of a safe haven from lightning, thanks to the frame, which can absorb the impact of a strike. But sometimes, attempts to get to a car aren't successful, as T.C. Cox found out the hard way while leaving work one evening last year.

Running to his vehicle from the Orange Grove Center, where he worked as health and recreation coordinator, he felt a sudden, shooting pain, coupled with an intense force pushing down on the top of his head. Suddenly, all he could smell was hot, burning metal. Then he realized he was on the ground, curled up in a ball and bleeding.

"Everything just kind of went away for a little bit," he says incredulously, rubbing his head where the spark struck him.

Luckily, Cox wasn't directly hit by the bolt, which can be more than five times hotter than the surface of the sun. He believes the bolt came off a direct hit to the large tree that hangs over the center's track. "It's just a negative and a positive doing one simple purpose, but it's so powerful," he says. "No matter what I've ever done or thought my entire life, it can beat me quicker than I [could] noticed it ever happened."

Since the strike, Cox has quit his job at the center to focus on dealing with insomnia, the reoccurring panic attacks and other neurological side effects which emerged suddenly as he backpacked through mountains in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park with his girlfriend and best friend last fall.

Following California's drought, Cox and his friends ended up camping on the Pine Ridge Trail during the first big rain the area had seen in years. He thought he would be fine. But he quickly realized that wasn't the case.

"We had just gotten our tents set up and thought, screw the rain gear, it hasn't rained in really a year. But of course, as soon as we got our tents set up, we heard the thunder. And it was mildly embarrassing to be around your girlfriend and one of your best friends having an uncontrollable, seizing, tearful, hyperventilating panic attack in the middle of the woods while doing what you know fully well you know how to do. But I totally lost all control," says Cox.

"It's still an ongoing battle with PTSD, which sounds really dramatic but there have been some really intense panic attacks, coupled with depression," he adds. "Any time you face death, it makes you look over your shoulder a little bit."

Suddenness triggers his body's uncontrollably panicked response, he says; the kind of panic you know is irrational but also seems unshakable. Slowly but surely, desensitization therapy has helped that feeling dissipate.

"I haven't gone back yet," he says, referencing the mountains where he experienced his first post-strike panic. "But it's in the plans."

Brewing a storm

Each year, the United States experiences roughly 100,000 thunderstorms, according to the National Severe Storms Laboratory, though many of those storms are not particularly noteworthy.

For a storm to form, there are three key ingredients needed: moisture; rising, unstable air; and a force lifting that air. The sun, in heating the earth's surface, warms the air above it. When that air is forced to rise, it doesn't stop rising as long as it is warmer and lighter than the surrounding air. Then, that rising hot air transfers heat to the higher atmospheric levels - a process known as convection.

From there, water vapor cools, releases heat and forms the cloud and the storm. As the air and cloud rise, cool air present in the higher altitude to which the cloud climbs creates small bits of ice that bump into one another as they move, causing a buildup of electrical charges.

The negative charges sink to the bottom of the cloud, leaving it with a negatively charged base and a positively charged top. When the positive and negative charges get big enough, a spark occurs: lightning. Sparks can either occur within the cloud (as most of them do) or between the negative charges in the cloud and the positive charges on the ground.

From storm to supercell

April is typically known as the worst month for tornadic activity in East Tennessee, as it was in 2011 when that fateful multi-day siege of tornadic activity struck the Southeast. That year, 288 tornadoes killed 316 people across the Southeast: 234 in Alabama, 32 in Tennessee, 15 in Georgia, 31 in Mississippi and four in Virginia.

The South's warm, moist air actually creates the perfect climate for such superstorms.

When that hot, humid air meets cool, dry air and forms a storm, if air keeps getting pushed, it can begin to form the funnel of a tornado, especially when rapid wind direction change or exceptionally powerful wind is present. This is why the spring months from March to May are commonly known as "tornado season," because that instability in the atmosphere is fairly common. Fall is a secondary, although lesser-known, season for tornadoes.

What to do

That knowledge doesn't need to bring fear of the weather, just a level of respect and understanding. And luckily, Barys says, technology today can make it virtually impossible for severe weather to sneak up on you.

Weather radars are an easy first defense. Now made to be compact and portable, most feature settings options that allow the user to narrow down alerts to a specific county or area. Basic knowledge of cloud formations and the weather conditions that create severe storms can also help prevent a serious situation before it occurs. I think it will be important to briefly explain each cloud formation.

Should you find yourself truly trapped in the wilderness during a severe storm where lightning is close by, position yourself near the smallest trees around - only a canopy of trees, though, never a singular tree in a field. Picnic tents, pavilions and other temporary structures will not shield you from lightning either. Remember, a car is a better bet than any of those structures.

If none of those options are possible, crouch down, remove all jewelry to avoid risk of burns, toss electronics away from you and sit on the balls of your feet to minimize ground current in case lightning strikes nearby, he advises. Tucking your head will minimize the likelihood of the strike traveling throughout your body.

Speaking from experience, Cox says looking foolish for a moment is worth being spared a serious strike. "Just don't get struck by lightning. Just don't."

Barys says having a plan is the best thing you can do to protect yourself from any dangerous facet of a storm.

"You just need to be prepared," he says.

Beyond that, he adds, it's just the luck of the draw - no matter how many mountains are around you.