tornadoes

Top apps to track severe weather

Though the official 2013 hurricane season is from June 1 to November 30, the news earlier this week out of Moore, Okla., is a sobering reminder that dangerous weather comes in many forms, and you often don't know where the next disaster may strike. Even now, many states are being pounded by heavy storms as the cleanup from the tornado in Moore is still under way.

Recently, I collected a few weather apps that are great for a quick glance at the weather, but those apps won't help you much in severe weather conditions. For more-serious weather activity, … Read more

Could storm-chasing UAVs help predict tornadoes?

In the wake of the colossal tornado that rampaged through 17 miles of central Oklahoma, plans for storm-chasing UAVs are taking on new significance.

Students at Oklahoma State University have been working on "storm-penetrating air vehicles" that could help cope with deadly tornadoes.

The aircraft are "designed to penetrate thunderstorms, including the supercells that spawn tornadoes" to gather data used to predict storms and warn people about them, the university said in a release. … Read more

AT&T, Sprint waive overage fees for Oklahoma tornado victims

AT&T is trying to do its part to help victims of the Oklahoma's massive tornado.

The carrier will bring in extra telecommunications resources to the affected area and will waive overage charges for affected customers through June 30.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by the tornado," the company said Tuesday. "We are coordinating with local authorities and bringing in additional resources. We recommend text messaging for communications with family, friends, and loved ones given heavy call volumes."

AT&T subscribers who want to aid the Red Cross in its … Read more

'Tornado Junkies' try to build twister-proof van

What would happen if you could take "The A-Team" and "Storm Chasers" and put them together in a blender? You'd get something like Tornado Junkies.

As their name suggests, this trio of young men are crazy about tornadoes. So crazy they think they can build a tornado-proof van.

Yes, this $5,000 Kickstarter project wants your money to build an armor-plated Ford to carry these Des Moines dudes down Tornado Alley chasing twisters. … Read more

Massive solar tornado caught on film

Astronomers have captured images of a solar tornado five times as wide as Earth, providing clues into how solar storms form.

Scientists at Aberystwyth University presented a movie of a solar twister yesterday at the National Astronomy Meeting in Manchester, England. The images were collected last September by a telescope on NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) satellite, which tracks variations in the sun to help predict space weather.

Solar tornadoes occur when super-heated gases get sucked up from sun and spiral towards its atmosphere. Along the way, these gases, traveling at about 185,000 miles per hour, drag magnetic … Read more

The 404 890: Where we put a tornado in your hurricane (podcast)

Don't dump your Apple stock before you listen to today's episode, because Wilson's going to tell us why Apple will survive the resignation of Steve Jobs. Wilson lets go of a couple tears before we lighten up a bit with a slightly less upsetting fact: the Web is older than incoming college freshmen.

You mad yet? What about the fact that most incoming freshmen don't anything about the OJ Simpson trial, or that they'd rather be like LeBron than Mike? Oh, and Ferris Bueller could be their father.

After the break, we'll address your concerns about the podcast feed, tell you why we stopped Tang That Tune, and reiterate an important point to remember: all Asian people are not tech experts!

The 404 Digest for Episode 890

Steve Jobs resigns from Apple (CNET roundup). Aww man, the Web is older than incoming college freshmen. Future PlayStations could read you like a book. All Asian people are not tech experts!

Episode 890 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Twitter inundated with tornado-photo hoaxes

I'm not exaggerating here--for a brief while on Thursday evening in New York, the weather felt so apocalypse-by-way-of-Hollywood that I wouldn't have been a bit surprised if I had spotted Godzilla stomping down Sixth Avenue from the vantage point of the midtown Starbucks where I'd taken refuge from the intense wind and pummeling cloudbursts. There were, in fact, two tornadoes making mischief in the neighboring boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens that evening.

So when an impressive photo showing a tornado in ominous proximity to the Statue of Liberty began making the rounds on Twitter, it was perfectly … Read more

Facebook wastes no time putting FriendFeed to work

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Facebook has unleashed a Tornado, and it's hoping that some eager engineers will go catch it.

Earlier this month, Facebook released the open-source Web server framework called Tornado, which powers the real-time streaming behind its latest toy, social feed aggregator FriendFeed. And on Wednesday evening at the office that most recently housed the FBFund incubator program, senior open programs manager David Recordon and director of products Bret Taylor held a "tech talk" to pitch Tornado to a crowd of several dozen interested members of the Web development community.

"We had actually been planning … Read more

Facebook open-sources real-time FriendFeed facet

Facebook announced on Thursday that it has open-sourced recently acquired FriendFeed's real-time technology. Dubbed Tornado, the company's real-time, nonblocking framework is written in Python.

"Tornado is...designed to handle thousands of simultaneous connections, making it ideal for real-time Web services," Facebook's David Recordon wrote in a blog post. "While Tornado is similar to existing Web frameworks in Python (Django, Google's Webapp, Webpy), it focuses on speed and handling large amounts of simultaneous traffic."

FriendFeed co-founder and new Facebook Director of Products Bret Taylor said in a blog post of his own that … Read more