The Tunguska Explosion

The Tunguska Explosion

Tunguska Event Fallen TreesOn June 30, 1908, at about 7:14 AM local time, an asteroid or comet plummeted over the lower Tunguska River, in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, a remote area of Siberia, and detonated at an altitude of 3 to 6 miles. It exploded with the energy of the largest thermonuclear bomb the United States has ever tested, the Castle Bravo bomb, 10-15 megatons. This is one-third the power of the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba. The airburst toppled about 80 million trees over 772 square miles of Siberian taiga, and would have registered at 5.0 on the Richter Scale.Thankfully, no one was killed, because the nearest eyewitnesses were about 40 miles away from ground zero. They reported seeing a bright blue column of light streak across the sky, almost as bright as the sun, then a flash, and a report like artillery fire right beside them.For one hundred miles around the epicenter, people were blown off their feet by the shockwave, their clothes were scorched off, windows were shattered, and trees seared to death and blown over. Iron locks were snapped off barn doors.This detonation was more than sufficient to incinerate the entire population of Japan, the Sao Paolo metropolitan area, the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, or the entire United States’s New England megalopolis from Boston to Washington, D. C.

 The 1999 Bridge Creek F5 Tornado

F5-Tornado-Hits-01-AfOn May 3, 1999, a tornado outbreak lasting for 3 days, began with a bang, when an F5 formed at about 7:12 PM local time. This tornado was the most powerful windstorm ever recorded on Earth, at 318 mph. It killed 36 people, and traveled northeast from Amber, OK, through Bridge Creek and Moore. Moore is a southern suburb of Oklahoma City, and had the tornado veered north into the city, it would have probably caused more deaths than any other tornado in history, and become the costliest.8,000 houses were obliterated. It shredded large vehicles with debris, and then wrapped them around telephone poles, threw them completely through warehouses, whipped 2x4s through wheel hubs, and pine straw all the way through 8-inch-thick pine trees.This was the first time that the local weather stations reported over radio that if residents were not securely underground, they would be killed. Hiding under mattresses in bathtubs, in ditches, or under overpasses was insufficient.