Mythbusters and Record Winds

Mon, Sep 11, 2006, 7:06 PM

So what did you think about last week's Mythbusters [JessePedia] episode (which I urged you to watch) involving Hurricane Myths?

They attempted to scientifically prove or disprove the theory that straw can go through a palm tree, and find out if chickens could have their feathers removed by high winds. Turns out both were "busted."

Fans love to nitpick at their episodes and I'm sure I won't be the only one who points these things out, but I also want to expose what they did right. Here's my opinion:

STRAW THROUGH A PALM TREE (BUSTED):

For the straw-through-palm-tree myth, I give them credit for picking a palm tree that actually exists in Florida (eventually they did), and creating wind at the maximum speed ever created by a tornado (318 mph). Ironically, they are mixing their myths there -- the palm tree would seem to indicate that it was a hurricane event in Florida, but the 318 mph was a Doppler-measured tornado speed which could occur anywhere palm trees are (still mostly Florida but also southern California eastward). See below for more discussion on record winds.*

And I also give them credit for trying to put the straw through the bent-over part of the tree (as it might be under wind stress). And it was good that they tested reeds as well as straw. In the end, the only thing they could get to go all the way through was piano wire; the reeds went a few inches in but the straw less than one inch. However, I think they should have also soaked the palm tree in water to simulate rain during a hurricane to see if the straw went through any easier (probably not because rain would never soak a tree all the way through, but you never know). It would have been nice if they had kept the original California Palm Tree to test against the Florida Palm Tree (just for fun!) In fact, since we're confused on the geography (see above), why not test the average tree from Oklahoma where the 318 mph was actually measured.

If you can't get straw through a palm tree, you probably can't get it through a telephone pole, which was what my original post was about. Also, I suspect "sticking in a pole/tree" may have been exaggerated to "clean through a pole/tree" over the years of retold stories.

FEATHERS FROM A CHICKEN (BUSTED):

Spraying air at 318 mph blew nary a feather off the (dead) chicken that they held in front of the hose. However, I think they are missing the point of the myth (though this would have only made it more busted). The myth (that I've heard) was that not only was a chicken stripped of its feathers, it was found alive afterwards. Again, if the chicken were wet, it might make a difference. Over at TornadoProject.com, a site I always recommend to tornado enthusiasts, they have a much more likely theory, which is harder to test:

The most likely explanation (Vonnegut, 1965) for the defeathering of a chicken is the protective response called "flight molt." Chickens are not stripped clean, but in actuality they lose a large percentage of their feathers under stress in this flight molt process. In a predator-chicken chase situation, flight molt would give the predator a mouth full of feathers instead of fresh fowl.

They also say that in 1842, a myth buster test-fired chickens from a cannon and found 341 mph the correct velocity (higher than any documented tornado).

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MINI-SWIRLS?

But the most important issue that makes me cringe when calling both of these busted) is simply the chaos that goes on inside both tornadoes and hurricanes. Tornadoes sometimes occur within hurricanes, or at least Fujita's "mini-swirls" (small vortices of intense wind within a hurricane) can do more severe damage than your standard record hurricane wind. Tornadoes often have multiple vortices inside them as well, which can cause additive damage when you add the wind speeds up, and, in theory might be able to strip the feathers from a chicken without killing it (but probably not). Maybe it's not just straw and wind, maybe something is pushing on the straw?

I could go on and on. Who knows. There are a lot of things we don't know about what happens inside a tornado or hurricane so I would not call these busted yet. Perhaps it will warrant a revisit (they often re-visit old myths based on user feedback). In the end, the Mythbusters did a good job with the information and supplies that they had.

ABOUT THOSE RECORD WIND SPEEDS: A remote Doppler radar measured that wind of 318 mph in the Oklahoma City tornado in 1999, but the observation was "hundreds of feet" high so this record is generally not accepted as the highest wind ever measured (because it was not measured at ground-level by instrumentation).

Mount Washington [JessePedia] maintains the official surface-wind record measured by an instrument (231 mph). Preliminary reports during Typhoon Paka in Guam indicated that this record was broken on December 16, 1997 when instrumentation (which was later found to be unreliable) measured a 236 mph gust.

According to the Guiness Book of World Records, who doesn't think that high-elevation winds such as Mount Washington count, "The fastest surface wind speed at a low altitude was registered on March 8, 1972 at the USAF base at Thule, Greenland, when a peak speed of 333 km/h (207 mph) was recorded."

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