Tornado vs. Turbines: Wind Farm Mania
From AccuWeather's WeatherMatrix blog, by Jesse Ferrell
Ever since I visited the local wind farm in 2007, I have been interested in wind turbines, despite their unproven problems. Last year, I blogged about the dangers of wind turbines in the paths of hurricanes. Today (hat tip to Michael Wade Moss) this video surfaced from the November 7 tornado outbreak in Oklahoma. Click here to start the video at the part where the tornado starts moving over the wind farm, or skip to 2:21 below.
This is something I've always been interested in seeing -- how a wind turbine would stand up to a twister. Basehunters was lucky to get this video. It doesn't appear to be a large, particularly strong vortex, but this tornado has not yet been rated on the EF Scale, according to the NWS. As Michael says in his blog, the turbines don't appear to be damaged, and I couldn't find any reports that they were, but I suspect there could be less obvious internal or external damage. Ironically, the November 7 tornadoes also destroyed a weather station in Oklahoma.
Wind turbines are suppose to brake their blades at the "cutoff speed" (usually 40 mph) or otherwise mitigate potential damage from high wind speeds. It's possible we're seeing that in the video (that's why some are spinning and others aren't, and they appear to turn into the wind). However, I would guess that those procedures are not tested for tornadoes.
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