So this week I will be beginning multipart seris on severe weather.  It wont be about the usual, lightning and so on, however more uncommonly seen severe weather such as this weeks topic of a Micro Burst.

Of all the forms of severe weather, such as tornadoes, lightning, and hail, it might be hard to believe, but wind is the most deadly of all of these forces.  More people are killed by wind than tornadoes every year. Whether it is straight line wind from a thunderstorm or a microburst, wind is the real killer.  Of all wind related events, none is more sever than that of a microburst.

A Microburst is essentially a rapidly descending column of air, also known as a downdraft, the forms at the base of a thunderstorm super cell.

These straight line wind make determining whether or not the event was a tornado or mircoburst fairly easy, because all the damage is blown out from a single location.

Though it is still debatable whether it was a tornado or a micro burst,  a micro burst was possibly responsible for taking down one of Northwest Pennsylvania’s most historical sites.  The Kinzua bridge, once the tallest railroad bridge in the US and at one time the world.