1997-05-27: Jarrell, TX F5

[calvinkaskey]

Well the NWS should take it into account when there is a slow moving ef 5 and no basements in an area that usually doesn't have a lot of violent tornadoes

 

[calvinkaskey]

689 people could've survived 90 years ago if they hadn't been in the tornado's path.

That tornado was moving like 55-73 plus mph

 

[Shawn Schuman]

There's absolutely no way the NWS nor anyone else would or should advise people to get in their cars and flee a tornado. That's just completely irresponsible and dangerous. For one thing, there's no way to tell the intensity of a tornado while it's in progress, so the idea that you'd only make such a recommendation when there's a "slow-moving F5" is flawed from the start. For another, 99% of the time you're much safer sheltering in your home than getting into your car. Even a weak tornado can seriously injure or kill you in your car, while the majority of people survive in their homes even if they're struck by an EF5. Jarrell was an extreme aberration - in fact, it's the only tornado I can think of in which the survival rate in the core of the path was zero - and it would be deeply misguided to base any sort of policy on that.

But even if we ignore all of those things, what's going to happen when you tell people that they can't survive in their homes and they need to flee? Traffic jams, car accidents, and mass panic. The odds are pretty good that that'd be worse than the tornado itself, especially when you end up with potentially hundreds of people (or more?) stuck in their cars on crowded roads with a violent tornado bearing down on them. That's a good recipe for mass fatalities.

 

[calvinkaskey]

Why should the NWS take this into account on a general basis? Like I said, this event was an exception to the rule as far as most tornado events go.

Not as a rule but in these cases if possible esp in rural areas where little chance of congestion
I don't see how this should be suddenly pinned on them. For this case in particular, the survivability rate within the core of the tornado's path was very low, but that rarely applies even in the strongest tornadoes.

 

[Donnie Beasley]

There's absolutely no way the NWS nor anyone else would or should advise people to get in their cars and flee a tornado. That's just completely irresponsible and dangerous. For one thing, there's no way to tell the intensity of a tornado while it's in progress, so the idea that you'd only make such a recommendation when there's a "slow-moving F5" is flawed from the start. For another, 99% of the time you're much safer sheltering in your home than getting into your car. Even a weak tornado can seriously injure or kill you in your car, while the majority of people survive in their homes even if they're struck by an EF5. Jarrell was an extreme aberration - in fact, it's the only tornado I can think of in which the survival rate in the core of the path was zero - and it would be deeply misguided to base any sort of policy on that.

But even if we ignore all of those things, what's going to happen when you tell people that they can't survive in their homes and they need to flee? Traffic jams, car accidents, and mass panic. The odds are pretty good that that'd be worse than the tornado itself, especially when you end up with potentially hundreds of people (or more?) stuck in their cars on crowded roads with a violent tornado bearing down on them. That's a good recipe for mass fatalities.

Unless you are the amazing Calvin Kaskey!

calvinkaskey said: ↑
There are lots of weak short lived tornadoes that aren't recorded. Ne pa had 4 tornadoes in an area of maybe a 6th or less of the area of pa. There were two in my county in N.Y. last year, one wasn't reported. I got 10 full minutes of tornado video in eastern NC last year. I might have gotten another tornado in W.V. but I got lost. I hit several tornado warnings in extreme southern Ohio, I might have seen something but I went into the woods, instead of being in an area of high visibility where I was at the time of the warning. You also don't have to go out west to get 70 mph winds from a t-storm or large hail. I was chasing two years ago and my house got hit with golfball-sized hail and I live in N.Y. lol. Two years ago I also got a video of what looks like an intense f-2 funnel cloud in N.Y.

 

[Mike Z]

If I'm not mistaken the tornado wasn't moving more than 20 mph and could have easily been outrun and everyone could have been saved if they got into a vehicle in time.

I read it was moving like 5 MPH. It explains why the damage was so bad.

I was gonna make a thread asking why this storm moved West, but.. it looks like the answer is muddy and uncertain.

 

[Jeff Duda]

I read it was moving like 5 MPH. It explains why the damage was so bad.

I was gonna make a thread asking why this storm moved West, but.. it looks like the answer is muddy and uncertain.

It actually moved southwest. This was because the updraft was anchored to a dryline/cold front and there was insufficient flow to push it off the boundary (not to mention the fact that if the winds were strong enough to push it off the boundary, a tornado of that strength may have never materialized).

 

[GPhillips]

My post on the radar loop in a different thread on this tornado indicating a movement toward the south-southwest at about 15 mph:

https://stormtrack.org/community/th...s-of-the-1997-jarrel-tx-f5.29664/#post-348792

Also, the NWS Disaster Survey Report/Service Assessment on the event if you haven't seen it:

https://www.weather.gov/media/publications/assessments/jarrell.pdf

 

[Mike Z]

Piece of information I found interesting about that day.

"As the thunderstorm’s updraft developed, its rapid acceleration helped to pull in vast quantities of hot, muggy air near the surface. The air raced in toward the center of the storm before being violently propelled upward, creating such a contrast in speed and direction with the air above that the storm began to produce its own wind shear. The resulting local shear, or storm-relative helicity, generated rotation parallel to the ground called horizontal vorticity. This rotation was soon ingested into the storm itself, where the vigorous updraft tilted it vertically and began to spin. A supercell was born."

- https://stormstalker.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/jarrell/

 

[Brian McWatters]

There is now a video showing the formation of the Jarrell tornado in its entirety. It was shot from a distance and it is not a continuous shot, but it is as good a view of the formation as we are likely to get. It was posted to YouTube in January 2018. The video was shot by Don Svadlenak, Holland Texas Justice of the Peace.

The video I linked above is an excerpt from a presentation by Waco TV station KCEN about the May 27 1997 outbreak. The video is introduced at the 22:54 mark.

 

[Scott Wiley]

Some of the best views I've seen of the tornado at max intensity were in the short video segment from the 20th Anniversary TV special. Absolute beast.

 

[Jeff Duda]

The anniversary of this event recently occurred. Some newer video has surfaced (although I think it is more a return of previous video that had been lost in the intermediate):

The first 10 minutes of this one are pretty high quality and detailed. You have to skip through the remainder to see it as a larger tornado. To be honest, I don't think there exists video during the point of transition of this tornado from its incipient stages to the monster it became.

See also this sequence of videos (the same one as from Brian's post above). The long segment of one of the earlier tornadoes was some pretty quality home video from before the cell-phone era:

Also some "light" reading in the scientific literature on this event (note: it's not light...it's actually pretty dense stuff):

https://t.co/fd4MtFCZLX?amp=1

https://t.co/Dfkl3dLeWQ?amp=1

https://t.co/UpTbz9wwRy?amp=1

From what I have read, it is pretty remarkable how tornadoes of this intensity occurred given the environment was generally unsupportive of both supercells and significant tornadoes (see the first article). It is also remarkable how rare such a setup has seemed to be in the years since - we seem to have rarely, if ever, seen such an event since then!

 

[Brian McWatters]

Here is a link to a new page made by the NWS for the 25th anniversary of the May 27 1997 tornado outbreak:

May 27, 1997 Central Texas Tornado Outbreak

It includes meteorological analysis I had not seen before. There are new interviews with Lon Curtis among others.

There is also a personal account from Joe Baskin, who apparently issued the tornado warning for Jarrell. He writes:

"Working for the NWS, I was returning from working away from the office. About 3 PM, parking the Gov car I noticed vicious looking storm clouds to the northeast. I went into the NWS office and noticed no one on the radar console. Having several years experience with doppler radar I sat down and started tracking the storms. The storm system was developing rapidly toward the southwest and gaining intensity. I thought to myself, all hell is fixing to break loose. The leading edge had reached I35 and was turning SSW. I issued the tornado warning for Williamson County including and naming the city of Jarrell. The warning was issued about 20 min before the storm hit Jarrell. Storms began to jump out west near Del Rio but my main focus was this storm now hitting the west side of Jarrell. It was continuing south toward Georgetown that was the focus of my next warning. There was a sickness in my stomach watching the radar as it hit Jarrell knowing what was happening under the storm. Later hearing stories from Jarrell of people that when they heard the warning sirens go off they closed their businesses in town and were home when the storm hit, I wondered to my self if 20 minutes had given them too much time to respond. I have seen many a strong storm in my career including the Wichita Falls tornado and numerous smaller tornado events and large scale flooding events. Jarrell still puts a pit in my stomach."

 

[Angel Escobales Jr]

Bumping this thread with a new take on an old classic. Tracked down the gentleman who shot this iconic video of the Jarrell F5. Remastered in 1080p60 from a VHS duplicate, this is as good as this video will ever look:

 

[Jamie H]

I hope @Angel Escobales Jr doesn't mind me sharing the new video he has put together, trying to create a proper timeline for this tornado. It's a good effort and worth watching.

In addition, Blake Natfel has uploaded a bunch of the raw KWTX video, of which the final few clips show the quite astonishing ferocity of the tornado.

It cannot be embedded here, but is available at:

 

[Randy Jennings]

I happened upon some in-depth media coverage of the 25th anniversary of the May 27th, 1997 Jarrell TX tornado that are perty cool.

KWTX (Waco) 17 min interview with Lon Curtis (off-duty meteorologist and avid storm chaser who documented most of the tornados that day in Central TX with amazing video for 1997). Note: Audio track is interview on one side and audio from his videos on the other side.
Jarrell Tornado Lookback with Lon Curtis - YouTube

KXAN (Austin) 26 min video with survivor interviews and video:
Jarrell tornado survivors remember ‘The Last F5’ to hit Central Texas, 25 years later - YouTube