2011-05-22 Joplin, MO tornado thread

[rdale]

Good news that they are finally cutting back on the tests. Bad news that they sound for a tornado warning in two neighboring counties as well "just to be on the safe side." Mike?

 

[Mike Smith]

Joplin is doing exactly the wrong thing. The flawed "Service Assessment" itself cites warning fatigue as a factor in the disaster. No one cares about "test" fatigue, people know that with a clear sky it is a test.

Now, when the tornado is two hours away (40 mi. in western Cherokee Co. moving at 20 mph) and they sound the sirens...and sound them again ten minutes later, no one will remember the activation 1 hour and 50 minutes later when the tornado finally arrives (if it hasn't dissipated by then).

Too many EM's think we are still in the 1970's when it comes to tornadoes. I offer more thoughts here: www.mikesmithenterprises.com/2012/02/error-on-the-side-of-safety/

 

[Aaron Kafton]

Hi, I'm a photographer that lives in Joplin Missouri. I made a horrible attempt at chasing this tornado. Pretty much made every mistake possible and I'm very lucky to be alive. (I've since made a great effort to educate myself and get the proper tools to spot and chase storms) I noticed one or two of my photos posted in this forum so I thought I might share the higher resolution copies with you and show you the rest of the photos from this event.

In this photo, taken at 5:49 (if the time on my exif data is correct) I'm looking directly at the tornado, which is on Main st about a mile away. I had no idea. Local news radio was actually saying it was south east of me, so I drove further NW until I realized just how much I messed up, drove through a front yard to get turned around and gunned it out of there. Honestly thought I wasn't gonna get out of there alive.

Here's the rest of the photos I shot of the aftermath http://www.flickr.com/photos/clovenlife/sets/72157626831687047/with/5748994963/
Oh, and the car is sitting on fertilized dirt outside of home depot.

 

[James Aydelott]

I'd be curious to know how many current members were influenced by a close encounter when they were younger. Have we done a poll like that already?

I'm with Mike Smith in this too. Tulsa: June 8, 1974, December 5, 1975.

 

[PDailey]

Inside St. John's...starts at the :51 second mark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vgKzq58UMNM

 

[Shawn Schuman]

Hey guys, I just got done writing a blog post about the Joplin tornado and I'd love some feedback on it. Between family issues and researching it took a loooong time to finish, so to be honest I didn't even proofread it. I'm sure there are mistakes, so if anyone reads it please feel free to let me know if I messed something up.

http://stormstalker.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/joplin/

 

[Mike Johnston]

Loco,

Read your blog post of the Joplin tornado and it was superb. I didn't even find so much as a comma out of place. You're obviously a gifted writer and I hope you'll continue your good works. The photo's were outstanding in their own right, well-placed and it's clear you put in meticulous research.

It's still kind of hard to put the Joplin event into perspective. I've read Mike Smith's book about it probably 3 times over now. While I can grasp "why what happened, happened" intellectually, it's still hard to accept a 100+ fatality count in this day and age...so it bugs the heck out of me. While the area is on the periphery of tornado alley, I always understood the people in that area were pretty weather-wise as my family is from the nearby areas of Pittsburg and Ft. Scott, Kansas.

 

[Shawn Schuman]

Thank you for the kind words, Mike! I've been meaning to get Mike's book, I'll have to make a note to remind me. It really is difficult to believe such a terrible death toll in modern times. I'd always assumed the only way we'd see a 100+ death toll again would be with a sporting event or other large public gathering, or if a tornado struck a major metro area during rush hour. Outside of those situations, I think Joplin was just about the "perfect storm" in terms of fatalities. The tornado being so massive and so rain-wrapped is bad enough, as it reduces the visual cue that many people unfortunately look for before sheltering. But add to that the extremely rapid intensification, generally awful construction quality, a track directly through the residential heart of the city, a complacent public and a bit of bumbling by NWS and others, and you've got the recipe for a historically deadly tornado.

In some sense, I think being "weather-wise" was part of the problem. Several of the people I spoke with alluded to the fact that they were used to bad weather, and they knew what to look for when a severe storm or a tornado was coming. Of course, with the Joplin tornado those usual signs they were looking for may not have been much help. I guess that's more a problem of perceiving themselves to be more weather-wise than they are. I intended to cover the "How did this happen?" angle in my post as well, but there's been so much written about it and I didn't want to look as if I were copying someone else or regurgitating old information.

 

[Michael Towers]

Hey guys, I just got done writing a blog post about the Joplin tornado and I'd love some feedback on it. Between family issues and researching it took a loooong time to finish, so to be honest I didn't even proofread it. I'm sure there are mistakes, so if anyone reads it please feel free to let me know if I messed something up.

http://stormstalker.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/joplin/

Very well written and documented account of that tragic event. Having been on the storm prior to it hitting Joplin I can agree with your description of it as “messy and disorganizedâ€. When the main cell was near Neutral (view on the photo is from the WSW) it did for a short time exhibit a low rain free base with a broad area of circulation. However it soon became enveloped in heavy precipitation and from my perspective lost any visual sense of structure. With visibility very limited, the cell moving toward a large populated area and other cells firing to the south I decided to abandon the cell and go after a different target. Minutes later the merge happened and subsequently the birth of one of the deadliest tornadoes in history.

Along with the meteorological documentation I liked the incorporation of the human experience into your account. For those interested in more of the human experience of surviving the Joplin tornado I’d recommend the book “5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornadoâ€. I also recommend Mike Smith’s excellent account of what went wrong with the warning system in his book “When the Sirens Were Silentâ€.

I saw this table in a study, while slightly more than half the deaths occurred in a residence (if you include the nursing home) a large number were apparently out and about and likely not aware of the impending danger. Preliminary locations of deceased:



1 Academy Sports Store
1 AT&T store
5 Elks Lodge
7 Full Gospel Church
21 Greenbriar Nursing Home
3 Harmony Heights Baptist Church
8 Home Depot
2 Meadows Healthcare Facility
14 Outside (6 in vehicles)
5 Pizza Hut
11 Residences - apartments
54 Residences - single family home
2 Stained Glass Theater
15 St. John Regional Medical Center
9 Unknown
3 Walmart
1 Officer killed in the line of duty

I found the study to be quite informative, please forgive if it’s already been linked:

http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/ncst/upload/NCSTACJoplin110411.pdf

 

[Matt Ashworth]

I remember driving across parts of rural Oklahoma to the SW of OKC late May/early June in 2011 and seeing very evident tornado damage from what I believe was the same storm system that hit Joplin (though I could be wrong on this). I'd seen plenty of storm damage before but not houses torn apart, sheds and hangers twisted with their roofs missing...and from what I was told the damage I witnessed was almost nothing compared to some parts of Joplin. I still can't really wrap my mind around such a high fatality rate for that storm or even just the sheer destruction that it caused to that city. We've had a fair number of tornadoes out here in Colorado in recent years but I certainly hope that nothing like that hits here. Nobody around here would really know what to do if something that powerful were to hit a town or city here.

 

[Jim Parsons]

2 days after Joplin(May 24) Piedmont, OK got hit by an F5....That might be what you saw. The Joplin storm fired up much closer to the OK, KS, MO border.

 

[Matt Ashworth]

2 days after Joplin(May 24) Piedmont, OK got hit by an F5....That might be what you saw. The Joplin storm fired up much closer to the OK, KS, MO border.

Potentially. I just remember hearing that what I saw and what hit Joplin was around the same time. The areas I saw damage in were Dibble and Newcastle, OK. There was a house in Dibble that had most of its roof torn off and a fair number of walls that had been stripped of nearly everything but the frame, and debris lined the highway through Newcastle for miles.

 

[Shawn Schuman]

That was probably the result of the Goldsby and Chickasha EF4s, which passed near Dibble and Newcastle respectively. They actually both produced damage that was nearly (and, in the opinion of many, should have been) EF5 at some points along their paths. But more on topic, I don't think I've ever seen such widespread urban/suburban destruction than in Joplin. It wasn't even so much the degree of damage -- which was obviously extremely significant in itself -- but just the scale and density of destruction was staggering. Although they're obviously so different for many reasons that a comparison can't even be made, I think this lends some perspective: the Tri-State tornado is estimated to have destroyed somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 homes along its 219 mile path. The Joplin tornado destroyed around 7,000 homes, most of them within about six miles.

 

[Joshua Nall]

If your curious to see the actual tornadoes that caused the damage you saw.... The First is the one that went near Newcastle, before it got to Newcastle. And the second was taken near Dibble. As stated though, this wasn't the same day as the Joplin tornado.

 

[Matt Ashworth]

Thank you Josh and loco for the information and the photos. As for the statistics provided by loco...wow. Just wow. I wouldn't necessarily call it a fair comparison (mostly because the Tri-State tornado didn't really pass through larger towns and the Joplin tornado ripped through the core of a decently sized city) but it definitely helps to put things into some perspective.