EquusStorm

My apologies, I'll shop roadkill into the photo sometime later today. Totally forgot to add it at the time! Or, we can pretend the girl to the left is a deer carcass. Imaginaaaaaation~

Very well then, I'll settle for just a little nibble, rather than devourment. I can be reasonable!

I wish to devour your soul, but we can work out some sort of time-share agreement if this option is considered unpleasant. Yes my slasher smile / rape face thing is quite well-known

I made that quite a while ago to help visually describe which tornado was on the ground at which time, I really think I need to go back and update it now that surveys are finalized (a few are missing from the AM rounds)

Here's a before picture of that location. That particular area in Phil Campbell has always sent chills down my spine, from a damage perspective; I know that little intersection very well. That's looking down Pinion Drive from Jackson Hwy (237) - basically ground zero, on the right side of the center of the tornado as it barreled just south of the town. I went through that area a few months after the tornado and it's just ridiculously depressing. In that picture, to the right, a dense forest of mostly pines once stood along with three or four frame homes along the highway; the tornado shredded and debarked every single tree in that grove and swept two of the homes completely and cleanly off their foundations (I can only assume there may have been fatalities in them, as there were 26 deaths in the town, about 2% of the entire population of Phil Campbell) - indeed almost every house in a quarter mile of this location was flattened or swept away. On the left, in this picture, atop that hill, once stood a large brick house with a daylight basement; the tornado swept the entire home into what once was dense forests off further to the left, leaving only a few small pieces of debris on the home site and a huge gaping pit where the basement was dug. All that remains now to suggest a house ever existed there is a few bricks along where the basement used to be, and a mailbox near the driveway. All the forests here are bare ground now. That vehicle there remained in the ditch for many months, a testament to the storm's power amidst bare ground and empty foundations. I haven't been there in several months but the last time I was, the residential area south of Phil Campbell was a stark landscape of numerous empty foundations and occasional mobile homes / new home construction. With Google Earth Street View, it's apparent that the now barren area was once fairly heavily forested. From a before and after perspective, I can easily see how even long-time residents would have been completely lost after the tornado, as every landmark in this particular area was gone. Ironically, though, as if a beacon of hope, amidst the shredded forest off to the right in that photo, a single cabin-like home survived the tornado with apparently minimal damage, and as far as I know still stands, with only debarked fragments of tree stumps where the forest that surrounded it once stood. How it survived is beyond me but it's a small symbol of hope for the future and remembrance of the past - how Phil Campbell once was, and what it will be in the future. The healing process may be slow, but it's definitely occurring. S of Phil Campbell, June 2006 July 2011

Oh yes, definitely. The difference between EF1-EF2 damage and EF5 damage is staggering and sad. The EF3 damage from 2002 was the worst I'd seen until April 27, and the Hackleburg area was my first experience with EF5 damage (plus Cullman, Bridgeport, Tuscaloosa, Argo Hill, and Sipsey at EF4). Across the road from the Wrangler plant, back in July, you could see hundreds of pairs of jeans and white shirts hanging in tree snags and shrubbery, mixed with twisted metal from the plant itself. It was incredibly surreal. They cleaned it all up now, though, and I lost the photos in a HD crash. All that was left in the immediate area last time I went through was one twisted piece of metal that was part of the entrance gate, along with two perfectly healthy river birches near the destroyed sign for the plant; how those survived is beyond me. That was the center of the path and the tornado was a mile-wide EF4/low EF5 at that time. In Phil Campbell especially, it was very sickening to look at all the clean slabs and know for a fact that 26 people died in the area. There's really very little that can compare to that feeling. But Hackleburg and Phil Campbell are very small towns. Going back to the topic of this thread that I have kind of sidetracked, I can't begin to imagine how awful the scene must have been in Joplin, a city of 50k, in the aftermath of a massive EF5 that plowed straight through the middle of it. Even seeing the pictures probably does no justice to that damage. Just glad to know the city is recovering pretty well. Best wishes for the folks up Missouri way.

The trees, oh yes. I've always noticed that surviving trees bear some of the most fascinating (and alien-looking) reminders of tornadoes. Just a couple miles from the house, I go through an area of branchless trees with foliage clusters on their trunks every time I head for town, a reminder of the Saragossa F3 back on Nov 10 2002 that killed 7 people. And a trip to Hackleburg or Phil Campbell shows the same thing there, a landscape of broken tree snags, downed timber, and the occasional alien tree sticking up partially debarked and without branches but bearing clusters of fresh foliage from new growth along the trunk. It's both encouraging and sad, fascinating and bizarre.

Wow, that's even better news. Looks like Joplin may come out of this even better and safer than before. Shame it took an EF-5 tornado to start the process though :<

It's so great to see that the rebuilding process in Joplin is coming along so nicely. Sure, there'll be a few issues here and there, but all in all it sounds like things continue to improve.