mappy

Some reports of bricks off buildings here in Baltimore

where is NEBaltiZen? I wanna know how it felt in a high rise

Still cannot place outgoing calls here in MoCo. Stupid people are still calling 911 I bet.

good to know - my mom cannot get a hold of my grandmother who was supposed to be in rockville today

That's what a couple school resource officers thought when they called it in to dispatch

I work in the city, is assumed that was the case. Until I looked outside and watched construction workers running away from the edge of a building roof they were working on, thats when the second shake occurred, much stronger than the first.

I won't lie, I thought at first a truck hit my building. Then when the second shake occurred, I just sat in my cube and went "awesome" while my coworkers are running out of the building.

anyways... back to irene...

THAT WAS AWESOME

Note to self: next time earthquake hits... don't be in a building in Baltimore

Wow, thank you for sharing that JoMo.

BTW, getting back to the warning system and whether or not it's adequate..I heard a story from silver lining tours. They almost got caught in Joplin when the tornado hit, but quickly tore ass out of there before it came into town. They warned everyone going west into Joplin to turn around...that a tornado is coming. Many just laughed and headed right into Joplin. It just goes to show you people sometimes will never believe warning. There are stories from other instances where sirens went off and people called dispatchers saying..."well I don't see it..." It's human nature. People get complacent when warning after warning goes off and a tornado never happens. They hear a siren and if they go out and don't see it...it doesn't exist. Of course many know to take warnings seriously, but there will always be a large part of the population that just doesn't get it.

We have all these things now...Tornado warning...tornado emergency...heck most people don't even know what the difference is between a watch and a warning.

This. My mom, who has watched me become obsessed with the weather over the years, still doesn't know the difference between the two... no matter how many times I try to explain it to her. Also, the radio station I listen to during my commutes always mix up watch and warning when there is one for us. The last tornado watch we had, the radio host kept saying "and we have a tornado warning until 8pm". I wanted to call in and correct her, but didn't.

As for those who don't take warnings seriously - a coworker from St Louis called me yesterday to tell me about her evening on Wednesday, how warning after warning was issued for the area and she said she eventually got tired going to the basement. She said she just sat in her living room and watched the news, heard about the baseball size hail falling in downtown St. Louis and laughed to herself about I would be upset that she wasn't taking the warnings seriously enough. I didn't get upset, but did voice my concern over how she really shouldn't do that because one of those times where she decides not to go to the basement is the time the tornado will actually be there.

Another very interesting detail.

I've heard that be described by people who have been through tornadoes before, the smell of fresh cut grass.

JoMo - glad to hear that you are okay. Thank you for sharing your experience with us, and I'm sorry to hear that you lost people you knew.

Wow posted this earlier in the May 21-22 severe thread when someone asked about whether they heard from JoMo or not.

No. The possible good news is that I don't believe he's on the missing list, assuming the name I believe is his is correct: http://c580804.r4.cf2.rackcdn.com/2011.0526.1000.pdf

Yes, KML (Keyhole Markup Language for those not familiar with the term) has really enabled the geographically enthused population to map features in software such as Google Earth. In term of meteorology and the Joplin, MO tornado a person could take a picture of damage, reference it with standard lat/lon coordinates and then upload the file in KML format for anyone to view on the web. This really emphasizes the connection between geography and the earth sciences.

That is exactly what I was thinking! My husband, who also works in the GIS field, as done simliar KML maps for his company (a transportation engineering firm) and he has taught me a few things about KML as he learned it too. I keep hoping for some free time at work so I can mess around with it.

Thank you for the compliment, it's now a part of my sig

Yes, I make KML files for NASA on a weekly basis. I think I'm going to hold back on the KML until I get enough data in. I considered a rough overlay of the SPC reports, but since they are in decimal degrees it's not as spatially accurate as I'd like. Disclaimer: I'm not bashing SPC at all, they do an excellent job!

I agree with you on decimal degrees and you are welcome for the compliment

I need to brush up on KML, play around with it some more. My mind is going crazy thinking of all the cool things you could with the data.

Yes, and I'm looking to find point locations of damage reports (ie: where a tree was de-barked or a car was flipped over) and add it into the map as a reference. Unfortunately, that information has yet to be released.

Well, from someone who works with GIS daily, it's a fantastic map!

Have you worked with KML files (google earth) before? It would cool if you could take those storm reports points with the attribute data and export them to KML files so they can be opened into GE for people to view (Norman did that with the tracks, but didn't have anything you could click on).

I took the liberty of making a map in the Geographic Information system (GIS) software ArcMap of the Tornado as it went through Joplin. My intent is not to rub in the damage, but rather to provide a geographical reference for those not familiar with the area. Data was provided by the National Weather Service as well as the Jasper and Netwon County offices of emergency management and department of public works. Please refer to the latest media releases by the aforementioned agencies.

Nicely done!

Did you buffer out the width of damage along the line?

I'm sure some people read this but others may have not - Beau was able to get some information on JoMo's location over in the Central subforum.

Go this message from someone online

[/url] May 23 at 10:05pm Beau, I saw your question but was unable to respond, so decided to do it this way. Schifferdecker was NOT wiped out - the tornado touched down right past there and it was farther south than 23rd. So, I'm sure that whoever you have living there is okay - maybe without electricity, but that's minor compared to other options. Hope this helped!

And then there was this

Best news I've read all night just posted below...

Brenda Seidel I have a friend who lives about 1/2 up from Shifferdecker on 23 st terrace - she is on the south side and doesnt' have power, but the other side of the street does. She has no damage to her house, but some have minor damage.3 minutes ago

Let's hope that is great news regarding JoMo and the neighborhood.

According to MSNBC, the death toll is now at 90

that isn't strong enough wording. the warning should have said large and extremely dangerous tornado. and there should have been a tornado emergency.

For all you know there wasn't enough time to put out a new warning with the dangerous part in it. That tornado dropped and grew in size VERY quickly, not to mentioned moved at 45mph.

It's easy for people to make judgements on what the NWS should have done when its over and done with.

holy crap

Oh and I should add - in the top picture, the car to the far right in the front row that is practically buried, didn't move all week. It sat there through both storms, the plows and the shoveling of others and was never touched. We didn't see the owner of the car come out to investigate until that following Saturday.

Some pics: sorry for the backwards timeline... I uploaded the pics in the wrong order.

34 inches in Crofton which was the closest snowfall report to my location in Odenton, truly epic and amazing.

My funny story to share is my husband and I going to the grocery store Thursday night. We didn't need the basics (we had gone earlier in the week before the news got serious about the threat) but we did want junk food and booze for the weekend. So here we are with our little cart filling up on cookies, chips/dip, fatty breakfast sandwhiches, ice cream, frozen pizza and appitizer meals while everyone else is clearing out the store of bread, milk, TP, eggs, fruits/veggies and meat. We are standing in line, our cart just a little over half full looking around at people with overflowing carts or even multiple carts just FILLED with endless amounts of the basics, like the world was coming to an end. We were given dirty looks, people were even making comments under their breath about how we were not going to survive the weekend on just junk food. It was incredible.

The woman who rang us up at the register smiled and thanked us for not going crazy and giving her a small break from the endless amounts of purchases she had been ringing up for hours. We smiled and laughed as we walked out with our 60$ purchase of junk food while everyone else fought over the last gallon of milk. Cracks me up to this day how insane people got due to the storm. Only to see people back out again on Tuesday buying MORE food for Wednesdays storm.

I think this sums it up nicely.