Hoosier

Time makes people forget. Plus there's a little truth in the lake myth, but it gets exaggerated to the point where people think it will prevent something big every time. Cook county had 24 minutes of lead time on 4/21/67, outstanding for that era especially given that the tornado hadn't previously touched down yet in another county. Oak Lawn had about 25,000 people and the tornado damage path was only a couple hundred yards wide at most, but we got unlucky with a lot of people caught in traffic. I've read the damage survey and it seems like the only F4 damage occurred in Oak Lawn...so if that severe damage would've been more widespread or farther northeast, it probably would've been worse. There's been some frightening modeled scenarios about what would happen if a violent tornado tracked through Chicago. The area with rather high population density is much bigger though as you said.

Long post so I'm not quoting the whole thing, but just wait. A mass casualty tornado is inevitable. It's been 20 years since Plainfield and that was only one violent tornado. Given the urban sprawl around there, that would be bad enough, but imagine 2 or 3 violent tornadoes in one day like 1967. It's hard to just pick one metro area in the US and say "this is where the next mega tornado disaster is likely to be" but your area is probably as likely as anybody. At least you have more basements than Alabama, but there's also more people.

Well, my relatives in Tuscaloosa are fine. They are on the north side of town so it missed them. They know someone who works in the ER and I guess there are babies lined up in the hallway with no parents around.

Obviously, but the question is whether one should be forced to have one. That starts to bring a political element into the discussion though.

Technically, but you know how we roll in this subforum.

Survey thread: http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/17853-427-428-tornado-outbreak-damage-assessment-thread/

Hard to even fathom that, but it was hard to fathom 260 yesterday.

What was the infamous line that Gary England told his viewers on 5/3/99...something like "if you don't get underground, you're going to die." If a TV met said that yesterday, there probably would've been a mass exodus out on the streets. In cases like this, there are bad options and there are worse options for the public at large. Unfortunately we had really bad luck yesterday.

Even if some of the tornadoes in 1974 were off by one Fujita category, you're still talking about violent tornadoes from Indiana/Ohio all the way southward into Alabama. We didn't have that yesterday.

Yeah, it's not a great policy for the general public on the whole (especially in highly populated areas), but if you're weather savvy and can evacuate, why not?

If you're gonna dare to say that something could approach 1974, then you should post some solid meteorological reasoning. Almost all of your posts were one or two sentenced and some variation on "I think this could be like 1974." That's not going to win you a lot of support around here.

It will happen again at some point but it could take a long time. Regardless, the death toll with this tornado outbreak is probably as anomalous as Hurricane Katrina. You look at hurricane fatalities on a year by year basis and they have gone down...then you come to 2005. Similar principle with this event.

144 (time-sensitive)

FYI, I posted a general thread in the main forum. http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/17825-april-27-2011-tornado-outbreak/

138 preliminary tornado reports for today.

All comes down to whether you want to take the chance that you're impacted by violent enough winds to kill you. In an extreme case like this, I'm getting the heck out.

What an event. No doubt there will be numerous case studies about this. On a personal note, I still haven't heard anything about my family in Tuscaloosa. Hoping it's just a case of the phones being down. Just surreal to see the images out of there...quite honestly I'm almost at a loss for words.

Early reports can be hard to gauge but I think it's pretty clear that this is bad. One thing that might keep it from reaching Super Outbreak type status is that today is concentrated in a much smaller area in terms of strong/violent tornadoes (at least up to this point). 4/3/74 had them over an extremely large swath.

Pretty much. We have relatives in Tuscaloosa (not sure what part) and have been unable to make contact. What a crazy day.

I don't think I recall seeing "has issued a tornado emergency" in the original warning text before today.

This is the nightmare scenario among NWS/emergency managers and is probably how we will get our next large casualty tornado (say 30+ fatalities). Well, either that or a violent tornado tracking through the heart of a major city.

It's fun to try to compare outbreaks but it's difficult, especially when they are in different eras. What would be the modern equivalent to the Super Outbreak... 180 tornadoes, 100 deaths, 20 EF4/EF5? Sort of like trying to compare different eras in baseball.

Chasers must hate days like tomorrow. Probably 90% of the target area is not particularly favorable for chasing.

The surface low was gradually filling in that case. This time we will have a deepening surface low. As others have said, there are some similarities on the larger scale and the threat area is quite similar to 1974. Other than that, I'd be really hesitant to say that this will be as bad as that...you'd be wrong at least 999 times out of 1000. It's sorta one of those things that you just have to let play out.

12z NAM goes nuts with the surface low tomorrow. 984 mb basically right over me and then around 980 mb in western lower Michigan.