JoMo

Thanks, I just found it. Yes, that warning is very wrong. I wonder what happened? All those locations are north or well north of the actual touchdown and eventual track. Were they looking at a different area? The one before that was more correct at 5:39. I'm not saying it would have mattered either way since the tornado was already on the ground and you could hear it or it was moving through the city.

I just noticed something. This was quoted from the Severe thread as the tornado was happening. I'm not sure if there are archived tornado warnings somewhere. See 6 miles NE of Galena? Now check out the map on this page showing where the first point of touchdown was. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/sgf/?n=event_2011may22_summary It's actually SE of E of Galena.

Thanks and yeah I do remember that, and remembered that your mother lived here. We've experienced an EF-5 tornado and a record breaking blizzard with 19" of snow all within 4 months.I didn't experience any hail here at all, just the inflow winds to the tornado and a little bit of rain. I know some people that already mentioned they aren't staying after this and they are going back to Michigan. So.. wouldn't you know it they have tornado warnings up there today!? It's very easy to get lost due to nothing looking like it once did. It all just kind of feels like a dream. It's going to take forever to clean all this up and once it's cleaned up it's going to look really bare. Everything has to be sorted out and looked through to make sure no body parts are in the wreckage. It's getting hot here now and everything is really going to start smelling. One thing I noticed was how close things look now. You can see things a long ways off and everything just looks like it's really close because you couldn't see it before due to the trees and houses. The area from Main street to Indiana street looks like it's about 2 blocks because you can see everything due to all the destruction. I don't know about people taking the warnings seriously. I'm sure those who were in the effected area may be a little bit more skittish and the general population may worry about it for awhile, but I think that due to us receiving so many warnings, people will once again get used to it. A lot of people were just used to nothing really happening or they'd go and sit in the closet for 10 minutes, wait for the storm to pass, then go back to whatever they were doing before. Now some of those people don't have closets.

About one week ago from today I posted this at 5:27 PM "Pitch black out, couplet nearly on me... Joplin, MO" After I posted that, I had enough time to shut down my desktop computer, look outside to the west and see the lowering and look at the base velocity again on my laptop before I heard the rumbling. 2 minutes later:

Blurry picture since traffic was moving, there were a lot of police around that were stopping people and traffic was moving at this time but became backed up in places as well. I could have taken more pictures but camera battery was low, people were there trying to find belongings, and it all basically looked just like this. Every now and then there was a house that made it or you could tell it had been a house. I believe Pres. Obama was in this same neighborhood today. People made signs that said "Gawkers, put down your cameras and help!!" I saw signs that said "Looters will be shot". I saw "For Rent" and "For Sale" signs that people had put up as a joke. There was a sign that pointed to a bucket that said "$15 for a picture" so I didn't really want them to know I was snapping pics because it does seem somewhat disrespectful but at the same time I wanted to capture the carnage that happened. Basically it all looks like this in the neighborhoods with the most damage. Just blocks and blocks and blocks and blocks of this. Shot of Home Depot. It looks like shredded cheese. Traffic was backed up and I saw this mattress in a tree so I took a pic of it while I was waiting. This is the Hampshire Terrace apartments over by Dillons. These were 2 story apartments. In some areas the first story was still there but not the second.

I'm not entirely sure even though I had classes there when I was in high school ages ago. The entire building is brick though, it was well constructed. It was only 1 story basically if I remember it right, there were no stairs leading up to a second story. There was a large auto repair area in the back which is pictured there and a lot of different classrooms that varied in size. It was partnered with the high school and some students took various classes over there for college/high school credit. It was also an adult technical school, those classes were typically at night. If you were to look behind me in that picture, you would see nothing but debris and the only way you could tell there were homes there would be because you see driveways leading up to them.

And I just put this together. This is Franklin Technology Center before and after from a picture I took yesterday. I heard the NWS used this as one of their points of reference for the EF5 rating.

Panorama that shows Franklin Tech before and After. Also Greenbriar nursing home where at least 11 perished. http://www.nytimes.c...-panoramas.html

The Joplin Globe had a fascinating story that included interviews with people along the path of the storm. It included information that included: St. Johns was shifted 4 inches off it's foundation. 4 out of 5 people that took shelter in the Elk's lodge died. There were also multiple reports of an "eye" with calmness in the center of it. http://www.joplinglobe.com/local/x1190396915/Along-tornado-s-path-victims-recall-trauma-wonder-about-future

This is St. Paul's. The middle of the sanctuary is scooped out but the playground equipment is perfectly fine. This power pole was splintered. This was a PVC pipe assembly of some kind sticking into a house that was about 2 blocks away from where the tornado hit. What's left of someone's door was found just below the above house. A little girls shoe that I found in my yard. No idea where it came from and it wasn't there before the tornado. This really creeped me out... The final picture I took until today was a picture of a mom and her son on the 2nd level of their house attempting to gather what was left.

Yeah the car has been there, it's just weird. The actual home was probably poorly constructed and it wasn't all brick. Just the front and around the garage. There are street signs like this all over since it's very easy to get lost since the landscape does not look the same. There's even street names painted on the streets in some places. This was bedding or a mattress wrapped around a tree. Just general destruction pictures:

Yep, and if you want to see the 2 houses (the pics with the black car in it) Go to "2448 West 26th Street, Joplin, MO" and turn the camera around to the left and you can see that they are now gone and all that's left is the slabs.

The building was built to withstand 300 MPH winds. If the tornado had been a little bit bigger or stretched farther south, it would have knocked out both of our hospitals. http://www.ky3.com/news/ky3-hospital20110527,0,1937966.story JOPLIN, Mo. -- Mercy Health System-St. John's Regional Medical Center said its hospital tower, severely damaged by the tornado last Sunday, will not be rebuilt. Structural engineers spent the week checking the structural integrity of the building. On Thursday, it was announced that, while the building is not at risk of collapse, the site remains “very dangerous.” Mercy said repairing and reoccupying the building is not a viable option.

Probably about 1/2 mile or less. I was in front of where the Elks lodge? was. You can see the flagpole in the St. Johns picture. I was told 2 people died there and there is nothing left of the building. It used to be where the backhoe is in this picture. Look towards the center and a little to the left and you can see the backhoe which was there to dig people out from under the rubble. I don't think St. Johns is going to rebuild there. It doesn't make a lot of sense having both your hospitals about 1/2-3/4 of a mile from each other and the building itself and the surrounding area looks like total loss.

Since I'm bored and in the curfew zone. I think this car has been here since before the tornado. It's sitting where the garage of a small house was. There's debris under it's right rear tire. The house is nothing but a slab of concrete now. There is damage to the left side of the car and it's left window is busted out. At first I thought someone had just parked it there, but it has not been moved since at least Tues. To the right of that there's another small house with a slab. When this picture was taken there was water flowing from this house from a water line. This one is of two guys checking a gas meter that was still leaking, Spray painted on it was "Haz Gas". A view towards St. Johns regional medical center:

Honestly I have no idea what charities are legit. You may check in with KZRG on Facebook. You can also try Joplin Tornado Info. Churches and other places are posting what they need on there. http://www.facebook.com/NewsTalkKZRG?sk=wall http://www.facebook.com/joplintornadoinfo

We'll need help once this gets out of the national news. There is a lot to clean up. One thing I found cool was that there's basically a case of bottled water on every street corner in the zone for people to get in case they need it.

I toured the entire area today. I can't believe the destruction and I got lost in my old neighborhood. Everything looks so closed in, but so far away. The only way you can tell there was a house at the locations worst hit is because there's a driveway in front of it. I did take some pictures and I have pictures left over from days ago as well that I will have to upload sometime. Someone requested a pic of Franklin Tech, I think a meteorologist, and I can clearly say Franklin Tech doesn't exist anymore. There are a couple places that still have bricks that are about chest high, the rest of it is completely destroyed.

There's a series of videos from someone who just moved here 2 weeks ago from Seattle as he ventured out right after the storm. Video 1 and 2 are pretty boring. Video 3 which I have linked shows Wal-Mart on 15th and Rangeline. Video 4 is pretty boring as well but shows the Home Depot from a distance. Video 5 shows the area around the high school and Dillons Supermarket which was also destroyed and the apartments around it. This was in the EF-5 damage area. Video 3 Video 5

Here's a vid of the damage around the high school and Franklin Tech. At around 10-11 seconds on the left of the screen, you can see a parking lot and what looks like cars, just to the left of that is where Franklin Tech used to be, but there is nothing there at all. He turns down the street my ex-gf lives/lived on I believe and I think at the end of the video is what's left of her house although I am not sure. Her husband, step-daughter, and she were in either a bathroom or a closet and survived, some in this area were not so lucky she said as she saw a couple of people that did not make it.

Franklin Tech was a brick building right across from the high school. There's nothing left of it now. I think the bricks are about ankle high. It was used to help determine the EF-5 rating. I just read that 139 are now dead.

The last few years Springfield has been tornado warning happy. I think it all really started getting that way after the Derecho in 2009. I wouldn't mind having a safe room. I'm sure other people would mind though, or some couldn't afford it if it wasn't subsidized into the construction or something. Tornadoes of this magnitude are pretty rare. The chances of being hit by a killer tornado are pretty low. There's probably a much much greater chance you will die in an auto accident before you are killed by a tornado. Joplin has a very low cost of living, and to shell out $5,000 for a safe room..... I'm not sure how many people would do that or could afford that for that once every 200 year killer tornado.

jhamps10: I know what you mean, we may suffer from 'warning fatigue' due to all the warnings. Storms happen a lot here, usually they are overnight storms from the MCS's that develop in the summer off the Rockies. Most of the time, the tornadoes we do see are usually pretty weak due to the time of day and the distance they have traveled. (cold pool interactions, etc) This was just a 'perfect storm' type situation because the EF5 tornado lifted after only traveling 7 miles. The same area of storms produced again but the highest rating was an EF2 with that path length being 17 miles. wintrymix: I know that several trailer parks have community shelters around here. Community shelters sound like a good idea, I'm just not sure how feasible they are.

Interview with Jordan Aubey who is a reporter for Fox 14/KOAM (Doug Heady's station). He was injured in the tornado and describes it in great detail. I think he may still be in shock a bit from what happened. He saw the devastation of the Picher, OK tornado and said he couldn't believe it.

Yeah, Doug is on facebook and he forgets to come here. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002024792564&sk=wall He was on-air during the tornado.