HurricaneJosh

Ugh-- so tacky.

Omg. Wow. Scary sh*t. What's especially interesting is how it's practically at the surface-- suggesting those max winds were really gouging down to the ground with this thing.

Another very interesting detail.

Back to the meteorological aspects: notice that JoMo describes that same lull that we heard in the now-famous convenience-store video and that we saw in that video of someone's back lawn (with the trampoline). Interesting.

Hey, JoMo- I'm so glad to hear you're OK! And thanks for taking the time to write this really engrossing account-- it is greatly appreciated to hear it firsthand from someone who was there. It's important history. The quoted part (above) really stood out for me. I think it's hard for a lot of us to get our heads around that level and extent of destruction. Welcome back, dude.

Ah, OK-- cool. I misread your post and felt an odd sense of dread. It's not like I'm friends with the dude on any level, but he's one of us-- part of our weather-nerd community-- and we want him to be OK.

?

I agree-- it's a bit odd he hasn't found a moment to pop on just tell us he's OK. I've been on other forums-- for example, the UK's Daily Mail-- where several Joplinites have come online and posted. Hopefully it's just that he's been busy-- which, as others have said, is completely understandable.

Really? He might want to look at the video I posted above. That building and everything around it is flattened, and all of the trees are stripped. It looks to me like the store was directly impacted.

Except that there is a real and distinct lull between that first "incident" and the primary impact-- more so than I would expect once you're within range of subvortices that are embedded in the main one. My impression is that embedded subvortices will cause substantial, localized increases in wind speed, but once you're in that main circulation, it's going to be crazy, even if you're not being directly impacted by one of the subvortices. I dunno.

Yeah, I saw it discussed earlier-- it was probably a microburst or some localized disturbance preceding the arrival of the main core circulation. (And, in itself, that "appetizer" wind was quite destructive-- it was strong enough to smash all the store windows and pelt the building with debris.) It seems that this system was complex, and that the actual primary vortex was perhaps embedded in an envelope of damaging winds.

Yeah. If winds got up to 150 mph, there would be no video. Oh, totally agreed. It looks absolutely ferocious. It's a fantastic video and another great "microdocument" of this very interesting event.

Probably 80-90 mph, maybe 100 mph-- no higher, or the surrounding structures, trees, and even the camera wouldn't have stayed intact. That's not to take away from the video, which is extremely cool. P.S. It's weird for me to talk in mph. In the tropics we use knots, but I know that the severe crowd uses mph. "When in Rome...".

Here's the "sequel" to that incredible video from inside the convenience store-- the one where you can't see anything. The guy returns to show what's left of the building. The area was flattened-- it looks like they took a direct hit from what was surely at least an EF4 at that time (notice the trees). They're all very fortunate to be alive:

Cool map, Joe! It's very informative, so thanks for posting it. (By the way, I don't know why anyone would be annoyed by it. This is a weather forum-- we analyze these events here.) Re: the path, are those really the start and finish points, or just where the surveying started and ended? It's just crazy that such a large, intense tornado spun up and spun down so fast like that.

This post is almost a word-for-word repeat of exactly what we were discussing yesterday (a couple of pages back). I don't mean this as criticism-- I don't read all of every thread I respond to, either. I guess the same topics come up repeatedly because they're relevant.

Oh, hey, Mardi! Nice to hear from you. Yeah, I think we're all a little bit in shock from this tornado season. I mean, in the USA we always expect the tornado season to be big, but this one is by far the worst in many, many decades.

The 2005 'cane season is a valid comparison to the 2011 tornado season by many metrics-- for example, 1) the high number of storms, 2) the high number of intense storms, 3) these "anachronistic" high death tolls, and 4) the extremely high dollar-figure of damage.

Good comparison of the two events-- and, I agree, there are a lot of similarities here-- as well as some important differences. Interesting that mobile-home parks were not a big factor in either storm, as we always tend to view them as death traps in tornadoes.

Very interesting-- thanks for sharing this. Given that the population of Joplin is only 50K, that's quite an influx for a Sunday afternoon! I didn't know you were studying emergency management. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts about all this once the dust settles a bit and we know more. Yeah, that sword can cut both ways. Not to bring earthquakes into it, but it was fortunate that the great Northridge Earthquake of 1994 hit L.A. at 4:30 am; even though people were sleeping, most of the really bad building failures were commercial. The death toll would have been much higher if it happened on a weekday afternoon. On the other hand, the Kobe Earthquake a year later killed thousands because it happened in the wee morning hours-- as the residential failures were much more extensive than the commercial failures in that one. So many factors... Yeah, it is just really weird. Do you even have any initial theories about what happened here?

Does anyone know why the winds were estimated at such a specific value-- 198 mph? I thought they rounded to the nearest 5 mph. Can someone shed some light?

Weird, I said exactly that this morning on another forum. Totally, dude.

Agreed. It could just be "one of those things". But even a simple statistical analysis of the fatalities-- where they occurred, in what types of structures/vehicles, etc.-- could shed some light on what exactly happened. We need to understand it. This is like the tornadic Katrina-- a single, contemporary event causing an "anachronistic", "old-school" death toll. In 2004 I would have told you that there's no way in hell that 1,000 Americans would ever again die in a 'cane-- and then Katrina killed almost twice that. Of course, with Katrina, the causes were fairly obvious. This Joplin event is somewhat mysterious by comparison.

Clearly, this was a very difficult tornado to warn for, given the speed of development, the brisk motion, the rain-wrapping, the late-day lighting, etc. So, I'm frankly impressed the NWS could even get a warning out in time. Thank God they did. But the death toll is a bit of a shock. As gymengineer pointed out (above), it's not like this is the first time in the modern era that a violent wedge tornado has plowed headlong into the heart of a good-sized city. I'm curious what made this event so much more deadly than Topeka 1966, Lubbock 1970, Omaha 1975, Wichita Falls 1979, etc. etc. The death toll is just so much greater, it begs the question. Were there a couple of major building failures with lots of people inside? Do people not have basements there? I hope that someone does a study about this and issues some findings. It could be really valuable for future preparedness efforts.