HurricaneJosh

Not on the list... sorry.

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.

It's not

?

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.

I think one of the Mets said in the other thread that the building wasn't hit directly by the tornado. He estimated the tornado was about a block away.

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.

Could just be multiple vortices revolving around each other a la planets in a solar system.

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.

From the "first person" video, why is there a distinct break in the wind? You hear a roar, you hear screaming and then there is silence which clearly makes the people in the video think that the tornado has passed prior to the real damage starting at 3:10s. Just curious if that was just a downdraft or perhaps a sat tornado.

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.

Yep, that was my estimate also...close to 80-85 kts. 150+mph and visibility would be close to zero, extremely difficult to film anything like that when rain is present

Yeah. If winds got up to 150 mph, there would be no video.

The duration is quite impressive IMO for what appears to be a glancing blow. It was a big mamma jamma.

Oh, totally agreed. It looks absolutely ferocious. It's a fantastic video and another great "microdocument" of this very interesting event.

Wow I wonder what the wind speeds were in that!

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.

Well, first of all I should give the disclaimer than I'm a big history buff, so any time I see some major tragedy such as the Tri-State tornado mentioned in a news article with the caveat "oh, but this was on unofficial records", it sort of ticks me off. It's like saying that they somehow don't matter as much because they happened before 1950. But maybe that's just my weird thing I'm overly pedantic about :-D

Second, I think in this case some historical perspective is definitely warranted. What I haven't seen many in the mass media bring up is that this is the first U.S. tornado to kill over 100 people since 1953, the year that public tornado forecasts began. If the death toll passes Waco/Flint, it will be on the list right below the Woodward tornado which was in the era before tornado forecasts. This is not a small thing that we have had death tolls like this in our time, with media saturation and longer leads times on warnings than there has ever been. It's similar to how Katrina's death toll was significant because there hadn't been a hurricane in the U.S. like that since 1928. Why was the death toll in Joplin (and, for that matter, the death tolls in Alabama) so high when there were warnings issued, and how can they be prevented in the future?

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.

Hi Josh

How have you been? Long time no talk....

Just been watching the footage of the tornado on the news over here. How bloody terrifying! We get nervous about cyclones but to be honest after seeing how huge it was and how much damage it created in such a short amount of time I'd rather be in a cyclone than a tornado any day. Can't believe that they only had 20mins notice - that doesn't give much time to do anything does it?

Hope there are no more tornados like this one....very, very sad for this community.

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.

2005 would be a valid comparison if Rita had smashed the Houston-Galveston area

In many ways, this spring has been so much worse - we had not one but TWO events that have changed the way we think about tornado fatalities in this country.

That's two "once in a generation" events within a month of each other.

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.

A more recent comparison is the Tuscaloosa tornado last month. Both were relatively close in strength, both went to cities of comparable size and the total damage area is each community looks to be somewhat similar (Tuscaloosa storm carved a longer path as the city is somewhat larger but the Joplin storm may have been a bit wider). The Joplin storm hit more tightly packed blocks of single family residences whereas in Tuscaloosa more damage was done to apartments. Hopefully we can get an idea of the number of people in the core damage path in Joplin (it was about 6,000 people in Tuscaloosa). Tuscaloosa storm was better warned, more visible and awareness was more hightened in general. Neither of the too community had many dwelling with basments. Mobile homes are a non factor in either case. Tuscalossa was a weekend, Joplin a Sunday.

All variables that will have to be examined as do why so many more died in Joplin.

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.

CNN had an official on the phone today who said up to 270,000 people can be in Joplin for work, shopping, visiting, etc. Seems surely plausible there was a very high number of people in the shopping districts, restaurant districts, driving, etc. Also, with families at home instead of at school and at work...

Someone said on here it's a good thing it didn't strike at night, but if it did then there wouldn't have been hundreds of people in the Wal-Mart that was hit, all the restaurants would have been closed and those tens of thousands of possible visitors would be back in their rural homes, etc.

I really don't know any statistics, I'm just speculating right now, but I'm studying emergency management and there is just so much going on right now my mind is going a thousand miles a minute.

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.

I guess it depends if a lot of the fatalities occurred in the commercial areas. It looks like it mowed down a lot of residential real estate. I just think having it plow through at a time of day when everyone is completely oblivious is probably worse.

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...

Everything that I thought I knew about violent tornadoes and death tolls has gone out the window this spring. It's been a long time since we've seen these kinds of death tolls, and I (like many others I imagine) was lulled into this idea that we wouldn't see this again. I've heard various sentiments in the past few weeks to the effect of "if you get a violent tornado going through a densely populated area, deaths are inevitable". While that may have some truth to it, I cannot help but feel that this is an insufficient answer. Like you Josh, I'm wondering how this happened, given how many violent tornadoes have rolled through significant population centers in the past few decades. Why weren't the Moore-OKC (1999) or Pleasant Grove (1998) tornadoes more deadly, for example?

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?

This year is becoming like 2005 was for hurricanes...and the next couple days look really active.

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

There were some bad circumstances as you mentioned, but yeah, I'm surprised. Joplin is practically in the middle of tornado alley so you'd expect preparedness/awareness to be better than most areas. I always thought the next 100 fatality tornado would occur in a sizeable population center outside of tornado alley or at a big outdoor sporting event. I think we will have to take a look at the entire system to see what improvements can be made, but it may be that there are not a lot of practical solutions.

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.

True. I guess I'm saying I'm fine waiting rather than guessing.

Yeah, I gotcha.

I do hope JoMo posts soon. It's a bit nerve-wracking! I'm sure he's fine-- and probably posting here is his last priority right now-- if they even have Internet connectivity in the city.

well, it's different when you're keeping a spreadsheet vs looking for a small splinter of your home.

For sure. But that's what we do here, I guess: we analyze the mechanics and the metrics behind events which are sometimes catastrophic to humans.

too much need for instant gratification these days.. honestly it doesnt really matter if it was an ef4 or an ef5.

Well... I'm sure it matters a little to wx nerds. I know it matters to me. Like, I'm curious to know what they find and how they rate it. It was obviously a big event.

And 15 minutes probably wouldn't be enough time to move all the sick and injured at the regional medical center from their rooms, which all presumably had windows.

No, but it's plenty of time for the average, able-bodied citizen to take cover, or for a teacher to bring children into the stairwells (or wherever they bring them).

Maybe because I'm from earthquake country, where we get zero warning-- catastrophes happen in the blink of an eye, like a bomb going off-- fifteen minutes just seems like a generous amount of time for making decisions and taking action.

It was warned some 15 minutes before it hit

JoMo, in one of his last posts, mentioned the sirens had gone off.

Also, in the now-famous video from the convenience store, you can overhear people talking about a warning before the tornado hits the building. My impression was that they didn't actually see the funnel coming-- it was large and rather foggy-looking-- but were taking cover due to the warning. I could be wrong, but that's my impression.

They had some warning for sure.

We can speculate, but I imagine one of the more specialized NWS survey teams will be in the area in the next few days, and then we'll have expert opinion.

Well of course. I would assume they're in there today.