HurricaneJosh

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.

Re: the EF5 thing... People sometimes seem quick to call an EF5 when they see a neighborhood flattened, but of course so much depends on the quality of the construction, etc. As most people here know, a house can get "swept away"-- leaving a bare foundation-- by something much less than an EF5 if it's not properly attached to the foundation.

One other thing: when you see a wide, aerial shot of Moore, OK, or Greensburg, KS, you're not really looking at EF5 damage-- you're looking at EF3-EF4 damage, within which are a couple of isolated instances of EF5 damage. So, seeing these flattened neighborhoods in Joplin doesn't immediately say EF5 to me-- it says an obviously violent tornado went through, and it could have been an EF5. Let's see if they can find some specific evidence of it.

It seems pretty clear that this was at least an EF4.

Wow-- there are some really awesome moments late in the clip as they almost get to the periphery of the tornado circulation.

I met Jeff in Mexico when I was chasing Hurricane Jimena. (He chases hurricanes now and then.) He's known as a pretty daring, aggressive sort of chaser, if I remember correctly. Like, he really goes for it.

Bad stuff headed their way again. A bowing segment with 60-70 mph winds approaching.

Ugh, that is just not right. Those poor people must be traumatized already.

JoMo's posts from yesterday, up until the storm hit. The good news is that they had warning-- he heard sirens:

Giant clusterf*k of storms in SE KS with more developing around that cell. Constant rolling thunder. Not seeing all that strong of a couplet. Did witness some mammatus despite the low clouds.

nd there go the sirens, rotation just NW of here.

Pitch black out, couplet nearly on me... Joplin, MO

Note: The timestamps are Pacific time, so add 2 hours for local (Central) time.

JoMO, I hope all is OK for you!

Well, this for one. This tornado just tossed the vehicles around like they were Matchbox cars and flattened them like pancakes... didn't see anything like this last year with the EF4. This looks more like the F5 damage to me.

It may end up being an EF5, but I don't think it would be based on this sort of evidence. Lesser tornadoes can really toss vehicles, which are relatively light for their size.

This.

I haven't seen anything indicative of an EF-5 yet... should be able to get some quick shots in this morning before the next storm rolls through.

Yeah.

I'm not denying it was an EF5-- I just haven't seen personally seen evidence of that. I would say it was most certainly at least an EF4, as per my comments above-- I've seen a few photos that look like hearty proof.

Looks EF5 to me... I helped clean up after an EF4 last year and it wasn't even close to as bad as the images I've seen from this one.

Hmmm. Can you share the images that look EF5 to you? Curious to see!

With the AL outbreak, there was the talk of the early morning severe weather knocking out power and therefore leaving parts of the population vunerable to not getting enough warning in the late afternoon tornadoes.

Especially with that outbreak still fresh in everyone's minds, having this massive death toll yet again just seems unreal. I'm sure it will come out in the NWS Service Assessment as to "why" it happened here, but F4's and F5's going across downtowns have not been accompanied by this type of death toll since the tornado warning system really got established. 1966- Both Jackson MS and Topeka, Kansas had F5's through the cities, with the Topeka one pretty much through downtown-- 19 died in the Jackson area and 16 died in the Topeka tornado. 1970- Lubbock, TX had an F5 go through downtown, including having a skyscraper in its path. There were 28 deaths there. 1979- Wichita Falls, TX, had the massive F4 mow through the city-- 42 deaths.

Maybe here, there were special circumstances, like a large amount of fatalities in one building-- we'll see if a lot of the deaths happened in the hospital itself.

That's a great point-- that these other "warning-era" urban tornadoes didn't kill anywhere near as many people as these 2011 events. I didn't even think of that.

Re: the hospital... It's beaten up, but the actual structure looks to be intact, based on the images I've seen.

2011 is having a very "1953" feel to it-- with multiple incidents of violent tornadoes hitting decent-sized cities and extracting large death tolls.

Reuters has that figure as well. So it's the deadliest single American tornado since Udall, KS, in 1955? We already hit that milestone this year, didn't we?

So, what's the expectation Re: intensity-- EF4?

A few of the damage pics have an EF4 look to them, with the homes really flattened and the trees stripped completely down to sticks. It definitely looks worse than EF3 to me in some places.

yeah... only 18 homes destroyed and a few dozen others damaged-but 14 fatalities. Yikes. scary stuff.

Yeah, I noticed that-- a very high number of fatalities for the size of the area affected.

no it clearly says 2.48 miles...another decimal point error? Or is this the same supercell and tornado that moved into AL and will get rated by a seperate office too?

If its not the same tornado then we could have at least 3 EF5's , this one, N al if it is upgraded and I'm assuming the tucs/BHM one too

Yeah, maybe it's a mistake or something-- or, like you suggested, maybe this part of the survey covers only one part of the track. I just find it hard to imagine that a discrete event with a track length that short generated winds over 200 mph. That would just be too weird!

Is this the final number though or is this the same one that moved into northern AL?

Not sure-- I was just reading from the survey report. Perhaps I misunderstood?

Interesting that the Smithville EF5 was relatively localized for such an intense event-- the path length was less than 3 mi, and it only damaged a few dozen homes. It must have spun up and wound down really fast-- like a microcane that bombs out and then totally falls apart.

Radar montage of the destructive supercell which hit Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, & more...

Wow-- really cool. Thanks for posting this.