Amped

Honestly, I don't think they knew any better. Some of the folks in the videos barely knew they were looking at a tornado.

No they said Tornado plenty of times in all those videos. They wouldn't have filmed it if they thought it was a normal Tstorm.

Nice whoever did that video read my mind, just what I was looking for. Before this I thought all the tornados were in the afternoon.

The morning derecho that preceded the outbreak was pretty insane as well.

Many people forget about that aspect of the outbreak, but there were some here that though that all the left over convection would damper the potential outbreak.

Strong winds quickly carried the clouds and rain cooled air away. I'd say it did almost nill to supress the outbreak. Extra soil moister may have even helped it.

Had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation tonight by the EM director from Joplin. Some notes from his speech.

7,500 residential homes damaged or destroyed

9,200 residents displaced

530 businesses destroyed

30 businesses will not be returning

4,500 employees affected

17,000 tetanus shots given out

The hospital saw an increase of 100 patients every 15 minutes yet the hospital (St Johns) evacuated totally in 90 minutes.

The hospital moved into a basketball arena and they were doing surgery within an hour of opening.

At one point, ambulances waiting to transport were 4 wide and 20 deep.

Freeman Hospital had 10 deep waiting for each of 4 operating rooms.

100% of primary streets were cleared 36hrs after the storm.

5000 emergency services personnel from 435 different agencies responded.

6 total passes were made looking for survivors.

Last alive was rescued on Tuesday.

The tornado removed 31 man hole covers which have never been found.

Three fire trucks destroyed.

Two fire stations destroyed.

3 million cubic yards of debris removed.

90-10 split of reimbursement.

Most sheltered at any point 650

2977 mobile housing units ordered.

569 families needed temp housing.

Currently 453 remain in temp housing.

118,197 volunteers registered for duty

720,834 hours of volunteer service logged.

54 percent of the city has been rebuilt or is being rebuilt at 9 months.

St Johns did NOT shift off its foundation. The upper three floors tilted 3".

Wow.

Actually I figured it out. Probably the low pressure inside the tornado that forced those off. Wind Speed alone can't do it since the surface is parallel. So manhole covers make a crude barometer.

lol he hasn't posted since this.

Doctors are busy gluing his head back together.

Oh well, I guess we can have BB come in and replace you.

2005 was a moisture starved clipper the last second. Then again so was the 1978. Not usually good for DC.

A lot of people are still wondering how the tornado killed so many people?

So i'll ask it now how did that tornado kill so few people? It destroyed 8000 homes with only 153 deaths, were people just not in them when they got hit?

And it took out the friggen hospital on top of it, People must be able to bleed for hours without dying those Bruce Willis movies must have had it right all along.

Edit: Not that I root for people to diing but I would have guessed this was a lot worse based on the pics and destruction statistics.

6 died today JoMo, it is now 151 is the death toll.

Is this a tally over the past several weeks ? It would be strange to have no deaths for two weeks and then 8 in one day.

On a side note 1 lightning strike hospitalized 77 soilders!! As if they don't put themselves in enough danger as it is.

http://beta.news.yahoo.com/lightning-hit-sends-77-cadets-miss-hospitals-211025436.html

Certainly cant blame him for trying to change things for the better, but as an elected official, you MUST lead by example. And "common good" is not that.

Politicians should not be allowed to use subjective statements like "Common Good" and "What the American people want" because they use them to promote their own agenda.

Apparently Homeless people on the streets look nicer than a trailer park. so not accepting the trailers is for the common good.

Yes we lost 4 more today from that have been hospitalized since the tornado. I think FEMA has been pretty good. They jumped on it and have gotten things done very quickly. I think the biggest thing I have heard is that the help from FEMA hasn't been enough, meaning $ signs. I will definitely tell the story from my eyes probably later tonight when I can get a chance to sit and really type. Even though I wasn't directly hit (which I am so blessed) it has indirectly effected all of us down here. Obviously my concern is for all of these familys to get housing and jobs back. Including my wife on the job part. But I truely believe that Joplin will be stronger from this event. I will tell my story later.

Doug Heady

Chief Meteorologist

KOAMTV/FOX 14

Joplin MO/Pittsburg KS

At least your town allows people to live in Fema trailers

http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979385002

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.

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.

We're not in Kansas anymore

This tornado is on the verge of becoming the 7th deadliest in US history.

http://www.spc.noaa....do/killers.html

Intersting only a couple of those are in Oklahoma

I just knew there was something really fishy about that picture. This makes much more sense.

Perfect sense now, no missing concrete. the crack is due to the piece of wood being torqued. My guess is rescuers ran it over with a truck after the tornado. . It can probably be recreated by feeding a long 2X4 into one of those things and having a heavy person step on it.

Still haven't seen any ground scouring pics, but thedamage is still pretty incredible.

TWC reporting a NWS upgrade to EF5.

Been at work the entire day, I can't think of any creative ways of saying Holy ****.

I wonder if any storm chasers got hurt or killed in this. I would think at least some of the deaths were do to with curious weenies who wanted to watch and photograph it with thier Iphone instead of running from it. Yeah there's an EF4 in your area, but if it's a matter of life and death you may have to settle for a quick glimpse. I know I'd make the wrong choice.

The prototype phased-array radar in Norman scans a 90 degree sector and can scan a volume in ~30 sec., but that's a long way off from going national.

It does make for some cool images when the outbreak is in Oklahoma. I wish they could make that semimobile. It would have been nice to gotten it to Alabama this week. Maybe I'll write in a suggestion to NWRT.

However I've never seen the thing and I don't know how hard to would be to move and reassemble.

Can't wait to see this outbreak

You know what struck me (besides the obvious devastation down the middle) were the strips of damage that most likely were associated with vorticies rotating around the main funnel. We know these were occurring from the various videos out there, and the damage seems to confirm that these were also very strong, to no ones surprise.

I had a nightmare a couple of years back that I was in a super cell with a large tornado at the center with multiple smaller tentacle tornadoes orbiting it. The videos of this storm actually reminded me of that dream.

EF4s and EF5s account for <1% of all tornados and >67% of all tornado deaths.

I think modern warnings may have made this percentage even higher. Less people are dying in the small tornados but there is still little that can be done to save yourself in 1/2 mile wide EF5.

would be interesting to find out how far/long this storms lasts

Going to be close for the south part of Rome, GA

Warning people means nothing if people don't heed the warnings.

The speed of these storms plus the strength of the tornadoes sometimes catches people by surprise.

And if it takes out the hospital. People are probably still bleeding to death right now.