Gorky Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Worked in Picher, OK as well. As long as the land is flat and you can see for a long way, this wouldn't be a good idea in the southeast though. Picher is an interesting example really. A town of 20,000 in it's heydey, it certainly had the road network to accomodate the few hundred people left who made the decision to leave by car. Using that tornado as an example for escaping in cars is pretty ironic though, given the amount of people who died South of Joplin in their cars once it was rain wrapped and wedged out near Racine. We obviously won't know for sure how many were trying to escape the tornado at the time and how many were just minding their own business and unaware of the threat but this aspect seems to get forgotten when compared to those who fled from Picher and lived. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ensō Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Picher is an interesting example really. A town of 20,000 in it's heydey, it certainly had the road network to accomodate the few hundred people left who made the decision to leave by car. Using that tornado as an example for escaping in cars is pretty ironic though, given the amount of people who died South of Joplin in their cars once it was rain wrapped and wedged out near Racine. We obviously won't know for sure how many were trying to escape the tornado at the time and how many were just minding their own business and unaware of the threat but this aspect seems to get forgotten when compared to those who fled from Picher and lived. You can find examples from both perspectives, but I do tend to agree (at least very loosely) with JoMo. If you have just the right circumstances, it can be possible to evacuate ahead of a tornado. Those circumstances don't happen very often though, so it's not a practical solution. You'd need a verified, dangerous tornado on the ground, a long distance away from the town, with a perfectly clear, unobstructed view the whole way, and a small-ish city with a good road network to facilitate evacuations. Except in those circumstances, though, I think it's very dangerous to advocate evacuations. The last thing you want is a packed highway with a strong tornado on the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bozart Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 You can find examples from both perspectives, but I do tend to agree (at least very loosely) with JoMo. If you have just the right circumstances, it can be possible to evacuate ahead of a tornado. Those circumstances don't happen very often though, so it's not a practical solution. You'd need a verified, dangerous tornado on the ground, a long distance away from the town, with a perfectly clear, unobstructed view the whole way, and a small-ish city with a good road network to facilitate evacuations. Except in those circumstances, though, I think it's very dangerous to advocate evacuations. The last thing you want is a packed highway with a strong tornado on the way. The Jarrell, TX disaster got a lot of people thinking in terms of evacuating for a tornado instead of hanging around like a sitting duck. People in Jarrell who took the advice to stay out of their cars and off the roads very dutifully committed suicide. Lest we forget. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ensō Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 The Jarrell, TX disaster got a lot of people thinking in terms of evacuating for a tornado instead of hanging around like a sitting duck. People in Jarrell who took the advice to stay out of their cars and off the roads very dutifully committed suicide. Lest we forget. That's why I said you can find examples on either side. In some situations, evacuating may be the best course of action. But that requires some pretty specific conditions, as I said above. If you have a tornado closing in on a town, or you don't have a very good road network, or you have a large town or city that you can't realistically evacuate in a short period of time, I have a hard time believing it does any good to tell people to go get in their cars. If you know people have the time to get out, sure. But otherwise you're significantly more vulnerable in your car than you are in an interior area of a sturdy building. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LithiaWx Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 That has to be the most impressive tornado video I've seen. I've never felt closer to the event than I did watching that. It's a decent video but the video from the Tuscaloosa tornado is number one in my book by a long way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Lizard Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Semi-OT, when someone starts arguing repeatedly that what turns out to be an EF-3 near Wichita was a weak tornado because he didn't see the debris ball he expected, and pro-mets are telling him outrageous G2G values less than 1000 feet AGL, and he keeps arguing, well, 5 posting people shouldn't just be a Winter time storm mode thing. I just lurked, I don't have GR-Level x or anything, I'm not out there chasing, once its past models and skew-Ts and forecast SigTors, I have nothing to add and just lurk. Although I came close to asking debris ball guy from Memphis to shut up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baroclinic_instability Posted April 16, 2012 Author Share Posted April 16, 2012 The Jarrell, TX disaster got a lot of people thinking in terms of evacuating for a tornado instead of hanging around like a sitting duck. People in Jarrell who took the advice to stay out of their cars and off the roads very dutifully committed suicide. Lest we forget. Great example, a freakish extremely violent tornado in a rural setting. I am sure evacuating the city of Joplin would have worked out swell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EquusStorm Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 It's a decent video but the video from the Tuscaloosa tornado is number one in my book by a long way. The Salina video reminds me of the Philadelphia, MS tornado video from April 27 really. The rolling motion on the left edge at ~1:07 looks just like what the Philadelphia tornado did on the video from when it reached its peak. I think that one is on Tornadovideos.net. Tuscaloosa looked pretty similar to that one though - both extremely frightening yet photogenic, with spewing debris and sporadic horizontal rolls. The biggest difference is that unlike the other two, the Tuscaloosa tornado was barrelling through a city at the time killing 40+ people... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Lizard Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Great example, a freakish extremely violent tornado in a rural setting. I am sure evacuating the city of Joplin would have worked out swell. The Jarrell tornado was also propagating to the Southwest at less than 10 mph. There'd have to be separate sets of advice for slow moving tornadoes in rural settings and rapidly moving tornadoes in urban settings, and hoping the general population would clearly recognize, and remember, the difference. Every Texan knows about the 1979 Wichita Falls tornado, and that the majority of fatalities were people who tried to evacuate and got stuck in traffic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Lizard Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 The Salina video reminds me of the Philadelphia, MS tornado video from April 27 really. The rolling motion on the left edge at ~1:07 looks just like what the Philadelphia tornado did on the video from when it reached its peak. I think that one is on Tornadovideos.net. Tuscaloosa looked pretty similar to that one though - both extremely frightening yet photogenic, with spewing debris and sporadic horizontal rolls. The biggest difference is that unlike the other two, the Tuscaloosa tornado was barrelling through a city at the time killing 40+ people... The interesting thing to me, watching various AL/MS tornadoes from last April, where the nearly horizontal little funnels feeding into the main tornado. Several different tornadoes. I've seen plenty of video of multivortx storms, but not storms with vortices that were nearly orthogonal to the main tornado. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bozart Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Great example, a freakish extremely violent tornado in a rural setting. I am sure evacuating the city of Joplin would have worked out swell. I understand the nuances. Every situation is different. There were almost no basements in Jarrell. (I asked why and was told it was a money issue -- demographics of the wiped-out neighborhood.) As for Joplin, yeah...except I know of quite a few chasers who evacuated the heck out of Joplin. But true enough, that option wouldn't have been there for everyone in town. It probably was there for everyone in Jarrell, where I wouldn't have just stood on my porch, frozen in place because some warning text told me to stay home, watching that highly visible, slowly moving thing sliding closer and closer... I would have scrammed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wmsptwx Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Wow...while you guys are talking about Jarrell, it brought it back, I remember being a 7 year old...just stunned by what I was seeing. It was an unbelievably powerful tornado....very sobering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Memphis Weather Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Semi-OT, when someone starts arguing repeatedly that what turns out to be an EF-3 near Wichita was a weak tornado because he didn't see the debris ball he expected, and pro-mets are telling him outrageous G2G values less than 1000 feet AGL, and he keeps arguing, well, 5 posting people shouldn't just be a Winter time storm mode thing. I just lurked, I don't have GR-Level x or anything, I'm not out there chasing, once its past models and skew-Ts and forecast SigTors, I have nothing to add and just lurk. Although I came close to asking debris ball guy from Memphis to shut up. I never said Wichita was a weak tornado...I said I thought we avoided a "high-end violent" tornado...EF-4 or EF-5. That appears to be the case with the early survey. I clearly saw the incredible couplet at less then 1000ft AGL...I have GR2Analyst w/dual-pol and analyzed the storm very closely...and accurately IMO. I just posted what the radar data inferred based on past historic events. That was all. It was obviously the inappropriate time to make that statement though...and I admitted that. It was not intended to downplay anything or be insensitive to the ongoing events...I was just trying to be a bit optimistic that maybe Wichita escaped a Joplin-like disaster...which they fortunately did...despite a very strong EF-3 event having occurred. Other people made this same point in this thread prior to my posts...noted the lack of significant debris, etc...but they didn't get called out. I again realize I approached it the wrong way and maybe that's why I was and maybe rightly so. I'm not here to get into an argument with anybody, I was trying to be valuable contributor. I'm not a pro yet (still in school) but have been looking and studying radar data for many years now. I appreciate the criticism though, its understood and will try to learn when the time is better to be like you and just lurk. I can't stress enough again - I apologize. Never thought a handful of optimistic viewpoints based on reliable radar data (which appears to have verified) about an ongoing event would still have people irritated two days after the fact, but again I understand it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoMo Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Great example, a freakish extremely violent tornado in a rural setting. I am sure evacuating the city of Joplin would have worked out swell. I know that was sarcasm. There would definitely be traffic problems. The Joplin tornado dropped down on the western side of the city so there was no time really. It was a very confusing setup with multiple areas of rotation. It was wrapped in rain pretty quickly. Joplin is a "Tree City USA", it's difficult to see anything due to all the large trees. (of course we now have a 'cleared' corridor where the tornado passed through) Even if a tornado was on the ground in SE Kansas or NE Oklahoma headed this way, it would still be difficult to see inside the city itself but easier to see on the northern and western side due to a less forested area. Joplin is expanding to the south, and will expand even more due to the construction of the hospital farther south. There are really dense forested areas to the south too. :-\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoMo Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Picher is an interesting example really. A town of 20,000 in it's heydey, it certainly had the road network to accomodate the few hundred people left who made the decision to leave by car. Using that tornado as an example for escaping in cars is pretty ironic though, given the amount of people who died South of Joplin in their cars once it was rain wrapped and wedged out near Racine. We obviously won't know for sure how many were trying to escape the tornado at the time and how many were just minding their own business and unaware of the threat but this aspect seems to get forgotten when compared to those who fled from Picher and lived. The area directly west of Picher is pretty flat and treeless. You can see for a long way out there. The Racine area is forested and has hills as it's closer to the Ozarks. I'm sure the storm motion didn't help since it was slightly south of east since it was a right turning supercell which isn't usually the case with storms around here. That pretty much saved Joplin from that one. Both the strong tornadoes recently were right turners. The speed at which it was traveling was pretty fast as well if I recall. Given that most people believe and that most tornadoes do move SW to NE, most would flee south, into a heavily forested with low visibility area. I'm not sure how many were actually fleeing the Picher storm vs just going on with their daily lives, blissfully unaware that a tornado was approaching them at a rapid speed from the west. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eskimo Joe Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 I am curious to know if anyone can direct me to a link where the old SPC outlooks are available for download in GIS format. I have checked the SPC / NWS GIS pages but I am either missing the link or the information is not there. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mappy Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 I am curious to know if anyone can direct me to a link where the old SPC outlooks are available for download in GIS format. I have checked the SPC / NWS GIS pages but I am either missing the link or the information is not there. Thanks! It doesn't look like there is GIS info to download for the outlooks themselves, just the images and text. Perhaps you can digitize the outlook areas? I know you can go back and pull up outlooks based on dates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eskimo Joe Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 It doesn't look like there is GIS info to download for the outlooks themselves, just the images and text. Perhaps you can digitize the outlook areas? I know you can go back and pull up outlooks based on dates. I'm probably going to do that, I was hoping for the exact coordinates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mappy Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 I'm probably going to do that, I was hoping for the exact coordinates. doesn't look like they have gis data for it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 I'm probably going to do that, I was hoping for the exact coordinates. Are you looking for this event or historical data? They have as far back as Friday afternoon, but grab them quick since each update purges the oldest data. http://www.nws.noaa.gov/view/national.php?prod=PTS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundersnow12 Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 some stills from Saturday evening near Solomon/Manchester, KS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewxmann Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Picher is an interesting example really. A town of 20,000 in it's heydey, it certainly had the road network to accomodate the few hundred people left who made the decision to leave by car. Using that tornado as an example for escaping in cars is pretty ironic though, given the amount of people who died South of Joplin in their cars once it was rain wrapped and wedged out near Racine. We obviously won't know for sure how many were trying to escape the tornado at the time and how many were just minding their own business and unaware of the threat but this aspect seems to get forgotten when compared to those who fled from Picher and lived. Three of the six fatalities in Picher were in cars (per the SPC statistics). I wouldn't call that a complete success of an evacuation (and from what I remember reading a few years ago, the roads out of Picher were indeed jammed up). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoMo Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Three of the six fatalities in Picher were in cars (per the SPC statistics). I wouldn't call that a complete success of an evacuation (and from what I remember reading a few years ago, the roads out of Picher were indeed jammed up). I believe those were people that waited until the absolute last minute to flee. The main thing is that if you can see the tornado, know the direction it is moving, and live in a rural enough area, you can get away from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoosier Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 The evac thing is a bad idea as a general practice. But if you have a reasonable understanding of meteorology and geography (which most people probably don't) then it makes some sense in certain situations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtticaFanatica Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 The evac thing is a bad idea as a general practice. But if you have a reasonable understanding of meteorology and geography (which most people probably don't) then it makes some sense in certain situations. This is succinct and correct. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brettjrob Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Superb pics, TS12. What a classic. I was on that storm way, way early out around Greensburg but left it due to outflow dominance -- definitely a mistake, as it was the storm of the day, particularly when it was SW of SLN. Thankfully, I did make it down to the tail-end Charlie in time for a good show just before sunset (and after, too). Here are a few shots from the north side of Cherokee, OK. Caught back up to it at Manchester, OK, just after dusk, and watched a large, strong tornado skirt by a couple miles to my NW. And finally, my first chase video ever, after six seasons shooting just stills. It was sort of my second priority as I was out of the car shooting tripoded stills most of the time, but sitting the camcorder on my dash made for a decent timelapse at least. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2kClkMR8Bs&feature=youtu.be&hd=1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wxsniss Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 anyone have an archived satellite image of the gravity waves seen over Oklahoma / Missouri ahead of the outbreak Saturday? and can someone explain the significance? EDIT: and incredible pics / movies everyone, keep them coming Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thundersnow12 Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Superb pics, TS12. What a classic. I was on that storm way, way early out around Greensburg but left it due to outflow dominance -- definitely a mistake, as it was the storm of the day, particularly when it was SW of SLN. We got on it early as well southwest of Great Bend and it didn't look that great so we left it as well and went a bit south and east to one coming up to near Pratt/Cunningham. Also left that one and busted north to get back on the one that was starting to put down tornadoes southwest of SLN. Thankfully we got back in time to see a few tornadoes with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewxmann Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NORMAN OK 441 PM CDT MON APR 16 2012...CORRECTED MAX WIND SPEED ...PRELIMINARY STORM INFORMATION FOR THE WOODWARD OKLAHOMA TORNADO... BEGINNING TIME: ~1150 PM ENDING TIME: ~1227 AM BEGINNING LOCATION: 2 NE ARNETT (ELLIS COUNTY) ENDING LOCATION: 4 NORTH OF WOODWARD (WOODWARD COUNTY) FATALITIES: 6 INJURIES: 29 EF-SCALE RATING: EF-3 ( MAX WIND SPEED 136-165 MPH ) THE TORNADO DEVELOPED APPROXIMATELY 3 MILES NORTHEAST OF ARNETT AND MOVED NORTHEAST. SIX STRUCTURES WERE DAMAGED AS THE TORNADO MOVED TOWARD THE WOODWARD COUNTY LINE. ONLY MINOR DAMAGE... DOWNED TREES AND POWER POLES/LINES... WAS SEEN AS THE TORNADO MOVED OVER MAINLY RURAL PORTIONS OF WOODWARD COUNTY. AT APPROXIMATELY 1212 AM... THE TORNADO STRUCK TWO MOBILE HOMES 5 MILES SOUTHWEST OF WOODWARD. THE DAMAGE HERE WAS DETERMINED TO BE EF-2 IN INTENSITY... WHICH ALSO RESULTED IN 3 FATALITIES. THE HEAVIEST DAMAGE... RATED EF-3... WAS REPORTED AS THE TORNADO ENTERED THE SOUTHWEST SIDES OF WOODWARD AROUND 1218 AM. SEVERAL HOME AND BUSINESSES WERE HEAVILY DAMAGED AS THE TORNADO CONTINUED NORTHEAST. SEVERAL MORE MOBILE HOMES WERE DESTROYED ON THE NORTH SIDE OF WOODWARD... WHICH RESULTED IN 3 ADDITIONAL FATALITIES. THE TORNADO FINALLY EXITED THE CITY OF WOODWARD AT APPROXIMATELY 1223 AM... EVENTUALLY DISSIPATING APPROXIMATELY 4 MILES NORTH OF WOODWARD AT 1227 AM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewxmann Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Also, two more EF3's (both with path widths in excess of 1 mi) have been found by DDC. The count of intense (EF3+) tornadoes for this outbreak is up to six. EDIT: 7, ICT map indicates that tornado north of Milan also attained EF3 status. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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