Hoosier

Of course I didn't mean to suggest that Oklahoma has the tree coverage that Alabama does on the whole, but in the case of the 1999 Moore/OKC tornado, I remember plenty of footage that showed a considerable number of trees. Any city is going to have a substantial number of trees which may not be captured well on a national map. Trees definitely factor in, but I think OKC having longer time to realize that a monster was bearing down (among other factors) surely helped.

I don't know if I agree with that. It's not like there aren't trees in a city like Oklahoma City.

Some schools do but I imagine that most don't.

That is a real nightmare scenario. It might be 10 years or 100 years from now but it will happen someday.

I think it was farther away from him than his post suggested (although certainly pretty close). We know that Cecil Floyd had damage and that is not too far away. Tidbits from the survey would suggest that he missed the worst but the damage path is wide.

People on Facebook are saying the suspected location of JoMo was heavily damaged. I've read so much conflicting info today...

I'd probably do the same thing but it's bad advice for the general public, especially in a rain-wrapped case like yesterday when even experienced chasers can be caught in precarious positions.

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.

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

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.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/nws-joplin-storm-an-955263.html

Looks like a confirmed high-end EF4 so far but survey still ongoing.

That makes it the deadliest since the Woodward, OK tornado of April 9, 1947, and currently the 9th deadliest on record in the US.

Yeah, good point.

The hurricane parallel to this event is something like Charley in 2004. Everyone knows about the potential (or they should), warnings are in effect, but the rapid ramp up into a beast catches people off guard. I really can't think of a worse set of circumstances for Joplin unless it would've hit at night.

Forward motion wasn't extremely fast but it wasn't a slow mover either. I think it was somewhere around 40 mph give or take.

We've been incredibly unlucky this year with major tornadoes hitting large population centers. As far as fatalities, you really have to go back to 1953 (Waco, Flint/Worcester) to find something like this less than a month apart. Unfortunately, this type of thing may become less rare in the future with all the population growth and expansion.

Posting this here as it may become a story of national interest... Obviously we have to wait for the survey but it looks like it may have been a violent tornado. The tornado appears to have tracked across the southern portion of the city and quite wide. It only happened a few hours ago and there are already reports of 24 deaths, but that number will probably rise. Joplin has a population of about 50,000. This is the latest example of a major tornado striking a densely populated area, an all too frequent occurrence this year. We have a member from Joplin by the name of JoMo. He was posting in the severe weather thread until the tornado approached. It is unclear whether he was hit but we have not heard from him since the tornado struck. Please keep him in your thoughts.

That is really impressive.

I won't be surprised if the final number surpasses the total from 1974.

Time makes people forget. Plus there's a little truth in the lake myth, but it gets exaggerated to the point where people think it will prevent something big every time. Cook county had 24 minutes of lead time on 4/21/67, outstanding for that era especially given that the tornado hadn't previously touched down yet in another county. Oak Lawn had about 25,000 people and the tornado damage path was only a couple hundred yards wide at most, but we got unlucky with a lot of people caught in traffic. I've read the damage survey and it seems like the only F4 damage occurred in Oak Lawn...so if that severe damage would've been more widespread or farther northeast, it probably would've been worse. There's been some frightening modeled scenarios about what would happen if a violent tornado tracked through Chicago. The area with rather high population density is much bigger though as you said.

Long post so I'm not quoting the whole thing, but just wait. A mass casualty tornado is inevitable. It's been 20 years since Plainfield and that was only one violent tornado. Given the urban sprawl around there, that would be bad enough, but imagine 2 or 3 violent tornadoes in one day like 1967. It's hard to just pick one metro area in the US and say "this is where the next mega tornado disaster is likely to be" but your area is probably as likely as anybody. At least you have more basements than Alabama, but there's also more people.

Well, my relatives in Tuscaloosa are fine. They are on the north side of town so it missed them. They know someone who works in the ER and I guess there are babies lined up in the hallway with no parents around.

Obviously, but the question is whether one should be forced to have one. That starts to bring a political element into the discussion though.