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Devastating tornado strikes Joplin, Missouri


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I find this interesting what you mentioned about oh just another tornado warning JoMo, the met at KSN there in Joplin is on James Spann's podcast Weatherbrains right now and he mentioned the EXACT same thing that by now you are used to about a dozen tornado warnings by now in a season so you get oh it's just another warning...

Why do you find that interesting? There are a lot of tornado warnings here every year, most don't produce. Actually around May12th I believe it was, a storm showed signs of rotation just west of here, I actually saw the rotation in the sky and it may have produced a funnel, but it lifted off to the NE and never produced an actual tornado. The first thing that everyone here does is go outside and look for the tornado.

During the first tornado warning and round of sirens, about 6 of my neighbors were outside talking and looking around. Everybody took shelter during the second round of sirens which were activated just prior to the tornado hitting as you could hear the rumbling sound and see the extremely dark sky.

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I've asked this too many times this year. But why in gods green earth are people that live in "TORNADO ALLEY" less educated than they should be? I mean. c'mon... It should be instilled in people from a young age about the dangers of these storms. I know this it's probably about 50-50 on percentages of people who know the dangers and the others. But it always seems that when people hear tornado warnings/sirens/watched that they don't take it as serious as they should And i;m not just talking about this event in Joplin, but all over the south. People in Florida and NC know about hurricane prepardness, west coast do the earthquake/wildfire thing, but i can't fathom some of the stories i hear.

WHoever said as they were heading out of Joplin, and warning people on the way in not to go, and they laugh it off. It's absurd... I know you can't fix stupid, but c'mon people.

I don't live in the area of tornados, so i have some questions?

1. Do public schools have education programs, cirriculums on tornado disasters?

2. DO local communities have seminars on weather emergencies? I know there's false alarms an such, but this goes to show you, that ignoring 1, well it could be your last one.

Finally, glad to see/hear your alright JoMo. I don;t know you personally, but your on the forum, and we were worried about you.

edit*

I sit back and try and put myself as one of the 5 persons in the car found in the pond, and i can't even start to fathom the fear, destruction and panic they must have felt in their final minutes... Must have been awful

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Out of curiosity, has anyone heard from Doug Heady, aka Joplinmet? He hasn't been on here since April...

I saw reports that he was on duty at the station, providing imformation throughout the event.

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Why do you find that interesting? There are a lot of tornado warnings here every year, most don't produce. Actually around May12th I believe it was, a storm showed signs of rotation just west of here, I actually saw the rotation in the sky and it may have produced a funnel, but it lifted off to the NE and never produced an actual tornado. The first thing that everyone here does is go outside and look for the tornado.

During the first tornado warning and round of sirens, about 6 of my neighbors were outside talking and looking around. Everybody took shelter during the second round of sirens which were activated just prior to the tornado hitting as you could hear the rumbling sound and see the extremely dark sky.

the thing that I found interesting is that by this point in the year Joplin is used to about a dozen different tornado warnings.... does not surprise me one bit that so many people were thinking oh just another warning to add to the evergrowing list. Which I think is PART of why when KSN showed the tornado on the tower cam that they starting getting REAL serious about it... like maybe Oh this one is REALLY real....

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I've asked this too many times this year. But why in gods green earth are people that live in "TORNADO ALLEY" less educated than they should be? I mean. c'mon... It should be instilled in people from a young age about the dangers of these storms. I know this it's probably about 50-50 on percentages of people who know the dangers and the others. But it always seems that when people hear tornado warnings/sirens/watched that they don't take it as serious as they should And i;m not just talking about this event in Joplin, but all over the south. People in Florida and NC know about hurricane prepardness, west coast do the earthquake/wildfire thing, but i can't fathom some of the stories i hear.

WHoever said as they were heading out of Joplin, and warning people on the way in not to go, and they laugh it off. It's absurd... I know you can't fix stupid, but c'mon people.

I feel personally it's the tornado warning fatigue that they get in SW Missouri, now I don't mean to pile on the Springfield office here at all, but it's pretty well common knowledge that they are one of the most tornado warning happy offices in the entire NWS, and after a while of hearing warning after warning after warning when 80 some odd percent don't produce a tornado in the area warned, you start to get oh OK this one isn't real either...

JoMo I'm sure you've seen this hundreds of times, you watch a storm on GR or on tv, and SGF will go nearly blanket tornado warnings, and as soon as it gets into the Paducah or St Louis CWA guess what, they go with severe thunderstorm warnings or heck sometimes no warning at all...

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Interview with Jordan Aubey who is a reporter for Fox 14/KOAM (Doug Heady's station). He was injured in the tornado and describes it in great detail. I think he may still be in shock a bit from what happened. He saw the devastation of the Picher, OK tornado and said he couldn't believe it.

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Hey JOMO: I'm glad you made it through the maelstrom.

Regarding the second guessing, here is my question:

It seems the Doppler Radar, warning system and sirens are reasonable; not perfect but far better

than what we had 20 years ago.

So...should there be underground shelters every couple of streets? It seems that some of the people had nowhere

to go. Heck, you had only a closet!!! For the people in the most intense F5 zone, would an underground shelter with a

six inch concrete slab or heavy steel storm door (covering an underground room) have saved them?

What good does it do to give people a 20 minute warning if they have no basement in their home and no community storm shelter

within a short walking distance?

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jhamps10: I know what you mean, we may suffer from 'warning fatigue' due to all the warnings. Storms happen a lot here, usually they are overnight storms from the MCS's that develop in the summer off the Rockies.

Most of the time, the tornadoes we do see are usually pretty weak due to the time of day and the distance they have traveled. (cold pool interactions, etc) This was just a 'perfect storm' type situation because the EF5 tornado lifted after only traveling 7 miles. The same area of storms produced again but the highest rating was an EF2 with that path length being 17 miles.

wintrymix: I know that several trailer parks have community shelters around here. Community shelters sound like a good idea, I'm just not sure how feasible they are.

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jhamps10: I know what you mean, we may suffer from 'warning fatigue' due to all the warnings. Storms happen a lot here, usually they are overnight storms from the MCS's that develop in the summer off the Rockies.

Most of the time, the tornadoes we do see are usually pretty weak due to the time of day and the distance they have traveled. (cold pool interactions, etc) This was just a 'perfect storm' type situation because the EF5 tornado lifted after only traveling 7 miles. The same area of storms produced again but the highest rating was an EF2 with that path length being 17 miles.

wintrymix: I know that several trailer parks have community shelters around here. Community shelters sound like a good idea, I'm just not sure how feasible they are.

I know comparing a city of 5000 to a city of 50,000 for community shelters is a much bigger story, but here the EMA has 3 or 4 community shelters scattered throughout Flora in different geographic areas depending on where you live, and the only issues we get here is people who are so adamant on bringing their dogs... and I don't mean little pugs or poodles, I know Wed mom and dad went to the shelter (I stayed back knowing that this one was going to be minor, but I was in a safe spot... just in case) and there was a guy with a pit bull in the shelter, anyway that's a whole other debate.

but I think with so much of Joplin taken out by the storm, I think it would be pretty easy to build in areas for community shelters in the rebuilding, but then again comes into the warning fatigue issue. although for a while I don't suspect you'll see a lot of people in Joplin NOT take a tornado warning seriously after what happened Sunday...

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What is worse, too many warnings, or a 40mi x 20mi tornado warning bigger than most counties, that IND issued a couple of days ago? Is the SGF tornado happiness a new thing? I don't remember that from when I lived there in upper SW MO. Of course my memory is skewed by the two tornados we had tracking towards our residence probably. I know I was always impressed with SGF. I even did a couple of job shadows at their office in high school, as well with Brandon Beck from KY3.

Just curious JoMo, and not trying to start anything polictial, and hope no one carries it that way. Does this change your opinion on mandatory safe rooms in new construction?

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I've always been surprised when people ignore warnings. To me, I would take advantage of the break from my normal routine. It's not like it happens every day or even every week. I guess part of it is people are just too preoccupied w/ their own lives to take it seriously.

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What is worse, too many warnings, or a 40mi x 20mi tornado warning bigger than most counties, that IND issued a couple of days ago? Is the SGF tornado happiness a new thing? I don't remember that from when I lived there in upper SW MO. Of course my memory is skewed by the two tornados we had tracking towards our residence probably. I know I was always impressed with SGF. I even did a couple of job shadows at their office in high school, as well with Brandon Beck from KY3.

Just curious JoMo, and not trying to start anything polictial, and hope no one carries it that way. Does this change your opinion on mandatory safe rooms in new construction?

The last few years Springfield has been tornado warning happy. I think it all really started getting that way after the Derecho in 2009.

I wouldn't mind having a safe room. I'm sure other people would mind though, or some couldn't afford it if it wasn't subsidized into the construction or something. Tornadoes of this magnitude are pretty rare. The chances of being hit by a killer tornado are pretty low. There's probably a much much greater chance you will die in an auto accident before you are killed by a tornado.

Joplin has a very low cost of living, and to shell out $5,000 for a safe room..... I'm not sure how many people would do that or could afford that for that once every 200 year killer tornado.

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The last few years Springfield has been tornado warning happy. I think it all really started getting that way after the Derecho in 2009.

I wouldn't mind having a safe room. I'm sure other people would mind though, or some couldn't afford it if it wasn't subsidized into the construction or something. Tornadoes of this magnitude are pretty rare. The chances of being hit by a killer tornado are pretty low. There's probably a much much greater chance you will die in an auto accident before you are killed by a tornado.

Joplin has a very low cost of living, and to shell out $5,000 for a safe room..... I'm not sure how many people would do that or could afford that for that once every 200 year killer tornado.

Gotcha, I moved away in 2003. I try to keep tabs out there some, because mom still lives in Lebanon. (In a trailer park none the less)

Have you seen or heard of any safe rooms that survived this storm, like we saw pics of in AL?

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Turns out that report about the receipt being blown over 500 miles isn't true:

http://blogs.wlfi.co...t-from-tornado/

sounds like an honest mistake right there, that quite frankly if I had seen a receipt from Joplin I would likely have thought from the tornado myself..

but smart move by the family to call Purdue in, good to get the right picture though.

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Joplin MO vs. Xenia OH vs. Moore, OK

Which one was the worst in terms of damage and strength?

The worst parts of the BridgeCreek/Moore?OKC tornado were a bit worse than the worst parts of the Xenia tornado(Windsor Park and parts of Arrowhead subdivision)imo. I think you had a car in Moore found half a mile from where it had been parked-I don't think you have quite that level in the Xenia tornado as bad as it was. And the damage to the high school was severe but no worse really than that in Plainfield with that high school, and several others. You had buses and tractor trailer rigs thrown on top of buildings, but nothing that big thrown half a mile like in Moore, or having semi trailers blown 1/8th of a mile, like in Joplin. If you look at the actual damage in Xenia, once it got out of the first subdivisions and into the city and then northeast, the damage does not strike one as being more than ef4/f4 or ef3/f3. There were very few of the older houses in Xenia proper, or the newer houses in the northeastern part, that were completely obliterated off the face of the earth-there was severe damage, but you could see the remains of a house there.

This Joplin Tornado sounds at least as bad as just about any. The Jarrell tornado came to mind because of how strong and wide it was, and the short path-but the slow speed really messes that one up for me.

I would say of the three Xenia would be not quite as strong as the other two. Just my two cents.

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I'm ok. My family is ok. We just got power and phone service restored. 3 blocks away is completely gone though. I'll post a more detailed account once I check in with everyone.

We know of at least 2 people we know that died. One was protecting his wife and died from injuries. She survived, he didn't. One had a compound fracture and bled to death, they couldn't give her a transfusion because they didn't have her blood type.

Glad you made it.....we were worried about you.

Welcome back.....:D

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Why is Moore so clearly stronger, in your opinion?

And why Jarrell? I've actually heard some skepticism Re: that one-- doubts about the quality of the construction, etc.

I think part of the reason for the extreme damage in the Jarrell tornado was because it was moving so slowly (10-15 mph I believe). It was propagating southwestward along a boundary rather than hauling ass with the westerlies. The WCM at WFO Austin/San Antonio told me a few years ago that several cars were never found. The only place they think they could have gone was Lake Travis ~40 miles away, which seems unlikely.

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The civil engineers at Texas Tech University did a study regarding the Jarrell tornado and also questioned the quality of construction of the homes, namely due to a lack of stronger building standards in Williamson County and that Jarrell was/is a rural community.

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/users/brooks/public_html/sls19/abstracts/mehtaetal.html

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This is a new video of the joplin tornado. It shows it going from wall cloud to wedge tornado in just 60 seconds.

Cool video but I think that's the most annoying commentary I've ever heard. Keep me safe, Lord....oh yeah and my wife too if you don't mind, since she's over there near the tornado. arrowheadsmiley.png

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