Deadly tornadoes rip OK, KS, and AR; high tornado risk today; Joplin tornado an EF-5
America's deadliest tornado season since 1953 continued its relentless onslaught of violent tornadoes yesterday. Numerous destructive and deadly tornadoes raked Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Arkansas, killing at least nine people. Yesterday's deadliest tornado hit El Reno and Piedmont, Oklahoma, about 30 miles to the west and northwest of Oklahoma City. Four people died, and one child is missing. Video of the damage from this tornado near the town of Piedmont shot by a news9.com helicopter shows damage characteristic of an EF-4 tornado, with many homes completely demolished and swept off their foundations. This tornado produced a wind gust of 151 mph at an Oklahoma Mesonet station in El Reno, Oklahoma.
Figure 1. Radar reflectivity image of the supercell thunderstorm that spawned the Piedmont, Oklahoma tornado that killed at least four people about 30 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.
Figure 2. Doppler velocity image of the supercell thunderstorm that spawned the Piedmont, Oklahoma tornado.
Figure 3. Top wind gusts recorded by the Oklahoma Mesonet yesterday showed that over 2/3 of the state received gusts of 40 mph or greater, and ten stations got gusts in excess of 58 mph (the definition of a severe thunderstorm.) A remarkable gust of 151 mph was recorded in El Reno, about 30 miles west of Oklahoma City.
Video 1. Chase video of the 1/2-mile wide tornado that killed four people in Canadian/Caddo Counties about 30 miles northwest of Oklahoma City on Tuesday, May 24, 2011.
Joplin, Missouri got a scare last night when Doppler radar showed a rotating thunderstorm approaching the city from the southwest. A tornado warning was issued and the sirens sounded, but the storm passed just to the northwest of the city, bringing Joplin only heavy rains, wind gusts to 41 mph, and intense lightning. A tornado warning forced the evacuation of NOAA's Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman Oklahoma late yesterday afternoon, and the center was out of commission for a 50-minute period. However, yesterday's dangerous tornadoes missed the most heavily populated areas of Oklahoma, and SPC was able to resume normal activity after the storms cleared Oklahoma City. The center logged 47 reports of tornadoes yesterday, bringing the preliminary 4-day total of the current outbreak to 153 twisters. With more tornadoes expected today over a wide swath of the country from Arkansas to Ohio, this week's tornado outbreak is likely to rank as one of the top ten tornado outbreaks in history. This year already has the two largest tornado outbreaks in history, the April 25 - 28 outbreak (327 tornadoes) and the April 14 - 16 outbreak (162 tornadoes.)
This year's tornado death toll is in the 495 - 499 range, making it the deadliest year for tornadoes in the U.S. since 1953, when 519 people died. That year, three heavily populated cities received direct hits by violent tornadoes. Waco, Texas (114 killed), Flint, Michigan (115 killed), and Worcester, Massachusetts (90 killed) all were hit by violent F-4 or F-5 tornadoes. A similar bad tornado year occurred in 1936, when violent tornadoes hit Tupelo Mississippi (216 killed), and Gainesville, Georgia (203 killed.)
Figure 4. Satellite image taken at 22:32 UTC (6:32pm EDT) May 24, 2011, showing a line of tornadic thunderstorms over Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. Image credit: NASA/GSFC.
Figure 5. Radar image of an unusual "J"-shaped tendril emerging from a tornadic thunderstorm near Dallas, Texas. This storm had unusually high radar reflectivity (note the pink colors of 70 dbZ echoes), because of large hail in the storm. This thunderstorm produced softball-sized hail (4.5 inch diameter.)
Video 2. Chase video of several Oklahoma tornadoes intercepted yesterday by Reed Timmer of tornadovideos.net.
The Joplin tornado an EF-5, and the costliest tornado in history
The Springfield, Missouri office of the National Weather Service announced yesterday that storm surveys of the 7-mile long, 3/4 mile-wide path of damage carved by the Joplin tornado revealed that winds in the violent tornado exceeded 200 mph, making it the 4th EF-5 tornado of the year. The twister roared through Joplin beginning at 5:41pm CDT on Sunday, May 22. In nine terrifying minutes, the tornado killed at least 125 people, injured 750 more, and destroyed 2,000 buildings. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center (SPC) rates this year's Joplin tornado as the 8th deadliest U.S. tornado of all-time, and the deadliest since at least 1947, when a violent F-5 tornado hit Woodward, Oklahoma, killing 181.
Catastrophe risk modeling firm EQECAT said yesterday that insured damages from the Joplin tornado could be between $1 billion and $3 billion dollars. According to NOAA's National Severe Storm Laboratory, the costliest tornado between 1890 - 1999 was the May 3, 1999 Oklahoma City tornado, which did $1 billion in damage (1999 dollars.) There were no tornadoes during the period 2000 - 2010 capable of causing $1 billion in damage; the only two EF-5 tornadoes during that period, the 2007 Greensburg, Kansas tornado and the 2008 Parkersburg, Iowa tornado each did less than $300 million in damage. Thus, with the possible exception of this year's Tuscaloosa-Birmingham tornado of April 27, the Joplin tornado is probably the most damaging tornado of all-time.
Another "High Risk" day for severe weather and violent tornadoes today
The Storm Prediction Center has placed portions of seven states, from Arkansas to Indiana, in their "High Risk" region for severe weather potential, and warn of the potential for long-lived strong or violent tornadoes. This is their second consecutive "High Risk" forecast day, and fourth of the year. A high risk forecast was also issued on April 27, which was the busiest tornado day in world history, with 198 tornadoes occurring in a 24-hour period. Over 300 people died. The other "High Risk" forecast by SPC came during the final day of the April 14 - 16 outbreak over the Southeast U.S. Fifty-two tornadoes hit that day, and 26 people died in North Carolina and Virginia. The severe weather threat will diminish considerably on Thursday, when only a slight risk of severe weather is expected from Alabama to New York.
Figure 5. Severe weather threat for Wednesday, May 25, 2011.
Joplin tornado the 7th U.S. billion-dollar weather disaster of 2011
The Joplin tornado is the 7th U.S. weather disaster of 2011 costing more than a billion dollars. With hurricane season still to come, 2011 has an excellent chance of beating 2008's record of nine billion-dollar weather disasters. The billion dollar weather disasters of 2011 so far:
1) 2011 Groundhog Day's blizzard ($1- $4 billion)
2) April 3 -5 Southeast U.S. severe weather outbreak ($2 billion)
3) April 8 - 11 severe weather outbreak ($2.25 billion)
4) April 25 - 28 super tornado outbreak ($3.5 - $6 billion)
5) Mississippi River flood of 2011 ($9 billion)
6) Texas drought ($1.2 billion)
7) Joplin tornado ($1 - $3 billion)
Links
The New York Times has an interactive tornado fatality map showing how this year's killer tornadoes have mostly clustered over the Southeast U.S., with the glaring exception of the Joplin, Missouri tornado.
NOAA's Visualization Laboratory has an impressive animation of the satellite imagery during the month of April, showing the locations of all the tornadoes as they happened.
Helping out tornado victims
For those who want to lend a helping hand to those impacted by the widespread destruction this month's severe weather has brought, stop by the Red Cross website, or portlight.org blog. Portlight has been very active bringing aid to the victims of this year's tornadoes.
Jeff Masters
The storm in Joplin Mo. before destruction
Much clearer view of it as it roped out (
vortecguy)
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 — Blog Index
so far things look milder than what we've seen recently
(rolls eyes)
there was a live feed I was watching today promising to show the final Oprah show that was supposed to air today tomorrow at its regular time or 3 am because of the emergency news cast..I think Oprah wouldnt mind her show being delayed in order to save lives but of course you do have people out there who wont think that..
The only reason Songda will be of any potential significance is due to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan. They are entirely accustomed to dealing with typhoons.
it's a sorry sad state of affairs, what we humans deem important
sometimes I wish I was something other than human
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I always picture you as a shaggy dog.
:):))
I'd love to dive into a discussion of this kind of thing, but as Floodman said, "Let's not get into this here."
This blog has enough trouble staying free of politics when global warming comes up. It's just not a good place to get into discussion of political and financial matters. Troll bait and all that.
Thanks.
you are obviously doing it to spark controversy, I stood up for you yesterday. Please stop today.
I sure understand and often catch myself feeling the same way. It might seem counter-intuitive, but I find some consolation in the thought that, if you could really analyze the minds of dogs or gnats or sparrows, you'd find that many of them are just as shallow and vapid as their human counterparts. I think when the basic needs (food, shelter, etc.) of a creature are met, it shifts its focus towards the pursuit of comfort. For better or worse, many humans derive greater comfort from mindless TV shows than they do from news and current events. Such is life. Luckily, there are quite a few humans who seem to derive comfort from being informed.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for taking the time to provide an explanation (and for the links).
http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=dax&produc t=N0R&overlay=11101111&loop=no
Ah ha! I was at radar.weather.gov earlier wishing I could figure out how to find a linkable image. How the heck do you get to that GIF from their main page?
Thanks!
MrMixon, I'll make a quick try at it.
Your correct about the precip and severe weather associated with the big upper low and the spiral bands of convection.
There is also a surface low underneath the upper system and extending to its east, a warm front boundary separating the warm moist air from the cooler and dryer air. As the warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico gets drawn north it gets a boost (lift) when it meet the warm front-almost like air forced to rise because of terrain (another kind of lift). More thunder and rain results from this somewhat abrupt lifting.
Part of this same warm, moist air continues to track to the north across the boundary and will usually start to make a gentle left turn in response to the lower pressure to its west. The properties of this airmass are much different than the air it has just lifted over. If unique airmasses can, they will try to not mix with an airmass that has different properties (temperature, density, moisture, etc). This air is still ascending a slope but one that is a much more gentle upglide. At some point it cools enough from the ascent for the remaining moisture to be squeezed out. Quite a bit different than the convective process where surface air is rudely yanked up 40-50,000 ft! This used to be called "overunning". The most explicit term nowdays is "Isentropic Lift". Today, this moisture is reaching saturation over MN and MI.
I'm stuck in make-Fortran-write-grib2-files, umm, utopia.
0012 6 NW BROWNSTOWN JACKSON IN 3894 8612 POSSIBLE DEBRIS BALL ON RADAR (IND)
0017 9 ENE BEDFORD LAWRENCE IN 3891 8634
I don't think the classifications depend on how severe the storms will be, but rather, the areal coverage and extent of said storms.
I don't know. In my honest opinion, I believe having the whole eastern flank of illinois under a tornado warning is pretty deserving of a high risk.
???
There have been Tornadoes all over the place today....
That seems to vindicate a "high risk" call, if you ask me.
Yah I posted a radar image of that one 45 minutes ago, nasty hook with little debris ball.
Very clever trick noted and stored away in the memory banks for future use. Much obliged.
They don't know that at 6am, main.
BTW - day ain't over yet.
Viewing: 451 - 501
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 — Blog Index