A Decade Since Joplin, MO Tornado. It Still Leaves An Impression

Ten years ago this weekend, one of the deadliest and THE
most costly tornado in United States history 
struck Joplin, Missouri. 

 For weather geeks like me, particular extreme, if distant,  weather events leave a lasting impression and one that still haunts me is the huge Joplin, Missouri tornado of 2011.  

Yesterday, May 22 was the 10th anniversary of that monster storm - an EF-5 tornado that pretty much leveled most of the southern third of Joplin.  

The storm killed at least 158 people, making it the nation's seventh deadliest tornado on record.   The tornado injured more than 1,000 people and destroyed 7,000 buildings. 

Damage amounted to more than $3 billion dollars, making this the costliest tornado in U.S history. 

The tornado did all this in just the 38 minutes it was on the ground, from 5:34 to 6:12 .p.m. local time.  The twister was as strong as one can get with winds of over 200 mph. The damage was amplified even further because the tornado's forward motion was only 20 mph. That's slow for a tornado and kept the winds grinding over the same spots far longer than usual for a tornado.

The videos of the tornado are still haunting.  As it approached Joplin, the tornado was a mile wide and wrapped in rain.  It was so big it didn't look like a tornado, just a wall of black smashing into town. Once it passed, everything was scattered, flattened. 

The destruction was so extreme that the first people arriving into Joplin moments after the tornado departed were overwhelmed and helpless. The Weather Channel's Mike Bettes, who had been chasing the tornado, arrived in Joplin on the storm's heels. He understandably  broke down and wept on air at what he saw.

The scene in the hours after the tornado was beyond unreal. People swarmed over the wreckage looking for injured under the glow of a setting sun, dark, lightning streaked clouds overhead and continued pelting rain. 

Joplin recovered strongly after the tornado.  Some communities devastated by tornadoes never fully recover and lose population.  Now, more people live in Joplin than before the tornado. The city has a population of about 51,000.

Since Joplin, the National Weather Service and emergency managers are still struggling with making warnings effective an accurate.

The tornado warnings for Joplin that day were confusing. Initially, a tornado warning was issued for a separate storm north of the city.  When the new tornado that would wreck Joplin formed, people wrongly assumed the warning was for the twister that would miss Joplin to the north. 

As the Washington Post reports, some tornadoes still go unwarned.  One twister struck southwest of Dodge City, Kansas earlier this year and residents never received a warning.  Another tornado around Memphis clearly showed its signature on radar. People following the storm on Twitter noticed the tornado and contacted the local National Weather Service, and they were still late on warning the storm.

Lead times between the time a warning is issued and the time tornadoes struck has actually declined since the Joplin tornado, says Mike Smith in a Washington Post opinion piece.

In part because of the Joplin tornado, the National Weather Service has changed the language in its severe weather warnings.  There was concern that the language used in tornado warnings like the one issued 17 minutes before the Joplin tornado was confusing.

 Now tornado warnings, and warnings for other hazards like hurricanes and big flash floods - especially for particularly dangerous ones headed for populated areas, - use language like "You are in a life-threatening situation," and "Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter."

Though we've seen devastating tornadoes since, the United States has so far not seen anything as extreme as Joplin since that storm hit a decade ago.  We've been exceedingly lucky with these strongest tornadoes. 

There has not been an EF-5 in the United States since a deadly one in Newcastle and Moore, Oklahoma in 2013.

Which is good. We do not need any more Joplin-scale tornado disasters.  

Thank goodness, we'll never see a tornado of the scale of the Joplin disaster in Vermont.Still, we're prone to other extreme weather disasters. We had our own mega-disaster just three months after the Joplin tornado when the huge floods of Tropical Storm Irene ripped parts of Vermont apart. 

You never know where the next mega-disaster will hit. Just keep praying it's not you.

like the Great Floods of 192