Juliett Bravo Kilo
Member
What's amazing (and tragic) about Joplin is that it blew up right when it was going through a big city, that almost never happens and virtually guaranteed 100+ deaths.The third cell that you see developing to the south of the two main cells that were combining interfered with the inflow notch, which caused rain-cooled air, which is stable, to obstruct the inflow into the tornado. This caused the tornado to remain weak for the rest of its life, but the updraft was so strong that it persisted for an unusually long time. Similar mergers caused several of the 4/27/2011 tornadoes to dissipate, along with Louisville and Vilonia