Juliett Bravo Kilo
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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.
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Significant Tornado Events
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Marshal79344
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Joplin was just terrible timing. Of all the places that this merger could have occurred, it had to occur right before it passed over the Joplin area. The high death toll was sealed by multiple instances of "false warnings" in the past, situations where tornado warnings had been issued but nothing had happened to the people of Joplin specifically, so they didn't care too much. When the Tornado Warning was issued for this tornado, they would have thought "Oh this is nothing," until they heard the roar of the EF5 Tornado approaching and it was too late. In addition to the Tornado Warning issue, the tornado was very low-based and rainwrapped for most of its life. Sometimes, when a Tornado Warning is issued, people wanna actually see the tornado. It's just classic human nature. However, this tornado would have been impossible to see coming, especially with all the trees in the way. You know just how rainwrapped and difficult the tornado was to see based on the few videos taken of it. Finally, the contour of EF4+ damage in this tornado is one of the widest I've ever seen. Combine all three of these factors together, you get the worst-case scenario.
Juliett Bravo Kilo
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This photo is of a house near the hospital that had its concrete basement walls blown OUTWARD:
Link to buckeye's thorough post on why Joplin fully deserved its EF5 rating:
Significant Tornado Events
Pretty impressive ground scouring, but I never noticed the potential pavement scouring with Katie-Wynnewood until now. It's hard to say for sure, but it does look like they drove over a patch of scoured pavement at 8:30 seconds in the Basehunters video. Hard to say for absolutely certain though...
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Marshal79344
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I remember reading one newspaper about a story from inside the Nursing Home, where someone inside reacted with "Oh just another tornado warning, it's nothing" when the warning was issued. Then, they heard the roar and suddenly realized how dangerous the situation was. This is most likely what the 158 victims of the Joplin Tornado were thinking when they first received the tornado warning.
Juliett Bravo Kilo
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This photo is of a house near the hospital that had its concrete basement walls blown OUTWARD:
View attachment 6556
Another thing about Joplin was that it went through town mere hours after the high-school graduation ceremony had completed; I believe quite a few of the fatalities were non-natives who weren't familiar with the geography of the area and thus, would have a harder time finding places to get to shelter or outrun the tornado in their car from.
Absolute insanity. The fact that anyone could think Joplin deserves a rating lower than EF5 is absurd.
locomusic01
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The other photo you're thinking of is probably from the cover of that month's Storm Data:
I've got the original photo somewhere, or at least I did. Might've been among the stuff I lost a while back when one of my hard drives died.
Anyway, Central Texas probably has as many high-CAPE days as just about anywhere else in the country, so there are plenty of opportunities. When you get boundary interactions in an environment like that, things can get crazy pretty quickly. And Central Texas is also in a pretty good spot for gravity waves. The basic sequence of events that preceded Jarrell (dryline storms form in KS/OK/TX during the afternoon, travel eastward overnight and eventually collapse, generating gravity waves that propagate back toward TX) happens relatively often. Most of the time it doesn't actually lead to anything like Jarrell, but the general ingredients are probably present more often than we realize. It's just a matter of them coming together in just the right way.
Regarding Jarrell in particular, who knows? I'd guess probably a combination of an incredibly violent tornado, a very slow forward speed/long duration of winds and a ton of debris loading.
Marshal79344
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There was one study that supposedly found "3% EF4 Damage." I honestly have no idea where this number was received from.
Juliett Bravo Kilo
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That engineering "study" does display some of the issues with the EF scale, and how it ranks damage.
Juliett Bravo Kilo
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Horrifying fact about the Greenbriar Nursing Home: It was the highest tornado-related death toll in a single building since 1987, when 22 were killed at a school ceremony in Saragosa, Texas.
Also, I recommend this link: https://extremeplanet.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/views-detailing-ef5-damage-from-the-joplin-tornado/
The EF4 rating houses of this tornado was still the most since the implement of EF scale, even higher than Moore 2013.More than 500 houses were rated EF4 and 22 houses rated EF5 inside Joplin.
That was the American Society of Civil Engineers study. Juliett Bravo Kilo posted a link to buckeye05's earlier post about why this study was far from accurate.
I do believe that the EF scale is flawed to a certain extent though I also think a lot of it has to do with how different NWS offices interpret the scale (I'm looking at you, Vilonia.)
I find sometimes these engineering study was full of contradictory in itself. I believe they find the damage of Rebar-anchored concrete parking stops needs winds at least 205mph in an article. Now several DOW/POD study found winds at ground level was about 60% of more than ten menters inside tornado.(like Sulphur and Dodge City case in 2016) If this finding was correct, it means winds several dozen menters above the Rebar-anchored concrete parking stops was at least 341mph in a rough comparison.
Marshal79344
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Saragosa was another classic case of terrible timing. There have been several instances of tornadoes barely missing graduation ceremonies, such as the June 5, 2010, Millbury, OH EF4, and the Joplin Tornado. However, even though this tornado lasted for less than 5 miles, it just so happened to be that Saragosa was right in the path. This too, was another classic case of a rather weak surface low interacting with a highly unstable atmosphere, influencing favorable wind profiles for tornadoes and initiation. 0000 UTC observations from Del Rio shows a very unstable, healthy, and thick updraft profile. The wind profiles definitely favor violent tornado activity, but the hodograph and critical angle makes me think that some sort of boundary interaction with the parent supercell helped to steady out the main updraft and hold out long enough to allow a tornado to come out of the updraft before the supercell would cycle again. The exact same thing happened with the EF2 Tornado in the Black Hills Forest on July 6, 2020.
The tornado initially formed as a small, weak condensation funnel before a second, much larger funnel formed just to its right. The two funnels can be seen below.
The two funnels had merged into one large tornado, which grew into an extremely large and violent F4 by the time it entered the southern side of town. It leveled several homes along a very wide swath. Two lives were taken here before the tornado moved right towards the church, where the preschool graduation was taking place. One man who was inside the church yelled, "There's a tornado coming!" Right before the building was struck and swept away by the tornado, which likely saved many lives. Every single part of the building, save for a portion of the back wall and foundation, was completely obliterated and swept away. Most of the fatalities occurred when parents were struck by debris trying to protect their children.
Photo of the remains of the schoolhouse:
The tornado continued its devastating course through town, striking another subdivision to the north, killing a family of 3 in a home before it exited the town. As the tornado exited the town, it killed a teenage girl who was trying to escape the tornado in her car. The tornado lasted no more than 5 miles after leaving the town, and the parent supercell never produced again. Several trees sustained debarking throughout the town and the ground was scoured. This tornado would definitely be awarded an EF4 rating today.
locomusic01
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I never really considered Joplin among the most intense tornadoes until I started researching for my blog post. That changed my mind very quickly. It produced some of the most incredible vehicle damage, debris granulation and vegetation damage I've ever seen, and I don't say that lightly. There's one streak of damage along.. Missouri Ave IIRC? that stands out even among the general devastation. There are several homes that are completely obliterated, surrounded by extensive scouring and a row of trees stripped so clean they practically gleam.
I spoke with someone who lived in one of the homes (they were away at the time, thankfully) and they said that they had their second car parked in the driveway at the time of the tornado. They eventually found it a number of blocks away with practically all of the body panels torn away and the frame essentially wrapped up into a ball around the engine block. The only way they recognized it as theirs was because the license plate had sort of gotten wedged into the tangled mess.
I spoke with someone who lived in one of the homes (they were away at the time, thankfully) and they said that they had their second car parked in the driveway at the time of the tornado. They eventually found it a number of blocks away with practically all of the body panels torn away and the frame essentially wrapped up into a ball around the engine block. The only way they recognized it as theirs was because the license plate had sort of gotten wedged into the tangled mess.
Is the area you're thinking of closer to St. John's or Joplin High School? Most of the extreme damage with homes swept away, ground scouring and completely debarked trees occurred in the vicinity of West 26th Street (immediately northeast of the hospital), and on both sides of the high school.
J-Rab
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Yeah, here is a gif that I found some time ago on the Jarrell storms that shows the interaction between the cold front (blue line) the dry line (yellow) and the gravity waves (orange) from storms in Arkansas the previous night.The other photo you're thinking of is probably from the cover of that month's Storm Data:
I've got the original photo somewhere, or at least I did. Might've been among the stuff I lost a while back when one of my hard drives died.
Anyway, Central Texas probably has as many high-CAPE days as just about anywhere else in the country, so there are plenty of opportunities. When you get boundary interactions in an environment like that, things can get crazy pretty quickly. And Central Texas is also in a pretty good spot for gravity waves. The basic sequence of events that preceded Jarrell (dryline storms form in KS/OK/TX during the afternoon, travel eastward overnight and eventually collapse, generating gravity waves that propagate back toward TX) happens relatively often. Most of the time it doesn't actually lead to anything like Jarrell, but the general ingredients are probably present more often than we realize. It's just a matter of them coming together in just the right way.
Regarding Jarrell in particular, who knows? I'd guess probably a combination of an incredibly violent tornado, a very slow forward speed/long duration of winds and a ton of debris loading.
Right as the cold front catches up to the dry line from the West, the gravity waves also reach the dry line approaching from the Northeast. You can see that the storms explode along the dry line just as the gravity waves arrive. The gravity waves provided just enough lift to rupture the cap and let the highly unstable air rush upwards.
EDIT: apparently, I can’t post a gif with it still animated, which is a shame because it shows exactly how this unfolded.
That vehicle damage is honestly on par with Smithville in terms of the overall strength. Vehicles crushed into a ball no more than a few feet wide is a VERY impressive feat of damage.
Juliett Bravo Kilo
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Other pics from Joplin:
A chair impaled into a wall:
Wood impaled through concrete:
Garden hose impaled through a tree:
Mangled Jeep Cherokee thrown from the hospital parking lot:
Ground scouring that took place near the Pepsi distribution center:
Before and after of the nursing home & surrounding areas:
A chair impaled into a wall:
Wood impaled through concrete:
Garden hose impaled through a tree:
Mangled Jeep Cherokee thrown from the hospital parking lot:
Ground scouring that took place near the Pepsi distribution center:
Before and after of the nursing home & surrounding areas:
locomusic01
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It's been years since I wrote it so the details are pretty fuzzy. I believe it's a bit south of the high school. I'll have to check my files later.