When the TV weathermen break in to regular programming to tell you what everyone else is facing. It's never your house or your office or the event where you have friends and family in attendance. Except for this afternoon.
For about 30 minutes they kept mentioning the tiny town less than three miles from me. I just kept laying in bed with the sheer confidence of a lifetime of experience in tornado alley. Watching the radar screen homed in very tightly near me. Knowing it will bad here but much worse nearby. Mere 70 mph winds are nothing. Nickel sized hail is nothing. Ten miles to the south of me an elderly care home was hit with quarter sized hail that stacked up eight inches deep near the perimeter of the building. Nothing to get excited about. Just ignore it. It'll be gone elsewhere in a few minutes.
Two nights ago numerous F2 and less tornados roared across the middle of the east line of Kansas. Called up a friend near one potential tornado and he was wandering around out in his yard wearing what he normally wears to bed. No need to get dressed until it's knocking on your door.
After we went thru the ef5 tornado here in Dec. 10, 2021 I’ve been a lot more attentive to the warnings. We were in the design stages of a new house and added a 8’x24’ storm shelter with poured walls 8” walls under the front porch slab. In my opinion, watching Ryan Hall’s YouTube channel is a lot more informative than local weather.
@eddycreek I remember you sharing that situation with us. Life gives us challenges that can sometimes be huge. No amount of planning is enough. What really happens is something else based on immediate circumstances.
The great thing about tornados is they are a rifle bullet rather than a shotgun blast. A hurricane is a bit like a shotgun blast. A tornado hits you with all of it's potential energy, but, it only hits you if you are in it's path. Huge tornados like your F5 might be one mile wide. An F2 is far smaller in both width and intensity. Many confirmed tornados are smaller yet. Those might move your car in your driveway but leave behind the small, cheap carport it was setting under. Crazy stuff you don't want to believe can happen.
@rankin_file I'll agree to meet you halfway on that request.
Well if you can’t afford one or the other, let us know, and maybe we could help you out with a go-fund-me…. 😆
@rankin_file I'll just send out my wife with her hair in huge, pink curlers and a Hawaiian muu muu dress.
@holy-cow please know my go fund me remark was strictly in jest in the confines of this post and not intended to be disparaging in any way.
I am un-disparaging-able anymore. I enjoy harassing others and have them harass me in return. Friends do that to each other.
It is great to have you posting again. You wandered off for a bit, probably lurking more than posting. I noticed when Mike Berry posted recently after a similar break. The same with a certain buddy from Tennessee.
The TV weather crew broke in to normal programming two hours and twenty minutes ago and stayed on continuously following the tornado on the ground. It is an incredibly slow moving tornado with a huge amount of rain and areas with hail up to two inches in diameter. It has moved only about 30 miles since they broke in. It is more or less headed towards Joplin, MO and might get there in another three hours at the current rate. Or it could die out. Or it could stop moving just to the south of east and pick some other direction.
UPDATE: The TV crew has abandoned their studio as the tornado is about on top of them. Hope the 1130-foot tower survives.
I did some field work in Joplin a year or two ago. Right in the middle of the tornado scar. Old house on the north side of the street. Brand new house on the south side.
Had a similar experience in Wichita Falls about 20 years ago. Neighborhood platted in the 1950s but all the houses were (re)constructed in the 1970s.
@andy-nold In 1966 Topeka, Kansas was hit by a big tornado that was on the ground all the way from the southwest corner of the city to the northeast corner near the airport. Same type of scar. The State Capitol Building lost part of it's copper dome. They put new copper over the hole, leaving a two-tone dome for years.
Joplin has two hospitals. One was destroyed and the other was barely missed. Took a long time to build an entirely new hospital in a new location. I believe the death count was roughly 150.
in 2013, which was during my sojourn to Oklahoma, an EF5 tornado ran through Moore, OK. Where it crossed I-35 it was quite concentrated. A couple hundred foot wide swath was reduced to matchsticks, across the street from that lost a few shingles. The results can be viewed on the legacy photos in Google Earth. Today, there is almost no sign that anything ever happened.