Posted on 04/28/2014 4:00:18 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
At least 18 people were killed Sunday by three separate tornadoes spawned by a powerful storm system that moved through the central and southern United States.
The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management confirmed early Monday that at least sixteen people had died after a tornado tore through central Arkansas, while an Oklahoma county sheriff's dispatcher reported that one person had died in the town of Quapaw, near the state's borders with Kansas and Missouri. Fox News has also confirmed that one person died when a tornado hit Keokuk County, Iowa.
The Arkansas tornado touched down about 10 miles west of Little Rock at around 7 p.m. local time and moved northeastward for at least 30 miles, the National Weather Service reported. It missed the state capital but passed through or near several of its suburbs, causing widespread damage in the communities of Mayflower and Vilonia.
According to the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, ten of the deaths occurred in Faulkner County, where Mayflower and Vilonia are located. Five more occurred in Pulaski County, and one occurred in White County.
The tornado, which grew to be a half-mile wide, turned buildings into rubble and stripped the leaves and smaller branches off of trees.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I’ve had something of a morbid fascination with Jarrell, TX but have been told that there’s really nothing there to see, it was stripped down to bedrock pavement and all, along the path of the tornado.
I was chasing that year and went through the damage path 3 days later...place was stripped and the stench of death was horrible as they were still finding human remains in the trees.
Sort of an academic distinction, same path with a break. Wonder if geography had anything to do with that?
I just don’t want or need to see that sort of thing. The damage itself holds some fascination but the toll in human and animal life affects me too much.
Not sure...usually these types of supercells cycle like this with long track tornadoes weakening and another forming to the northeast of the subsequent tornado.
I hear you on that...it was heartbreaking and something I never want to come across again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_El_Reno_tornado
People panicked, and tried to drive out of danger, and the death toll could have been very high.
I know I and many others that live in “tornado alley” dread this kind of weather event. I understand the need to get information out to people but the local media around here have to hype it for DAYS before any drops of water fall. And then afterwards, they praise their “life-saving coverage” of the horrible events. It literally makes me sick.
Our severe weather event will be tonight (after dark) when you can’t see anything except flashes of lightening. That’s the worst time IMO for tornadoes to form. Looks like a sleepless night for me. :( Prayers for those in the path.
How do you drive at a right angle to a spiraling tornado?
They take a path, you go in a right angle to that path.
So if it’s coming at the side of your car, is it better becasue you have a better chance of driving out of it I guess? Seems like it wouldn’t matter if it was one of those half-mile-wide deals I guess.
If you were to try that in a place that had a lot of visual obstructions and meandering rural roads with no particular compass heading, you might find yourself running right into it and then turned into a missile. More of the debris falling away from large tornadoes that you might have seen in storm footage are cars than you realize.
For instance, below is the remains of a vehicle caught in the El Reno tornado, driven by an experienced storm chaser with two other passengers. It was a Chevy Cobalt 4 door compact sedan. All were killed.
Thanks for the links. Totally forgot about some of those. Especially the weather underground.
Anyone who dies in natural disasters is likely due to his own recklessness. Every tornado has warning... upto an hour and we know days ahead that tornadoes are possible in your area. Cry me a river of you are not responsible for your safety.
Anyone who dies of tornado in his own house is the biggest loser of all, sorry to put it bluntly. If you choose to live in a tornado prone area and not invest in a shelter, but probably have expensive tv ipads and smartphones, your death is simply proving darwin right.
I feel sorry for the cops, fire fighters, and emt folks who have to risk their lives to drive to places to pull out your carcass while tornadoes are nearby. Sorry to put it bluntly.
Where exactly is this? This is a stunning photograph.
This was when a tornado was headed for Louisville, MS
This was when a tornado was headed for Louisville, MS.
Wrong! Many folks are responsible but shit happens. A lady took shelter in her NEW above ground shelter in Arkansas last night and the door did not hold up!!!! She died you insensitive fool! You sir are the biggest loser! You can call it blunt or whatever...but I will be blunt with you! There are families out there tonight who have lost everything!!!!You stupid puke!
Also, these storms are moving at 60 mph...very fast and can be on top of a town in a matter of a couple of minutes...
“Finally, I’ll put part of the blame on local radio stations, which should be a lifeline during a weather emergency. But due to budget cuts, they’ve deferred “live” coverage to local TV stations, cable outlets and the web. But when the power goes out, many of those other sources are unavailable, and when they tune to the local radio station, they hear (in most cases) an automated jukebox. The announcers, with the possible exception of the morning crew, are “voice-tracked” from a personality or format service hundreds of miles away.”
When I lived in Mississippi, I remember walking out of a Wal-Mart on a stormy Sunday night, just as the tornado sirens went off. I jumped in my car and turned on the most popular local station; the announcer assured us that it would be a “beautiful day, with a high near 85.” Not only was the forecast hours out date, the station apparently did not air weather bulletins through the emergency alert system (EAS). “
So many stories lumped into these two paragraphs.
“Local” radio stations - very different now than years ago. As I read this earlier today, I was recalling the time in the early 70s when I worked at WJLJ in Tupelo, MS. We were a very small, new, daytime AM radio station - we had no news staff at all, let alone a weather staff. But the one thing that was drilled into my head almost from the moment I arrived there - Tupelo had nearly been flattened by a tornado many years previous, and the populace was still constantly on edge. So we had a separate weather wire installed alongside our regular newswire, and it did the trick. We monitored it faithfully, and our listeners were always informed. All the affiliations with TV stations, and graphics, and whatever else today are meaningless, if they don’t get the information to frightened listeners when they need it. Bottom line, we didn’t need the stuff they use today, had no staff, and far and away kept our audience best informed about the frightening weather in Tupelo. And there was always some of that.
So, very shocking to come home tonight and see all this horrible information about a tornado in Tupelo. Just darn. Talking about destruction of a mall - I left there in 1974, and I suspect this is one built after I left. Sounds awful, I had hoped they wouldn’t have to go through that again. Never thought it would be today.
The second part of your comment - about the state of radio today. I had the exact same experience (and this exact time of year, too) with a favorite radio station in New Orleans. I was in town for JazzFest, we had heard the weather was threatening, and I turned on the radio hoping for some accurate info. I had it on a station I had listened to before, not knowing it had changed into one of those voice tracked from afar stations. I kept waiting and waiting for any updates on the weather or conditions at the Fairgrounds - never mentioned!!! I finally realized what was going on. Just imagine having so many people captive wanting to know what was going on, and as you said, “beautiful day with a high near 85.” Really, what purpose does radio serve anymore - it was once a lifeline, now just a joke.
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