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Joplin, Missouri is in ruins today (5.23.11) because a tornado touched down around 6:00 PM Sunday and cut a four mile (or longer), one mile wide path through the town. This has been one of the worst tornado seasons on record in terms of damage and loss of life and Joplin is the latest, horrific victim of these sudden devastating storms.
Why do tornados kill so many people and do so much incredible damage? The winds of the Joplin tornado were estimated at a maximum of 166 miles an hour. If those winds had been straight line, as they mostly are in hurricanes, many buildings would be standing and many of those that were damaged would have experienced much less destruction. 166 MPH is a very powerful force, but many buildings, especially commercial structures that are reenforced with steel, can stand up in that kind of wind.
Tornados do their damage because the wind is twisting around in a fairly tight circle. This twisting wrecks almost everything in its direct path. (Hurricane winds are also circular, but over a very wide area, often hundreds of miles, so they don’t have the ripping effect of that twisting power.) Further, the winds in tornados are lifting upward, so that large objects, even houses and cars, get carried up into the vortex where more damage occurs before the objects are thrown out to the side, crashing to the ground. Houses in Missouri were basically ground up like in a meat grinder. Sometimes tornados sweep back and forth, the swinging motion giving additional power to the destructive forces.
The tornado itself represents an incredible low pressure system. This helps the tornado suck objects, including very large ones like cars and trucks, into its vortex. Indeed, it has been reported that houses tend to implode, rather than explode, when a tornado passes over or nearby. This would take place from differences in air pressure, plus the force of the winds.
Those who live in the east and far west might wonder why more people and houses are not better prepared for tornados. Why not build a tornado proof house? Well, first, it would be very, very expensive, probably double or three times what most people pay. Second. tornados are relatively small, short time events. There are many millions of square miles of land in the tornado zone, so protecting any one particular house is probably a waste of money.
When the tornado zone of America was a lot more rural than it is now almost every house, and certainly every farm house, came with an under ground shelter. These were difficult to keep up and largely useless because people didn’t have enough warning to get to them before storms came. The practice of building tornado shelters has been greatly reduced, almost down to zero. Local and state governments might want to mandate shelters with new houses, but residents in the region where tornados most often hit are resistant, especially the builders who put up the houses and don’t want their prices to go up. Trailer parks, which seem to attract tornados like magnets, should probably be required to provide underground shelters, since the trailers provide almost no protection.
The residents of Joplin were said to have had about 24 minutes warning of the incoming storm. Here’s a question: where do you go? Almost nothing besides a hospital in the path of the tornado was left standing. People have been warned for decades not to get caught in their cars in tornados, so even running can be seen as dangerous. If you know the direction a tornado is traveling, 24 minutes would be plenty of time to get out of the way, except in a traffic jam.
Many steps have been taken to save lives. Better warning systems, with direct broadcasts (by cell phone and emergency radios) would probably save more lives. Having a plan to get out of the path of a tornado would be another measure, but most people think it will never happen to them. Clearly, we can do better and this season of death and destruction is another reminder that we have to try.
While tornados are highly destructive events, they are comparatively rare in a given area. Most people who live in the hot zone go their whole lives without even seeing one. They are not as rare as meteor strikes, but no one even considers that ever happening to them and the same applies to most people where tornados most often strike.
Doug Terry
5.23.11
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