Tornadoes

"So when an angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed, Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm."

"When you told me you used to chase tornadoes I always thought it was a metaphor!"

"When the cloud, bloated with debris and tons of river mud, had passed over a slight rise of land to the east of the village, it left behind a landscape that passed beyond the bounds of despair into unreality. The handful of unscathed citizens from Griffin and surrounding districts were confronted with destruction so complete that some could only guess where they had once lived. The search for family and friends had a special hellishness, as fires flickered over the ruins and the injured wandered about in a daze, mud so thoroughly embedded in their skin that identification was all but impossible."

"A single experience of this awful convulsion of the elements suffices to fasten the memory of its occurrence upon the mind with such a dreadful force that no effort can efface the remembrance of it. The destructive violence of this storm exceeds in its power, fierceness, and grandeur all other phenomena of the atmosphere."

"Afterward, there was a lot of discussion about what people had thought it was. The noise had seemed to come from all corners of the sky at once. Journalists, armed with the thesaurus and apocalyptic scriptures, fumbled and were defeated by it. "A gulfy gulfy deliquescence of deranged and harnassed air"..."A volcano of the invisible, darkly contrued"… To the pleasure faithers with tiktok affections, it was the sound of clockworks uncoilding their springs and running down at a terrible speed. It was the release of vengeful energy. To the essentialists, it seemed as if the world had suddenely found itself too crammed with life, with cells splitting by the billions, molecules uncouplng to annihilation, atoms shuddering and juggernauting in their casings. To he superstitious it was the collapsing of time. It was the oozing of the ills of the world into one crepuscular muscle, intent on stabbing the world to its core for once and for all. To the more traditionally religious it was the blitzkrieg of vengeful angel armies, the awful name of the Unnamed God sounding itself at last — surprise — and the evaporation of all hopes for mercy. One or two pretended to think it was squadrons of flying dragons overhead, trained for attack, breaking the sky from its moorings by the thrash of tripartite wings. In the wake of the destruction it caused, no one had the hubris or courage (or the prior experience) to lie and claim to have known the act of terror for what it was: a wind twisted up in a vortical braid. In short: a tornado."

"Little tornado You and the hurricane Close your eyes and go campaign Make it go faster Baby go faster Make it go twice the speed of you and me"

"If enough people were praying [God] would've intervened, you could pray, Jesus stilled the storm, you can still storms. Why did you build houses where tornadoes were apt to happen?"

"All morning, before the tornado, it had rained. The day was dark and gloomy. The air was heavy. There was no wind. Then the drizzle increased. The heavens seemed to open, pouring down a flood. The day grew black…Then the air was filled with 10,000 things. Boards, poles, cans, garments, stoves, whole sides of the little frame houses, in some cases the houses themselves, were picked up and smashed to earth. And living beings, too. A baby was blown from its mother’s arms. A cow, picked up by the wind, was hurled into the village restaurant."

"Then the wind struck the school. The walls seemed to fall in, all around us. Then the floor at one end of the building gave way. We all slipped or slid in that direction. If it hadn’t been for the seats it would have been like sliding down a cellar door.I can’t tell you what happened then. I can’t describe it. I can’t bear to think about it. Children all around me were cut and bleeding. They cried and screamed. It was something awful. I had to close my eyes…"

"Scenes of suffering and horror marked the storm and fire. Throughout the night relief workers and ambulances endeavored to make their way through the streets strewn with wreckage, fallen telegraph poles and wires and burning embers. The only light afforded was that of the burning area…"

"It is the public’s perception that their children are safe from tornadic wind events while at school because their school has an established tornado shelter. However, it may be a tornado shelter in name only; in fact, the only reason that area may be a “shelter” is because someone called it one. A tornado safer area designed by an experienced architectural and engineering team is essential in providing what FEMA has labeled “near-absolute” protection from tornadoes."

"This is a particularly dangerous situation. Take cover now!"

"You are in a life-threatening situation. Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter. Mobile homes will be destroyed. Considerable damage to homes, businesses, and vehicles is likely and complete destruction is possible."

"This is likely to be the most severe tornado outbreak in our state's history. We believe our death toll from this event will exceed 50 Kentuckians and probably end up 70 to 100"

"THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION" [...] Primary threats include... Several tornadoes and a few intense tornadoes likely; Widespread damaging winds and isolated significant gusts to 90 mph likely; Scattered large hail likely with isolated very large hail events to 4 inches in diameter possible. [...] "SUMMARY...An increasingly volatile environment and very strong atmospheric winds are expected to yield an outbreak of severe storms including tornadoes and widespread damaging winds across the region through the afternoon and early evening."

"[...] The tornado remained a multi-vortex circulation as it moved into the county producing high end damage for much of its remaining path. The tornado encountered several houses in the vicinity of Fontanelle Road and 320th Street. Many of the structures received at least EF2 damage with one house north of the intersection receiving up to EF4 damage with a sufficiently anchored structure destroyed and slumped into a debris field nearby. Additional EF4 damage was noted at a farmstead on Jordan Avenue south of 280th Street with the house destroyed and trees chewed down to only the largest trucks and portions of the bark removed. [...] Several structures over the next several blocks had up to EF4 damage from SW 3rd Street over the SE 3rd Street and South of Linn Street and north of Oak and Noble Streets. Most of these saw complete destruction of the house with much of the debris scattered in the area but not completely swept away. [...] Of note, according to media reports, a Doppler on Wheels (DOW) intercept research team measured a wind speed of just over 300 mph approximately 150 feet above ground level with this tornado."

"For the Greenfield tornado, Warn-on-Forecast yielded strong confidence in the probability of extremely strong near-ground rotation in the Greenfield area more than an hour before the tornado touched down. These results were shared with NWS forecasters in Iowa to assist in their work issuing warnings."

"Very prelim analysis of DOW data show >250 mph peak winds, possibly high as 290, at 44 m (144 ft) above ground in Greenfield, IA. Tornado very intense & also very small, so worst winds were in narrow swath."

"Impressive measurement! On the IF-scale, 250 mph measured below 60 m above ground level is IF4 on the IF-scale, 290 mph is IF5."

"As the 2024 #BEST field season ends, a glimpse into the data collection during the Greenfield, IA tornado. Peak wind speeds as high as 309-318 mph were calculated in a narrow region 100-160 feet ARL. These are among the highest wind speeds ever determined using DOW data."

"The DOW scanned over Greenfield at heights of about 30-50 m (100-160 feet) above the ground every 7 seconds, measuring Doppler velocities. The tornado was unusually small and was narrowing as it passed through town. It was moving very fast, at nearly 45 mph (20 m/s). The DOW directly measured Doppler velocities as high as 263-271 mph (118-121 m/s). DOW measurements are used to calculate peak tornado wind speeds using methods described in Wurman et al (2021a) and an upcoming American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) formal standard for determining tornado wind speeds from proximate radar measurements. DOW scientists calculate peak ground relative wind speeds, in a very narrow swath to the immediate east of the path of the center of the tornado circulation, as high as 309-318 mph (138-142 m/s). Since the tornado was very small and fast moving, these peak winds were likely experienced for less than a second at specific locations in town."

""[...] without question a tornado capable of EF5 damage"."

""Had that tornado been any closer to our hospital or hit us directly, this entire building would be gone"."

"Horrific." [...] "It’s just gut wrenching." [...] "I’ve always said Iowa is one big community, and we certainly see that in times of tragedy and we’re witnessing it again."

"In May 2007, Greensburg changed forever. An EF-5 tornado tore through our city, taking 10 lives, injuring many more and destroying 95% of the community. Some thought Greensburg was gone forever. But many dug deep to find a pioneering spirit that has helped bring Greensburg back. Residents and countless new friends have come together through the years to build a newer and stronger community. Nothing can truly replace what we lost. What we have done though is forge ahead, look to the future and improve on what we had."

"At ten years old, I was old enough to understand what had happened to my family, but not quite old enough to fully grasp and handle the emotional aspect of it. The devastation we witnessed is hard to put into words. It looked like a bomb had gone off, and nothing in the town was recognizable. When you actually stand in the rubble of what used to be the house you grew up playing in as a child, you just cry. I would never wish something like that on anyone."

"May 4, 2007 will remain etched in the minds of many people, not just the citizens of Greensburg Kansas as folks from all over the world helped, in part, the rebuilding of the small western Kansas town."

"There is a lot of destruction. Fortunately, a lot of folks had basements here in this part of the world and lived to see another day. Unfortunately, too many died."

"One thing I'll never forget about that outbreak was the sight of fans evacuating the stands at Chicago's Soldier Field as severe thunderstorms approached during the Bears NFL game against the Baltimore Ravens. Wind gusts to 75 mph were clocked on the city's near south side."

"The first tornado that morning hit the northside of Pekin. which only had 2 minutes warning because the outbreak literally exploded on the west side of the Illinois River near Orchard Mines."