[Excelsior]

Another serious tragedy hitting the country. Don't know if we have any RVFers in the area, but prayers go out to everyone there. I have a few classmates from the area, can't imagine how they must feel right now.

At least 51 killed as tornado tears through Oklahoma, leaving miles of debris

Quote:

A monster tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs and killed at least 51 people Monday, pulverizing block after block of homes, tearing the walls off an elementary school and leaving behind miles of mangled cars and splintered wood.

Crews frantically searched the wreckage and were only beginning to get a sense of the destruction. Hospitals reported several dozen injured.

“The whole city looks like a debris field,” said Mayor Glenn Lewis of the city of Moore, which appeared to be hardest hit.

At Plaza Towers Elementary School, authorities said there were casualties could not specify how many or give details. The tornado tore the roof off, and authorities kept hysterical parents back because it was too loud to hear screams for help. A teacher told NBC affiliate KFOR that she draped herself on top of six children in a bathroom to shelter them.

It was not clear how many children were trapped. Students in fourth, fifth and sixth grade were evacuated to a church, but students in lower grades had sheltered in place, KFOR reported. More than two hours after the tornado struck, several children were pulled out alive.

The Weather Channel said the twister was a mile wide at its base, and a reporter for KFOR said it kicked up a cloud of debris perhaps two miles wide. The National Weather Service initially classified the storm as an EF4, the second-strongest type, with winds of 166 to 200 mph.

“It seems that our worst fears have happened today,” said Bill Bunting, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman, Okla.

As the death toll steadily climbed, television footage showed a landscape shattered — not the arbitrary damage of a tornado that leaves some homes untouched, but vast and utter obliteration.

Emergency workers stepped gingerly around piles of wreckage left on the foundations of homes. Other people simply walked around dazed, marveling that nothing was left of their houses — and in many cases that they themselves were alive. Fires broke out in some places.

“I lost everything,” one man said as he walked through the ruins of a horse farm. “We might have one horse left out of all of them.”

At one hospital in Moore, cars were “piled like Hot Wheels” in the parking lot, and police were searching them one by one and spray-painting X’s to mark them clear of victims, said Kurt Gwartney, news director for radio station KGOU.

An Oklahoma emergency management spokesman said a hospital was being evacuated after sustaining severe damage, and 16 ambulances were being sent to move patients. It was not clear whether it was the same hospital.

The tornado struck at mid-afternoon and tore a 20-mile path, said Rick Smith, another weather service meteorologist. He said it was on the ground for 40 minutes. Much of the storm’s rampage was captured on live television, perhaps alerting people in its path to seek shelter.

President Barack Obama pledged the full help of the federal government. Gov. Mary Fallin asked the people of Oklahoma for patience and promised: “We will bring every single resource out that we can.”

Relief efforts sprang up. The Red Cross said it was opening a shelter, and the University of Oklahoma opened some of its housing for displaced families.

In addition to Plaza Towers, Briarwood Elementary School was heavily damaged, KFOR reported.

Search and rescue teams converged on a staging area at the Warren Theater, which was also damaged, as the tornado churned toward other Oklahoma towns. The storms were expected to continue through the evening.

Grasping for comparisons, some people said it looked like Joplin, the Missouri town virtually wiped off the map two years ago when a tornado — this one an EF5 — blew through and killed 158 people.

For people in Oklahoma, the ferocity was reminiscent of May 3, 1999, when a tornado registered wind of more than 300 mph, left 46 dead and damaged or destroyed more than 8,000 homes.

The tornado Monday also came one day after another cluster of storms in Oklahoma that killed two elderly men in the town of Shawnee. Tens of millions of people from Texas to the Great Lakes — an area covering 55 million people — had been warned to brace for more severe weather Monday.

The Sunday storms destroyed mobile homes, flipped trucks and sent people across 100 miles running for cover. In Kansas, a weather forecaster was forced off the air as a tornado bore down on his station.

“You can see where there’s absolutely nothing, then there are places where you have mobile home frames on top of each other, debris piled up,” Mike Booth, the sheriff of Pottawatomie County, Okla., told The Associated Press. “It looks like there’s been heavy equipment in there on a demolition tour.”

Fallin declared a state of emergency for 16 counties on Sunday and added five Monday.

[2Wycked]

Damn nature, you scary!

On a serious note, it is awful and a huge tragedy. Here's to hoping the people can piece their lives back together sooner rather than later.

[NYJ]

That shit looks awful. Besides Sandy coming over here and ripping us a new butthole in Jersey, we are lucky that events like that above never really happen. The worst we get on a regular basis is the occasional flood or snowstorm.

Obviously nothing I can say here can help, but my heart does go out to the people there who are now dealing with a tough situation. Mother Nature is a force to be reckoned with.

[Kickb]

that shit ruined my pool party plans.

it was supposed to hit my area but we didnt even get so much as a rain dop.

but it stikl made the enitr party leave the pool. cockbkocked by mother nature.

[Brosemite]

Yeah that's rough. My condolences to those dealing with this situation out in OK right now. I know southwest of my city was another small town named Granbury, TX that was hit pretty hard too last week.

[Excelsior]

Death toll rises to 91

[Travelsick]

Terrible terrible terrible.

America is having a rough year. So many dead children.

[Samseau]

I'm guessing no one knows how to predict tornadoes yet. Almost as bad as Earthquakes.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

I initially read this as "Oklahoma Tornado Kills Area 51" and laughed, then I regretted it. My condolences.

[bojangles]

Looks like death toll is rising, really sad as same area got hit by a huge tornado 14 years ago.

[Teedub]

As a kid, pictures of tornadoes used to scare me. They still so, as they look so abnormal and menacing. I'm just glad that Europe doesn't get tornadoes, or earthquakes etc.

[Travelsick]

We do have tornadoes in europe. They're quite frequent in parts of northern germany, but luckily much smaller. Google "Windhose".

However, it's possible we'll be getting more of them in future too. That's global warming for you.

[speakeasy]

(05-21-2013 03:21 AM)Teedub Wrote:  

As a kid, pictures of tornadoes used to scare me. They still so, as they look so abnormal and menacing. I'm just glad that Europe doesn't get tornadoes, or earthquakes etc.

Once again, we think alike. That long trunk like thing hanging from the clouds always looked like a giant elephant trunk or some park of a gargantuan monster. I thought they were terrifying.

It seems like I never hear about any other country getting these things. Why don't I hear about tornadoes in Brazil, Africa, India or any other part of the world prone to violent thunderstorms? I think there's an isolated one here and there in different parts of the world but by far most of them are on US soil.

[bojangles]

I'm not sure why but it does seem you guy get the brunt of them, is that little area called tornado alley?

[soup]

(05-21-2013 03:21 AM)Teedub Wrote:  

As a kid, pictures of tornadoes used to scare me. They still so, as they look so abnormal and menacing. I'm just glad that Europe doesn't get tornadoes, or earthquakes etc.

Not yet.

Nothing to see here..

folks. Just keep enabling more CO2 to get in to the atmosphere.

[NYJ]

(05-21-2013 03:09 AM)Samseau Wrote:  

I'm guessing no one knows how to predict tornadoes yet. Almost as bad as Earthquakes.

You can't predict them like a hurricane. With the right conditions they can happen at an instant. Forecasters are able to look at storm cells and can tell which ones are most likely to produce tornadic activity. Sometimes they can see the rotation of a tornado in radar.

[Teedub]

(05-21-2013 03:30 AM)speakeasy Wrote:  

It seems like I never hear about any other country getting these things. Why don't I hear about tornadoes in Brazil, Africa, India or any other part of the world prone to violent thunderstorms? I think there's an isolated one here and there in different parts of the world but by far most of them are on US soil.

I just did a bit of googling, and it seems Bangladesh has had it's fair share. http://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/the-...ld-history

Again, they just look so scary. How can anyone not be absolutely terrified by this:



Its something primal for me, and I'm childlike in my fear of what they look like.

[Roosh]

Sad event.

On a related note, I do miss experiencing thunderstorms, especially the excitement when the sky turns black and the wind picks up and you need to race to get under shelter. Europe has very weak rain storms.

[Mentavious]

The cold dry air from the mountains to the west, the cold wet air from Canada, and the warm moist air from the gulf coast. All three combine in Nebraska, Oklahoma, north Texas, and Kansas which perfectly creates these nasty storms. Seems like it is at its worst in the spring and fall.

[UrbanNerd]

As someone who grew up in the midwest, seeing tornadoes (knowing they are far enough away to not cause damage) is some of the most breathtaking visuals. At the same time, I am VERY luck that one never hit my city directly.

Some folks may not know, but tornadoes have wind speeds far greater than hurricanes. They just last for shorter periods and are tiny in size compared to a hurricane.

Yes....and are quite sudden.

[bacon]

That has to be one of the most scary ways to die. You are lifted up in 200 mph winds along side cars and parts of buildings for several minutes(no doubt you would be in sheer panic) before you are thrown down to the ground from several hundred feet.

[presidentcarter]

While hard to measure, tornados clearly have the highest wind speeds ever on Earth:

The highest surface wind speed ever officially recorded is 372 km/h (231 mph; 103 m/s) at the Mount Washington (New Hampshire) Observatory in the US on 12 April 1934, using a heated anemometer. The anemometer, specifically designed for use on Mount Washington, was later tested by the US National Weather Bureau and confirmed to be accurate.[4] The second-highest surface wind speed ever officially recorded in Afghanistan on 14 August 2008: 328 km/h (204 mph; 91 m/s) in Ab-Paran, Ghowr.

Wind speeds within certain atmospheric phenomena (such as tornadoes) may greatly exceed these values but have never been accurately measured. The figure of 486 km/h (302 mph; 135 m/s) during the F5 tornado in Bridge Creek, Oklahoma on May 3, 1999 is often quoted as the highest surface wind speed.

In 1991, a chase team from the University of Oklahoma chased a tornado in Red Rock, Oklahoma and used a portable Doppler weather radar to measure a wind speed of 460 km/h (286 mph; 128 m/s).

[soup]

I believe we are getting to a tipping point where this stuff will be irreversible. We are probably going to end up with 800mph winds on a daily basis.

[Samseau]

Toto survived the tornado!!!!!

http://news.sky.com/story/1093711/tornad...-interview

Fast forward to 1:30

[Excelsior]