…8 years to the day (almost) of the deadly tornado hit in Joplin, Mo.
Jefferson City is the state capital, smack dab in the middle of the state on the Missouri River, about 30-40 miles south of Columbia and the Mizzou campus.
(Missouri Task Force One is the National Guard group of disaster responders.)
Worth the click to see the gif graphic of the infrared showing the cloud movement as the tornado hit.
Like something out of a horror movie, in one of the frames as the lightning strikes in the darkness, you can see the massive tornado in the distance bearing down.
That is freaking scary.
The lightning flash to that massive tornado (at 41 seconds in) … jesus. I do believe I’d crap my pants if I saw that.
Multiple reports of people trapped by collapsed structures…but amazingly the JCPD reports no fatalities as of yet within city limits.
Sounds like heavy property losses and damages, but thankfully no lives lost. 100+ being treated for injuries. Earlier in the day an evacuation order had gone out for some of the affected parts of the city due to flooding along the Missouri River. That may have helped some, dunno.
University of Missouri – which ended classes for the semester last week – has offered their dorms as temporary housing/shelter for those in need.
Me too. The gasp you can hear at that moment is fucking chilling.
Good to hear, well, at least i mean no lives were lost. Does Missouri have a culture of building tornado shelters? I know a big complaint about OK was that people were recommended to build them but because of the sort of ground they had and the cost of building and maintaining then, they rarely did.
Yeah, the ground in my parents’s yard was red clay. Massive pain to dig in, and it seeps water all the time, so yes, basements and cellars are pretty rare there.
But on the other hand, we used to go out on the back porch to watch the tornadoes move along I-177 west of town, about 3-4 miles west of their house. The highway runs through a shallow sort of valleyish thing along the west edge of town, so tornadoes tended to follow it. They were a sort of entertainment to watch. Of course, the town also got hit by three tornadoes over the 18-odd years I lived there.
Yeah the ground throughout the south consists of red clay, especially in Texas and Oklahoma, where you’d think shelters/cellars would be more common. It’s shitty to dig through (even for fence posts). However, that’s not to say it’s not so costly that it can’t be done. It should be damn-near mandatory in places like Moore, Oklahoma (and should actually be subsidized by the city/state for rebuilding purposes). That being said, storm-proof block shelters built into ground-level structures also seem to work fairly well (think of walking into a big giant safe).
— Alan
Grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. Texas has fewer tornado cellars than I’d expect, but Oklahoma had them all over the place. At least two or three a block if not more. Granted, this was 30 years ago…
Dayton, OH got hit tonight, and it looks like a lot of damage, though so far it’s only property damage and injuries – no deaths reported. Daytime tornadoes are frightening as hell. Nighttime twisters are an order of magnitude scarier than that.
And now Lawrence gets smoked this afternoon. Look at that thing:
Same storm is now on the ground in Excelsior Springs, a KCMO suburb. Stay safe, Kansas Citians.
That whole thing is not a tornado.
— Alan
No, it’s a rain wall circling a tornado.