2013 Tornado Season

Wow.

The guy shooting the video seems rather blase about it. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."

I'd be screaming "Holy shit" about a million times.

 

A woman carries a child (damn near as big as she is) near the collapsed Plaza Towers school.

 

Piers Morgan just said the death toll has risen to 91 confirmed.

 

Not to be coldhearted, but let's go easy on the hyperbole. We just don't know the extent of the damage or the death toll in Oklahoma right now.

My hometown suffered 203 fatalities, the fifth-highest total ever recorded for a U.S. tornado, after it was hit by an F5 in 1936. (Only one building in downtown survived; the tornado caused $13 million in damage, or about $200 million in today's dollars.)

Just a day earlier, 216 people were killed in Tupelo, Miss., when an F5 hit that town. That's the fourth-highest death toll ever recorded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Tupelo-Gainesville_tornado_outbreak

And in the deadliest tornado ever, 695 people were killed in the Tri-State Tornado that hit southern Missouri, Illinois and Indiana in 1925. Nine different schools were destroyed across three states, killing 69 students.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Tornado

 

Storyful is a pretty strong news-gathering service (for future reference).

Here's a collection of videos from yesterday:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtMSwy96r2CbSWmfnVtvX0Kvj36oo_WZQ&feature=edit_ok

 

I can't even imagine this and pray that I never have to experience it. I saw first hand what it looked like when we had ours two years ago that killed 6. Because it hit a rural area and not downtown, the death toll was thankfully lower, but the landscape is scarred for the rest of my lifetime.

Thoughts and prayers go out to these folks.

 

Looking at street after street with nothing but concrete slabs left, it's amazing this was only an EF-4.

Until I remembered the EF-5 that hit Jarrell, Texas sucked up all the concrete ... even the roadway where the tornado crossed I-35. If this had been a 5, not even the slabs would be left.

 

It may not be the worst tornado in the history of the town. The 1999 Moore Tornado was an F5, with a 257 MPH Wind Gust.

 

Front pages

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/214009/the-monster-returned-front-pages-from-oklahoma/

 

Worse Than May 3rd, huh? For the main hed? Interesting.

 

Thanks for sticking cameras and microphones in the face of people whose lives are crushed and may have lost family and friends. Watching people go through shock and pain is what the rest of the voyeurs like to see.

Meanwhile, did any Oklahoma congressmen vote against aid for Hurricane Sandy. Stick a microphone in their face.