The Tupelo, Mississippi F5 of April 5, 1936 Otto McCurdy, the son of the man who flew the plane from which the above photo was taken provided a first-person account of the tornado and its aftermath. Only one damaged structure remained: the town jailhouse. A 2013 study led by Robert Johns found that the longest truly continuous damage path was 151 miles long, from central Bollinger County, Missouri, to Pike County, Indiana.Īt least eight other violent (F2 or stronger) tornadoes killed an additional 52 people in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky over the course of that day, bringing the total killed to 747 and making this the single deadliest tornado outbreak in American history.Ī violent F5 tornado swept away the village of Glazier, Texas, on April 9, 1947. Modern research, however, suggests that this was likely a series of tornadoes developing from a single supercell traversing the area. At least 695 people died in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana when a F5 mile-wide monster carved a course that was apparently 219 miles through the three states. history was the famous Tri-State Tornado of March 25, 1925. When the conditions are just right (normally in the spring) extraordinary supercells can develop in the central portion of the country and can occasionally spin out a tornado of EF5 intensity.īelow we take a look at the five deadliest F/EF5 tornadoes. Only in North America does a solid land mass stretch from the subtropics to the arctic with no mountain barriers to inhibit the mixture of air masses from these two regions. The reason for this lies with North America's unique topography. The United States and Canada are the only countries in the world to have verified reports of tornadoes with a classification of F5 or EF5 strength. Winds within these monsters have been measured as high as 302 mph by Doppler radar (Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, on May 3, 1999, pictured above) but winds likely have exceeded 300 mph on other occasions in tornadoes that were not so closely observed. Caption by Michon Scott.Arguably, the most intense weather event that takes place on Earth is the rare occurence of a tornado that reaches EF strength on the Enhanced Fujita Scale (or F5 on the original Fujita Tornado Damage Scale). NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using data provided courtesy of NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. Panoramas of Joplin before and after the tornado.John’s Hospital in Joplin was so badly damaged that it would need to be completely replaced. On May 31, 2011, the Springfield News-Leader reported that St. Besides the human toll, the tornado caused widespread destruction to the city’s homes, commercial structures, public buildings, and roads. The tornado track is light brown.Īs of May 30, the National Weather Service classified the Joplin tornado as the deadliest in the United States since modern recordkeeping began in 1950, and the eighth-deadliest tornado in U.S. In this image, vegetation is red, buildings and paved surfaces are varying shades of gray, and clouds are nearly white. The track left by the Joplin tornado remained visible on May 30, 2011, when the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color image. As of May 28, 2011, the National Weather Service estimated the fatalities from the Joplin tornado at 142, and the number of injured at more than 750. Over Joplin, Missouri, the supercell spawned an EF-5 tornado with winds higher than 200 miles (300 kilometers) per hour. In the afternoon and evening of May 22, 2011, a supercell thunderstorm traveled from southeastern Kansas into southwestern Missouri.
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