Be Excellent To Each Other

A tornado has just hit the city of Moore in Oklahoma. This is going to make the international news. The tornado that caused it was a mile wide. Live stream here:

http://www.kfor.com

And here:

koco.com

A good chunk of the city has been levelled and the elementary school has been wiped clean in parts, and is just a tangle in others. There are fears of casualties because it was in lockdown but new reports say that the teachers raced the kids to a church outside of the path when the stormchasers and news feeds called to say it was bearing down on them.

This is the tornado that hit:



This is what Moore now looks like:



It had been a real quiet season up to now. The quietest in a long, long time in fact. Very few tornadoes, no real communities hit. But now Spring has finally kicked in and its certainly opened up with a mean one. Yesterday saw a supercell brewing up over Oklahoma City and threatening to drop a torndao on the satellite city of Norman. Nothing happened however, the storm just couldn't organise. It looked pretty hairy for them. But the storm passed over and later on dropped the tornado that hit the trailer park near Shawnee and knocked over and trucks and injured folk sheltering (unwisely) under an overpass on the I40.



Kansas was also troubled yesterday, but nothing really of note. Since yesterday was the high risk day and today's TORCON index was considerably lower, I figured things would be safe - but this reminds me that it only takes one bad tornado to ruin a season. I was hoping for more of the pretty rope tornados out no-place, but this was one mean wedge. At one point it was sucking on the weather news chopper and it had to pull back. At another point to incredulous shock a cow was sucked up live on screen.

I'm now going back through the run-up trying to make sense of what happened, but with the footage unrolling on the screen in front of me this looks like at least as bad as Tuscaloosa from the 2011 outbreak, and may be an F5. I doubt anything will ever be Joplin bad though, as they had their storm-siren system knocked out and the tornado there was rain-wrapped. So fingers crossed.

And news coming in... sounds like the students are safe with only minor injuries. Phew. Even the reporters looked shaken over seeing that school.

Going through the Wunderground feed. Quoted stuff is taken from there. It's a reliable source.



Radar shows the debris ball at points as two miles wide with a classic, tight, strong hook echo. At the least it was an F3, but in places it looks definitely an F4 or F5. This hit in the afternoon, and though there was advance warning of the supercell itself and the strong possibility of a tornado, the tornado dropped close to the city allowing for little actual emergency warning time. There were also cars on the street, and someone reported that the tornado rolled over a traffic jam. This is compared to a similar tornado of May 3rd, 1999, which went along a track close to the same area. That tornado killed 41 people, and reporters are saying this one looks three times as bad.

This was a neighbourhood:



Near the Medical Centre:







Jesus. They just showed a woman with a plank of wood through her leg.









Timelapse footage of it here: http://www.fox19.com/story/22301540/tim ... ty-twister

From what I can see, I wouldn't use the usual superlative of 'atomic bomb' but I would say it looks like a heavy Lancaster bomber raid carpet bombed the area. At leas the kids in the two schools hit appear to be safe. Fingers crossed.

91 dead. Jesus.

Just got back from the pub this minute. I knew things were going to get active ths afternoon and late evening late standard time, but figured it was no reason to call off a good night's drinking in the Albany. Switched on the Wunderground weather feeds and it looks pretty horrible. Oklahoma City is looking fucked. It's rush-hour, the roads are packed. A HUGE tornado is approaching, rain wrapped, and the sky is dark. You can't see it on the screen but the radar debris signatures are HUGE.

...

[Again, any quotes from Wunderground posters...]

And shit, reports of several storm chaser vehicles have been hit. This is practically unheard of. Their SUVs have just been tossed off the road.













This is heading towards Oklahoma City metro centre. Bang smack in the middle of the city. If it doesn't shift or lift I can't imagine what will happen. OK City is just fourteen miles north of the previous North disaster. With a rain-wrapped tornado, at dusk, with the sirens already knocked out from straight-line winds... this could be very, very bad.

Still a parking lot. Fucking MOVE.

Just heard a storm-chaser scream, "HOLY SH...!"

I've no idea what's happening. I'm not sure the news people do either, or the storm-chasers. The radar looks ugly. The tornado looks like it dropped just above North of Moore, the same city hit a few days earlier. It's punching up NE towards Midwest City.

But they're also talking about Mustang City which is directly East of Oklahoma City and Moore... so are they talking about two tornadoes here? That would be truly a nightmare, and one that could severely damage the American economy.

News 9:

Is this a big tornado? One channel says it may have weakened. Another says its still going strong. The back-and-forth on this is chilling, because all people are seeing are power-flashes. You can't tell how strong the winds are, other than that the debris ball is big.

...

Just seen about eight power flashes - transformers exploding essentially - in a row. Within a twenty seconds. Not good.

There's another. I think this fucker is running a path just five miles north of Moore. Shit.

Moore is the city hit earlier this week. Norman is an equivilent sized city just a few miles south of Moore that dodged a bullet the day before that.

The built up track of the northernmost tornado is TWICE the distance in miles as the Moore tornado. But it could be weaker. The track is wider, but it may be less intense. That would cost more, but would save more lives.



One of the Weather Channel storm-chasing cars got hit:



I assume they're okay 'cos the photo got took.

Police just reported the centre of rotation has just passed over Moore City Hall.

There may be a THIRD tornado incoming, further West.

Main tornado hitting Oklahoma City main airport Tinker AFB. 100mph inflow. No powerflashes though, may be easing up, hopefully - or just recycling. Sparse suburbs and open ground after the airport. It may be on the ground, it may not. Can't say.



I have a big fear. The media (and myself included) talked up how many lives were saved by people jumping in their cars and driving out of the way of the tornado that hit Moore a few days ago. And it did save lives. But this time its a few hours later and the roads are UNUSUALLY jammed - literally static. I'm watching and nothing's moving. And the tornado is passing over those roads.

People might be trying the same thing. And this time it might not be working. Hopes are that the tornado may be weaker, but as it can't be seen, and the radar only shows the general width, its power can't be estimated.

Overturned cars on the I40, semi-trucks too.

The one hope is from the re-forming and lifting. I didn't catch the build up but yesterday similar drops and raises happened with little damage, so some of this may be less severe. But at the same time the news has just reported that El Reno light debris of bank-statements, etc, has been fluttering down into Luther twenty miles away. So something has happened.

Meanwhile over a thousand people have been packed into the tunnels under OK aiport, so that's good. And the circulations have been now downgraded to medium-weak by KFOR... it may be easing.

And now a county across, Missouri, the city of St. Louis has this inbound:



Something has dropped over Moore itself. Again. Powerflashes. A line of powerflashes. Fuck. When will it catch a fucking break?

And tornado tracking south too, into Norman towards their regional hopsital. Don't know if they mean the same tornado too. And there's a fire there too. Indian Hills, Cedar Hills region. North Norman.

We're possibly talking within a 15 mile width three evenly spaced tornadoes passing West to East across a city at rush hour.





Now for St. Louis. Looking bad, a tornado hit the built up retail, industrial and casino parks in the North of the city. Confused reports from there, but no real bad things reported yet. There have been tornado touchdowns reported in a fair few places, but St. Louis is famous for having brief touchdowns. Still, all looks pretty significant.

Some good news, tornado warning for Norman has expired. The system has now passed over them.

11 inches of rain in tornado hit El Reno, OK, causing flash floods. The number of lightning flashes makes night-time OK City look like its undergoing the blitz. One flash every couple of seconds.

Good news as daylight vanishes so does the foodstuff of the tornado shrivell up, so tornado warnings diminishing a lot and only 80-90mph straight line wind gusts and flash flooding to deal with. Off to bed now and I'll see how things look in the morning.

Final signing off point, there's been a lot of false information been spread by ACCW Weather as to horrible things that turn out to be 20 miles outside of any track and not true at all. Only daylight will reveal what happened tonight.

This wasn't the car that was totalled, but it was in the same area - probably the most astonishing storm chasing footage I've seen as a car is repeatedly hit by big debris as barns and silos and buildings disintergrate in front of them. Watch in HD:

Storm chasers down

Seems they had actual proper goals, rather than just thrill seekers.