One of the worst disasters in USA’s history I was alive for.  This disaster is known as the Joplin tornado.  This massive EF5 tornado tore across the town of Joplin destroying everything in its path.  It destroyed the hospital, 8,000 buildings (7,000 of which were homes), and 124 lives.  The tornado packed wind speeds over 200 miles per hour at it’s strongest point.  It leveled 30% of Joplin and had a damage path of 22.1 miles.  The tornado was on the ground for 38 minutes before it dissipated.  In the time it was on the ground it was rain-wrapped.  This is one of the main factors for the death toll.  When a tornado is rain wrapped this means that the tornado has sucked in rain currents that then begin to rotate around the tornado.  This makes the tornado appear to be just a wall of rain.  You can barely tell that there is a tornado among the droplets.  An example of what a rain wrapped tornado looks like:

One more factor that led to the deadliness of this disaster was that it occurred at night.  Most people were sleeping or not thinking about tornadoes.  The tornado struck when most people weren’t expecting it.  Most tornadoes occur during the day when the air is warm towards the ground.  A supercell feeds off of day time heat to produce tornadoes, but this storm was so immense that it produced a tornado in the evening/night.  The combined factors of everything that happened on May 22, 2011 led to the worst tornado in 50 years.  The only tornado that was worse was the Tri-State tornado of 1950 that was ranked higher by The National Weather Service.  Our technology has greatly increased since then, and scientists everywhere were greatly disappointed in the death toll that occurred.  Today people are working harder than ever to prevent another disaster like the Joplin tornado.  They hope to improve the warning systems, and other ways to notify residents to prevent any more deaths from happening.  Below is a picture of the aftermath of the historic Joplin tornado:

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