9/27/2023 0 Comments Joplin tornado damageFifty-three-year-old Don Chesmore was killed when the tornado destroyed his trailer on the east side of town. The storm system had claimed its first life, and the worst was yet to come. As the tornado bore down, 38 of the town’s residents survived by seeking refuge in the basement of the local United Methodist Church. The tornado, later rated EF3, barreled into town just after 9:15 pm and damaged or destroyed more than 100 homes and businesses along a ten-mile path. Spurred on by an intensifying low-level jet, the supercell spawned a tornado near the small community of Reading. On the evening of May 21, a towering thunderstorm erupted southeast of Emporia, Kansas and began to rotate. The EF3 tornado that struck Reading, Kansas on May 21, 2011. The air became soupy as the strong cap prevented the hot, humid air from rising, mixing and exploding into thunderstorms. Beneath it, the southerly flow that had piled up moisture for several days continued unimpeded. This parched air mass drifted and slid into place over the Central and Southern Plains, lingering several thousand feet above the ground like a sturdy cap. An arid wind blew in more dry air from the Desert Southwest and the Mexican Plateau. A layer of air from the western United States, raked across the Rockies along with the incoming storm system, warmed and dried as it descended along the eastern slopes of the mountain range. For the next several days unsettled weather continued, producing scattered thunderstorms, hail and a handful of tornadoes in Colorado and Kansas as the low plodded across the Rocky Mountains and toward the Northern Plains. As the week drew to a close, forecasters became increasingly concerned that the weekend could bring a more significant outbreak of severe weather.Īs the weekend approached, an explosive chain of events began to take shape. The storms blew up quickly, dropping nickel-sized hail and spinning up a few brief tornadoes east of Denver. The system first made its presence known on Tuesday, May 17, as the hot, sticky air rose, condensed and ballooned into tall cauliflower-shaped clouds over eastern Colorado. As the system ambled northward, a southerly flow pushed vast quantities of warm, moist air into the Southern and Central United States. A low pressure system originating in the Gulf of Alaska dropped south to the West Coast before migrating north and east toward the Rocky Mountains. Several weeks passed with little activity, but by the third week of May the pattern had again begun to change. After the utter devastation of April 25-28, however, the large-scale weather patterns changed and conditions became less conducive for tornadoes. Three major outbreaks pushed the monthly count to a staggering 758, obliterating the previous record of 542 set in May 2004. By the time the sirens wailed to life, the single deadliest tornado in more than six decades had already begun its path of devastation.Īpril of 2011 had been the most active month of tornadoes in recorded history. A scattering of debris soon followed, prompting Piotrowski to issue his desperate plea. Lowering from the sky to engulf the horizon was a massive, billowing cone of clouds. The doppler radar inside Jeff’s vehicle indicated an extremely intense circulation just minutes from town, but one look to the southwest left no doubt. The murky clouds heaved curtains of rain and a spattering of hail as storm chaser Jeff Piotrowski pulled alongside a police cruiser near Seventh Street and Black Cat Road on the south side of Joplin, Missouri. The brilliant blue springtime skies had become a malevolent, roiling mass of charcoal grays and diffuse blue-greens. The sense of urgency, bordering on panic, was palpable. “Get the sirens going, get the sirens going, I’m telling you!”
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