El Reno, Oklahoma Tornado set the record!

I had no idea it had been THIS bad! What a nightmare to imagine being in the path of!

The National Weather Service has just upgraded the May 31 El Reno, Union City tornado to an EF-5 with a width of 2.6 miles wide, making it the widest tornado ever documented.

The upgrade was based on information from a Dopler On Wheels (DOW) that measured low level winds of 296 miles per hour.

This tornado is double the width of the May 20 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma.

Source

I think we can all agree that this is the type of record we don't want to see broken again, any time soon. The previous record, according to the article, was 2.5 miles in diameter and set in Nebraska during a storm in 2004.

Nature can be an incredible force at times and nothing is quite as destructive in the immediate path as a tornado in full rage.

God's plans are confusing at times but when you have faith, you have peace of mind no matter what. So let'em rip and let the Earth cook or freeze or whatever.

I would be a nervous wreck, if I lived in Tornado Alley. These people are amazing. They keep getting knocked down, and they get up fighting. I think we could all learn something, from their attitude.

I just hope many, if not all that rebuild, have a storm shelter built right into the concrete slab, with easy access, and possibly some type of hand crank system to close the door, when the wind is trying to suck it open.

Bless all of you, in Tornado Alley.

Given the severity of that storm, it could have had a much larger body count than 18 dead. I don't think anyone was thinking F5 when it hit. Big, weird, nasty, but not a F5, which likely would have changed how people acted in it.


Link
(News article written before F5 status reported.)

M.

I think we can all agree that this is the type of record we don't want to see broken again

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


hopefully its true. but according to the discovery channel the worst is yet to come, Check out "Perfect Disaster Super Tornado"

looks like Colorado might be under the gun now.

TORNADO WARNING FOR...
SOUTHEASTERN LINCOLN COUNTY IN EAST CENTRAL COLORADO.

Tornado Alley

Hope there is none to chase tonight.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000

Nature can be an incredible force at times and nothing is quite as destructive in the immediate path as a tornado in full rage.

If you've never been through one, or near where one went through, the damage is mind boggling to look at. We had several go through our county a few years ago. When we went up to one of the shelters to see if they needed food, and seeing the sheer randomness was stunning. The one closest to Ft. Payne was about a mile to a mile and a half wide. We went past a car place that was out of a converted home, that had 15-20 cars out front. The porch on the side of the building had been shifted, but not one of the cars looked like it had even been damaged. Thirty yards away there was a path through the trees where every single tree was just gone.

Another street, the house on one side didn't have a mark on it, the house on the other side looked like someone had taken a massive sledgehammer and flattened the entire house (they were less than 100 yards apart). It was like that through the entire area.

The tornadoes that hit us were multi-vortex tornadoes, meaning that one tornado had two or three vortexes spinning inside it. This means that the damage is even more randomized, and much worse than with a single vortex tornado.

reply to post by zeta55


These tornadoes/this severe weather season has been a freak occurrence. This doesn't happen as often as it may seem. I've lived here my whole life and have never even seen a tornado on the ground. The apocalyptic storms you have seen on the news are very out of the ordinary, even for here. People carry on like they do in other parts of the country whether it be a hurricane, wildfire, earthquake, blizzard, flood, sinkhole or "super storm". No where is guaranteed.

Originally posted by ItCameFromOuterSpace
reply to post by zeta55

 

These tornadoes/this severe weather season has been a freak occurrence.

You mean in an area that is prone to them? Those "freak occurrence[s]"? I can see if you were stating something from say...California (which does enjoy the freak tornado from decade to decade) or New York; but the Great Plains? Freak occurrences?

This doesn't happen as often as it may seem. I've lived here my whole life and have never even seen a tornado on the ground.

Oh, you never seen one, so they are "freak".

The apocalyptic storms you have seen on the news are very out of the ordinary, even for here. People carry on like they do in other parts of the country whether it be a hurricane, wildfire, earthquake, blizzard, flood, sinkhole or "super storm".

As long as there has been "weather" on this planet, tornadoes, hurricanes, wild fires, blizzards and especially floods, sinkholes and "super storms" have always been there.

Originally posted by InverseLookingGlass
God's plans are confusing at times but when you have faith, you have peace of mind no matter what. So let'em rip and let the Earth cook or freeze or whatever.

ummm no. that statement is wrong on so many levels, and shows a disturbing lack of empathy as well as some serious delusions regarding reality

reply to post by ownbestenemy


Agreed... Tornado Alley is a very very busy place for a few months every year. June is the peak of it by stats I've looked at, but outside stats? It's not that I'd notice or anything. A tornado ripping through Missouri towns like mine in May or July won't feel any different than one in June, right? I found a little graphic to show just how common it really is though. People who don't live in the area may be a bit surprised.



Now of course, as my thread here indicates, the El Reno one has set the new documented record for a base diameter of an active tornado at 2.6 miles wide. (Still hard to imagine...WOW!) In terms of suggesting that's some staggering new development tho..I'd just note the record has only stood since 2004...when Nebraska set it with 2.5 miles in another storm outbreak. I didn't check the record prior to that.

I think the fact our computers and radar are constantly getting better and more refined has something to do with this too. For all we know, that isn't a record at all ....but simply a matter of technology that can now put a number to what was just a SWAG in decades past, eh?

I still have to wonder why on Earth people live in these red spots.
Or at least if you do, build a storm shelter. It's worth it.

I expect more freak weather records in the coming years. Ironically these storms popped up right after the media announced it was a mild spring and a low tornado season. The weather here in Oklahoma has felt weird.

reply to post by Gazrok


I live in the red spot in Texas. We have a few every year, but they're normally small and the damage is confined to a few neighborhoods at most. Having said that, its been a good 10 years since Fort Worth had its last major tornado, so I'm expecting within the next year or two that we'll be hit again.

Storm shelters are an amazing idea, if you can afford them. Most of the houses that have been built in the last 20-30 years don't have them though, and putting them in can be very costly.

This was a terrifying event that caught me and some friends totally off guard. We had just arrived back from a horse ride and barely got the horses to safety. Then we ran to a nearby underpass and hunkered down.

It seemed to move so slow and the hail from it ranged from marble sized to melon sized, seriously. We were very blessed to have survived.
FreeFalling

Originally posted by riddle6
reply to post by Gazrok

 

Most of the houses that have been built in the last 20-30 years don't have them though, and putting them in can be very costly.

I don't think their as expensive as you might think. This company is out of the OKC area, but I'll bet there are companies in Ft. Worth or the surrounding area that could give you the same shelters at a price that's similar.

biggsstormshelters.com...

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


The statistic is not meaningful because the land has been there in current form for about 12000 years and we only kept records for like the past 100 maybe?

Incomplete data to make any meaningful conclusion unless you believe you aren't talking if no one hears you. That is if no one recorded the EF10's back in 15 B.C. and so forth

reply to post by LastStarfighter


You're right on what you say and I've been the first one to make that very same point in global warming debates for those who point to trend lines on short time scales for some portent of doom. You'll notice I was careful in the Op to distinguish the quote for this as the largest documented, not, by any means, the largest to ever happen on our world. I have no doubt in my mind that over the billions of years of Earth's passing time, the land has been witness to sights and violence on a scale we'd shriek in horror from and hide in a state of borderline madness from having actually seen.

If they ever invent a time machine or, more likely if the technology is ever possible, a mere way to view past events through some wormhole in space-time? I have a feeling we'll find what we call record breaking is but a quiet day in the global neighborhood of history.

reply to post by zeta55


Ditto:
I'll take the earthquakes and fires any day over tornados & hurricanes.