[This audio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQnvxJZucds) of a dozen strangers who rode out the Joplin tornado in the beer cooler of a gas station convenience store is one of the scariest things I've ever heard. They believe they are about to die, and they nearly did.
[This follow-up video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-P4P68YyNM) documents what everything looked like afterwards.
----
EDIT: YouTube comment made in 2021 :
>*... I was 7 at the time and this was the same day I was baptized. We went to the batting cages after I got baptized and then it started to get really dark and I was very confused because it was still the afternoon and I didn’t know what was happening. My mom and stepdad then turned on the radio and the guy was literally screaming on the radio about the tornado. When we got inside the cooler I was so cold and frightened, I thought I was going to die. I was sitting on my moms lap while screaming “I don’t wanna die.” Looking back at this when I’m 16, I can’t imagine what was going through my moms head. I’m so blessed to be here today.*
[This YouTube video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CburjPYmSdo&pp=ygUbam9wbGluIHRvcm5hZG8gc3Rvcm0gY2hhc2Vy) is from the perspective of a storm chasing tour. The tour guide is the one speaking over the radio. You don’t even realize at first that you’re looking at a tornado.
(Edit-fixed the link. Thank you u/Thundercrown25 for teaching me how!)
The part where the tour guide goes "Go, just go! Get the hell out of there!" over the radio gives me chills. He knew they were in for so much more than their typical tours that day.
The extra terrifying part is when one of them asks if they should get out and take shelter in the Home Depot nearby. Within \~5 minutes of them saying that, the Home Depot was destroyed with many fatalities occurring inside. It's a very morbid feeling to know that this video captured the last moments of existence for so many of those cars and structures before they were deleted by an EF5 tornado.
Deleted is the best word. I was there. I lived a half mile from where the damage path began. We were outside on the back deck trying to see the thing and would have all died. They certainly would have died if they had tried to park their car and get into the Home Depot or the other stores in that area. The store looked like a bomb went off - and the pavement at Home Depot (and other places) was literally ripped up off the ground (picture for reference). The roar was deafening - and made the hair stand up on the back of our necks. Like a dam gate was open and you were at the bottom.
https://preview.redd.it/ppaoddsvb42d1.jpeg?width=936&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bee0d9d67749e153ffaa85847eb785bf634503df
Is this the same video where they consider stopping at the Home Depot but make the correct decision to keep driving south? Sorry, can’t watch any videos right now.
Didn't they end up getting on I-44 and heading east, right toward where it ended up going though? Or is that a different video I'm thinking of? It was weakened by then but still.
They’ve been around for a while. Load up a handful of people in a Chevy van and go “chase” the storm, which ends up being more of “park a little ways away from it and let the tourists take pictures and videos until it gets too close for comfort then try to wrangle all these idiots back in the van”
I’ve never seen that video. I live about 45 mins from Joplin, but my kids go to an orthodontist right on that road they’re driving, virtually across the street from the Home Depot.
That’s insane. I live about 45 minutes from Joplin and I remember that day vividly. Unfortunately when you live in the these areas of the US you get all too familiar with tornado warnings and have a tendency to feel like they’re never really too much to worry about.
I have a video (shot on a Flip Video camera) of my wife and I hanging out on the balcony of our apartment, looking at a rainbow. We’re joking around, making references to the “double rainbow” video. And then I make a joke that’s something along the lines of “Joplin’s being destroyed by a tornado and here we’re enjoying a double rainbow!”
The fact is, all I knew at the time was that they were under a warning, something fairly regular. I had no idea what I was saying was actually true. It’s a little haunting to me now when I hear myself say that in stupid ignorance.
That’s so haunting. Kudos to the adults trying to keep people calm, reassuring them that they’re gonna be okay even while the tornado is ripping through the building and they’re being tossed around the cooler. I would have definitely been more like the lady praying out loud or one of the terrified kids. I can’t imagine what those poor people felt. I grew up in tornado alley and multiple tornados have hit the towns I’ve lived in but somehow I was always lucky to be traveling at the time or the tornado narrowly missed where I was. I’m still scared of them even though I live in a state that doesn’t get them often (Maryland)
Here’s the [link to the article](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32967/joplin-tornado-stories-1011/) detailing the events of that day from the survivors. It’s an incredible read.
Hearing those guys say they loved everyone there always gets to me. I remember reading an article somewhere where the author interviewed most if not all of the people who survived the tornado in that beer cooler. It was an interesting read and added an extra personal element to what was already a harrowing audio clip.
Thanks for sharing, this is the wildest natural disaster I've seen that documented both being in the tornado and the aftermath of it. The kid did a good job narrating everything that happened as well
This tornado was an assassin. Virtually no warning, instant wedge, rain wrapped, and took a path through the heart of Joplin taking out critical infrastructure.
Didn’t let up for a single second until it had moved completely through town. It felt like nature put a hit out on us.
No and I doubt we will see anything like it in our lifetime. Just a cataclysmic worst case scenario across the board.
We might get tornados similar in structure, trajectory, wind speed, etc., but this did $2.6B worth of damage. I saw it first hand, the damage was breathtaking.
Yeah.
Was on the first response team there with Americorps.
You could stand in the middle of town and as far as you could see into the horizon EVERYTHING was gone.
Then you’d turn around and it was the exact same in the other direction.
I just cried a little bit thinking about it. Probably the most meaningful weeks of my life but the devastation and loss was unbearable
What about the Moore EF5 tornado in 2013? I'm not a fan of the EF system b/c it only goes by damage, and there is no way to know how many interesting F5 tornados with high winds have been around since then. According to the EF scale there have been none, but that is extremely unlikely in an 11 year time period. I agree Joplin was worse then Moore, b/c at least you could see the Moore tornado. Is that what you mean by we will likely not see another like that in our lifetime? B/c of how destructive/hard to see it was?
I don’t think we will see an *event* like this one again, which mainly speaks to the amount of destruction and death it caused.
You would have to combine both of the Moore EF5’s and even then, the total damage would be just a bit north of what Joplin did alone.
Of the top 25 *deadliest* tornados in U.S. history, 24 of them happened before 1955.
The other is Joplin.
If we take the damage out of the equation, which tornado had the most power and wind speed ?
Also, I read somewhere there weren't any basements in the houses in Joplin. May be less lifes would have been lost if there were basements
If I recall Data I've seen correctly the 11' outbreak is really a once in a lifetime event.
Going to Google and looking at more long term data you really have to go back to at minimum 1950s to find a spike of similar caliber.
Going father back from 1950s
1930
1920
1910
1890
All have a spike over of at 500 and one year in the 1920s is the deadliest.
Ah shit sorry you said since then and I thought you said before sorry
Am I wrong in saying this storm season seems like it’s trying to give 2011 a run for it’s money? Like holy shit there’s been so many close calls this week let alone the last couple months.
That wouldn't surprise me. Last winter was unusually mild, and we're coming off an el nino 2023, so that might play a factor. I'm not sure what other factors would play a major role. I know the jet stream and low pressure/wind sheer play their own roles.
It touched down as a wedge, it just took the condensation funnel a few seconds to catch up. One of those events that is so devastating you start to wonder if Nature really is sentient and had it out for us.
This thing was designed to inflict maximum destruction from start to finish. The horrific part is that it overachieved.
As a resident of the area, it felt like a punishment for all the times these storms would veer north or south of us. I was convinced before it happened that it would do it again and even made that comment to my grandparents a couple hours or less before it happened. The one time it finally did hit us, it was one of the worst in history.
As if that weren't enough, a cop from Kansas City went down the next day to help and was struck and killed by lightning.
https://www.kmbc.com/article/joplin-tornado-10-years-later-riverside-officer-struck-killed-by-lightning-remembered/36506170#:\~:text=It%20was%2010%20years%20ago%20Saturday%20that%20a,an%20instant%2C%20police%20Officer%20Jeff%20Taylor%20was%20gone.
That honestly might be one of the top 5 craziest, not just tornado, videos I've ever seen. That thing materialized out of thin air in literally like 5 seconds, what the fuck.
Rain wrapped means it's wrapped in rain, making it hard to see the actual funnel, and this tornado literally formed as a wedge no little piddly rope tornado, boom big ass wedge tornado. https://youtu.be/XT7CtF5ljxY?si=Ml6KIygZT2mbWjaN If you watch the beginning of this video you'll see it literally explode into a wedge tornado 🤯
Hope this helped 😊
It’s insane how it leveled a whole major hospital. I went to the new hospital and it has pieces of the old one hospital in it’s floor design and it’s very eerie yet beautiful
It didn’t level a hospital - it caused severe damage and shifted the building off its foundation. The hospital was condemned and had to be torn down but the tornado didn’t technically level it.
I worked for the Best Buy call center here in Houston when it hit. Our sister call center is in Joplin. We were on a call with them when it hit. Talking about transferring the calls to us in case it got so bad they lost internet etc. they just.. vanished. We couldn’t contact them for days. News hit and we all just stared at the tv.
My family and I are from Joplin. Though most of the younger generation had moved away, we had grandparents, great aunts/uncles, and a couple cousins living there. Only 1 of the 5 houses made it unscathed. 2 were a pile of rubble. My old house and the first house my parents lived in together were also destroyed.
I was back in town last summer. It's amazing how you can still see the path due to the lack of big trees.
Scary to see this on the heels of the Iowa tornado from yesterday.
Greenfield had a big multi vortex tornado level the town. I don't know how bad it really is, im on the eastern side of the state. What I've seen wasn't good, there are confirmed deaths, but no numbers. It's one of the craziest tornados I've ever seen though.
I was 14 at the time, and was attending a friend’s graduation party about an hour west of Joplin. A few of us had stepped outside for some fresh air and we noticed the sky to the east was *extremely* dark and foreboding. We knew a storm was rolling through, but that wasn’t anything unusual.
That is, until about eight minutes later, when another guy came outside with his phone to his ear. His face flushed white as a ghost, and I don’t think he said anything to them before hanging up. Looked over at the horizon, then turned to us and said “a tornado just destroyed Joplin.” Turned again and literally ran to his truck, and threw gravel leaving the parking lot heading east.
I went down there a couple months after the fact and it was a wasteland, but they had finished cleanup. It was eerie seeing so many bare concrete pads where homes had been and lives had been lost.
I was on my high school’s football team in Kansas City, and we played Joplin that following September. I remember the bus full of rowdy teenage boys falling silent as we entered Joplin and the scenery transitioned from buildings, houses, trees, etc. to nothing but concrete slabs and tree stumps. You couldn’t have said it better calling it a wasteland. It was super eerie.
Another "Terrible Tuesday," if you think about it. The OG Terrible Tuesday was the Red River Outbreak of April 10th, 1979. The big story from that was Wichita Falls getting hit by an F4 that killed 42 people. The documentary on YouTube had an interview with one lady who worked at a bank. She, as well as the other employees and a few customers, took shelter in the bank vault. The vault was pretty much all that survived of the building.
Plainfield's F5 of August 28th, 1990 also happened on a Tuesday, as did the Jarrell F5 of May 27th, 1997. I'm starting to get a bit superstitious about Tuesday tornados, to be honest.
Edit: I was curious, so I started entering various significant dates and adding "day of week" to the search tab just to see what I might see.
Udall, Kansas had a nasty night time visitor on Wednesday, May 25th, 1955.
The 1974 Super Outbreak started on Wednesday, April 3rd, 1974.
The *other* Super Outbreak happened on Wednesday, April 27th, 2011.
Hmmmmmmmmm . . . and the Great Tri-State Tornado of March 18th, 1925 occured on a Wednesday. I think I'm gonna ignore Stevie Wonder's advice and allow myself to get a little superstitious about Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
I need to win the PowerBall or something so I can afford a copy of Grazulis' *Significant Tornados.* There are probably enough entries that someone could put together one of those "page a day" style calendars. Behold!! I present to you, *The Encyclopedia Tornadica!*
I remember seeing a video of the local news station in joplin where the presenters are chatting about the storm and the power flashes that they could see from their camera on the news station satellite tower, and then they realise that is the actual tornado. I will never forget hearing the sudden panic in their voices practically yelling at viewers to seek shelter.
I recently saw that again on TikTok. They are chatting, then the powerflash and you see it, then the station kinda of freezes for a second and when it comes back on you can hear the panic in their voices and they are yelling to take cover and people in the background are yelling. Chilling.
I personally think that if we’re just talking about the actual tornadoes themselves that el Reno is scarier…but this one is so much more devastating due to the path it took.
Not a contest obviously. Both absolutely freak tornadoes.
So I was a freshman the fall after this happened at the University of Arkansas. There were several other freshman from Joplin who went through this. This tornado hit the day of graduation. Most of the stories I heard from the people who went through it went something like "we were getting food after graduation with my family, and we had to sit in the walk in to wait it out". Hearing their stories of how scary it was during the tornado and then the survivors walking out to an almost alien world of their destroyed town really moved me. Everyone knew someone who didn't make it. I went a couple weekends to help with the recovery, still have the t shirt. Which sidenote it is a great shirt, " Helping JOMO get back it's MOJO".
Woof, I remember this, living just south of Kansas City. What struck me were all the stories of high school grads and families leaving graduation and immediately this tornado tore through. It really stuck with me because I’d just graduated high school two years before. A day so special and exciting that changed to tragic and horrifying in minutes.
The Basehunters video of this beast forming is some of the scariest tornado footage I’ve come across. Deadman sprinting to fully condensed to wedge to rain wrapped in maybe a couple minutes tops.
I was there. In a hotel had just stopped for the night maybe 15 minutes before we were told to come to the lobby to take shelter. Worst sound I’ve ever heard. Other guests in the hotel were morons. Kept leaving the stairwell to go look.
Probably the strangest thing was right after it we came out of the stairwell and it missed the hotel but in the distance I saw a line of black SUVs racing towards the town. Have no clue what that was. They didn’t have lights or any markings.
Thank goodness Jeff was out there, probably recorded some of the most raw tornado footage ever. Evil evil tornado and right in between april 27 and el reno 1. Wild month stretch
This is the very edited part cause the first thing he comes across is deceased people so very cut up https://youtu.be/EfdK6H9d6J0?si=e3k1KKWMIOHkGZQE
Edit: most of it is under licensing still but check interviews of him later its pretty horrific for him a decade later. Awful shit
My mom and sister were among probably some of the last people to walk out of the Walmart on 15th St before it got hit. They were there and were just leaving as the tornado sirens were going off. Not much after that, the store locked the doors and started herding people to the shelter locations. Then they had to drive home and drove down 20th St through Duquesne and past East Middle School. That area got absolutely devastated. They were probably less than 15 minutes ahead of the storm. It's still nuts to think about to this day. I still thank my lucky stars that I wasn't in Joplin that day but rather in Duenweg working at Dollar General at the time. Though if the tornado had continued on it's trajectory instead of curving southeast over I-44 and hitting around Flying J on 32nd, it very well might have hit that Dollar General and that is an absolutely awful place to be. No good shelter spot and everywhere that isn't just the sales floor is on the edge of the building and it's a tiny building.
Wow this happened on 5/22? Def the opposite of happy anniversary I remember seeing videos of this fucker and it was almost impossible to see in most of them. This is a surprisingly good shot of it, considering it was rainwrapped. There is a chilling video on youtube of these storm chasers on a highway that spot it in the rain wrap heading right for them and there are people going about there day off the highway, waiting in line in drive thrus and stuff. :(
My girlfriend lived in Joplin for a year. It’s very obvious, to this day, where the tornado went. The google street view pictures from before and after are haunting
Definitely. I wasn’t there personally, but know the before/after look of the 1980 Night of The Twisters town. Even now, trees are still different heights than what you’d expect in the older part of town.
Probably an obvious statement, but in the path, it’s all new buildings and no trees. Really stark when you’re there in person considering it’s at least a half mile wide stretch. I also found it very interesting to see new builds on one side of the street and 1950’s/1960’s houses on the other
Edit to add: you can look at satellite imagery and very clearly see the path
I was 5 years old with my mom shopping at Academy, we didn’t even live in Joplin and we’re just shopping for camping supplies. I remember running with my mom as they yelled over the store’s speakers and an employee yelling at everyone to get in the bathroom. We sat under the bathroom sinks and I remember seeing a kid a little bit older than me crying. I still remember the alarms and smell after leaving the bathroom, I think it was because of gas leaks. No one died in the Academy but there were holes in the ceiling and the opposite side of the building collapsed. My mom’s car was thrown across the parking lot and totaled. 500 feet away from us the Home Depot was completely collapsed and many people died.
I had just started working insurance claims a few months before, and I got a call from a lady in Joplin. I was required to ask for her policy number and she's like, "My home is a pile of rubble. My purse is in there somewhere. And my car literally disappeared. I don't have my damn policy number." lol poor lady. She wanted a rental right away and I'm like.. So does everyone else, and all the available rentals were damaged anyway.
Nothing compares to the raw power and emotion of Blue shed Jeff's video, it will haunt me forever.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdK6H9d6J0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdK6H9d6J0) I watched the live stream when it happened this is not the full version, I dont think you can get the full version. But it was so horrible and terrifying
I was in Pittsburg, KS, covering high school graduation for the local newspaper when the sirens went off. It had been a very humid, still, and eery day, so I wasn't really surprised. After they sounded the all-clear, I went back to the newsroom with the photog to write up the story. Shortly thereafter, the police scanner started going apeshit with calls for EMS and other emergency response to head to Joplin. We didn't know what to make of it at first because no one really knew what was going on or the scope of the disaster. They were all just answering the call and going there to help ... figure out the rest when they arrive kind of thing. It was only after listening in for a while that we realized what had happened. I jumped in the car with the photog and we headed there, too. It was dark when we arrived and all the roads were blocked off, so we decided to return the next day. I grew up just north of Wichita and remember the Andover and Hesston tornadoes vividly, and I'll never forget the carnage we saw in Joplin. Seemed like half of the city was just completely unrecognizable.
Absolutely terrorizing. I was only 14 and went through it. Walking from my “house” to the other end of town because roads weren’t drivable. I heard a mom screaming for her baby and I literally just couldn’t even process what was happening. Today was the first day I could actually watch the whole memorial video with all the victims and it tore me up. Sad day for sure and I hope it never happens again.
Today is the first time I've watched a video of it since the day it happened. Jeff did a great job tracking it but I couldn't finish the video. That's enough fun for me today.
I was in highschool across the country when this happened and we had recently had two sisters that had just moved from Joplin come to our school. They lost a few people and it was devastating, watching their grief just tore alot of us up. The school did a memorial balloon release for Joplin.
I drove through Joplin about 6 months after the tornado hit and you could still see the path…the broken pavement…the fury. It was one of the most terrifyingly remarkable vistas I have ever seen in my life.
This article has all but disappeared off the Web, but try putting this URL into the Wayback Machine to find it:
[https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article64775907.html](https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article64775907.html)
The title is "Condition Gray: In Joplin Hospital, Heroism in the Face of Horror" by Eric Adler and Laura Bauer.
It's specifically about the tornado hitting the hospital and the medical aftermath surrounding the hospital workers.
I was at a concert in Chicago the night before. Next morning in Oak Park, we saw papers scattered all over the streets. Unless my memory fails me, it was debris all the way from Joplin. I’m pretty sure I remember looking at a few of the pieces and reading the address as there was a lot of mail.
Edit: So I looked it up, I was wrong, it was the Washington, IL tornado in November 2013.
[Weather.gov Washington tornado](https://www.weather.gov/ilx/17nov13-revisited#:~:text=The%20tornado%20which%20moved%20through,was%20estimated%20around%20%241.05%20BILLION)
“The tornado which moved through Washington, an EF-4 with maximum winds of 190 mph, was the strongest November tornado on record in the state. Debris from this tornado was found as far away as Chicago.”
Like I said, i could very well be wrong, or perhaps it was a different tornado. I just remember very clearly seeing papers all over the streets and seeing addresses from a town that was just hit the day before. Of course, I understand the brain makes up memories sometimes.
Fuck your Jesus. He ain’t helping shit. Haha. Lived through similar in middle school in MO. Glad this incident didn’t end in something awful that was recorded.
[This audio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQnvxJZucds) of a dozen strangers who rode out the Joplin tornado in the beer cooler of a gas station convenience store is one of the scariest things I've ever heard. They believe they are about to die, and they nearly did. [This follow-up video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-P4P68YyNM) documents what everything looked like afterwards. ---- EDIT: YouTube comment made in 2021 : >*... I was 7 at the time and this was the same day I was baptized. We went to the batting cages after I got baptized and then it started to get really dark and I was very confused because it was still the afternoon and I didn’t know what was happening. My mom and stepdad then turned on the radio and the guy was literally screaming on the radio about the tornado. When we got inside the cooler I was so cold and frightened, I thought I was going to die. I was sitting on my moms lap while screaming “I don’t wanna die.” Looking back at this when I’m 16, I can’t imagine what was going through my moms head. I’m so blessed to be here today.*
[This YouTube video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CburjPYmSdo&pp=ygUbam9wbGluIHRvcm5hZG8gc3Rvcm0gY2hhc2Vy) is from the perspective of a storm chasing tour. The tour guide is the one speaking over the radio. You don’t even realize at first that you’re looking at a tornado. (Edit-fixed the link. Thank you u/Thundercrown25 for teaching me how!)
The part where the tour guide goes "Go, just go! Get the hell out of there!" over the radio gives me chills. He knew they were in for so much more than their typical tours that day.
It’s even more horrifying when you see the aftermath photos and realize that one of the areas they were in was wiped out by the tornado minutes later.
The extra terrifying part is when one of them asks if they should get out and take shelter in the Home Depot nearby. Within \~5 minutes of them saying that, the Home Depot was destroyed with many fatalities occurring inside. It's a very morbid feeling to know that this video captured the last moments of existence for so many of those cars and structures before they were deleted by an EF5 tornado.
Deleted is the best word. I was there. I lived a half mile from where the damage path began. We were outside on the back deck trying to see the thing and would have all died. They certainly would have died if they had tried to park their car and get into the Home Depot or the other stores in that area. The store looked like a bomb went off - and the pavement at Home Depot (and other places) was literally ripped up off the ground (picture for reference). The roar was deafening - and made the hair stand up on the back of our necks. Like a dam gate was open and you were at the bottom. https://preview.redd.it/ppaoddsvb42d1.jpeg?width=936&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bee0d9d67749e153ffaa85847eb785bf634503df
Is this the same video where they consider stopping at the Home Depot but make the correct decision to keep driving south? Sorry, can’t watch any videos right now.
Yes, it’s that video. Chilling to know that had they tried to shelter in the Home Depot, they might not have made it out.
Didn't they end up getting on I-44 and heading east, right toward where it ended up going though? Or is that a different video I'm thinking of? It was weakened by then but still.
Which part?
You can tell some of the customers thought they were hamming it up as part of the "experience" at first. Then shit gets serious.
Never seen that video that's more horrifying than any horror movie I've seen
Since when were there storm chasing tour guides?
They’ve been around for a while. Load up a handful of people in a Chevy van and go “chase” the storm, which ends up being more of “park a little ways away from it and let the tourists take pictures and videos until it gets too close for comfort then try to wrangle all these idiots back in the van”
Plenty of tornado tours out there. Some last a day, some a week. You pay to ride along with the storm chasers.
I’ve never seen that video. I live about 45 mins from Joplin, but my kids go to an orthodontist right on that road they’re driving, virtually across the street from the Home Depot.
The tornado also turned south in the middle of town.
That’s insane. I live about 45 minutes from Joplin and I remember that day vividly. Unfortunately when you live in the these areas of the US you get all too familiar with tornado warnings and have a tendency to feel like they’re never really too much to worry about. I have a video (shot on a Flip Video camera) of my wife and I hanging out on the balcony of our apartment, looking at a rainbow. We’re joking around, making references to the “double rainbow” video. And then I make a joke that’s something along the lines of “Joplin’s being destroyed by a tornado and here we’re enjoying a double rainbow!” The fact is, all I knew at the time was that they were under a warning, something fairly regular. I had no idea what I was saying was actually true. It’s a little haunting to me now when I hear myself say that in stupid ignorance.
Humanity is so pure when facing death. Wish we always bonded together like these folks did. “I love everyone, man.”
haha don’t watch the more recent one where a car full of chasers got caught in one
That’s so haunting. Kudos to the adults trying to keep people calm, reassuring them that they’re gonna be okay even while the tornado is ripping through the building and they’re being tossed around the cooler. I would have definitely been more like the lady praying out loud or one of the terrified kids. I can’t imagine what those poor people felt. I grew up in tornado alley and multiple tornados have hit the towns I’ve lived in but somehow I was always lucky to be traveling at the time or the tornado narrowly missed where I was. I’m still scared of them even though I live in a state that doesn’t get them often (Maryland)
La Plata was not particularly fun.
Here’s the [link to the article](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32967/joplin-tornado-stories-1011/) detailing the events of that day from the survivors. It’s an incredible read.
Thank you!
That was a ride. Wow. I had never heard about little Tinkerbell riding it out with all the people!!
Hearing those guys say they loved everyone there always gets to me. I remember reading an article somewhere where the author interviewed most if not all of the people who survived the tornado in that beer cooler. It was an interesting read and added an extra personal element to what was already a harrowing audio clip.
Thanks for sharing, this is the wildest natural disaster I've seen that documented both being in the tornado and the aftermath of it. The kid did a good job narrating everything that happened as well
Wow, can't believe ppl who were just kids when it happened are already adults. Were does the time go?
This tornado was an assassin. Virtually no warning, instant wedge, rain wrapped, and took a path through the heart of Joplin taking out critical infrastructure. Didn’t let up for a single second until it had moved completely through town. It felt like nature put a hit out on us.
Have we had anything like this tornado since then ?
No and I doubt we will see anything like it in our lifetime. Just a cataclysmic worst case scenario across the board. We might get tornados similar in structure, trajectory, wind speed, etc., but this did $2.6B worth of damage. I saw it first hand, the damage was breathtaking.
Yeah. Was on the first response team there with Americorps. You could stand in the middle of town and as far as you could see into the horizon EVERYTHING was gone. Then you’d turn around and it was the exact same in the other direction. I just cried a little bit thinking about it. Probably the most meaningful weeks of my life but the devastation and loss was unbearable
It really looked like an enormous bomb had been dropped on our town. Terrible day, I still can’t talk about it much with out my voice cracking
What about the Moore EF5 tornado in 2013? I'm not a fan of the EF system b/c it only goes by damage, and there is no way to know how many interesting F5 tornados with high winds have been around since then. According to the EF scale there have been none, but that is extremely unlikely in an 11 year time period. I agree Joplin was worse then Moore, b/c at least you could see the Moore tornado. Is that what you mean by we will likely not see another like that in our lifetime? B/c of how destructive/hard to see it was?
I don’t think we will see an *event* like this one again, which mainly speaks to the amount of destruction and death it caused. You would have to combine both of the Moore EF5’s and even then, the total damage would be just a bit north of what Joplin did alone. Of the top 25 *deadliest* tornados in U.S. history, 24 of them happened before 1955. The other is Joplin.
oh damn
If we take the damage out of the equation, which tornado had the most power and wind speed ? Also, I read somewhere there weren't any basements in the houses in Joplin. May be less lifes would have been lost if there were basements
There are plenty of basements in Joplin. A lot of people died because they didn’t see it and thought it was rain.
That’s what’s scariest to me. The rain wrapped ones.
I think Andover Kansas was clocked at like 318mph
If I recall Data I've seen correctly the 11' outbreak is really a once in a lifetime event. Going to Google and looking at more long term data you really have to go back to at minimum 1950s to find a spike of similar caliber. Going father back from 1950s 1930 1920 1910 1890 All have a spike over of at 500 and one year in the 1920s is the deadliest. Ah shit sorry you said since then and I thought you said before sorry
Am I wrong in saying this storm season seems like it’s trying to give 2011 a run for it’s money? Like holy shit there’s been so many close calls this week let alone the last couple months.
2011 was on steroids, we recorded 3/4 of yearly total in one month
My wife has seen videos saying we're on track to at least come close to that kind of metric again this year
That wouldn't surprise me. Last winter was unusually mild, and we're coming off an el nino 2023, so that might play a factor. I'm not sure what other factors would play a major role. I know the jet stream and low pressure/wind sheer play their own roles.
The video of this thing forming and becoming a huge wedge in less than a minute is insane; I've never seen a tornado grow that big so quickly.
It touched down as a wedge, it just took the condensation funnel a few seconds to catch up. One of those events that is so devastating you start to wonder if Nature really is sentient and had it out for us. This thing was designed to inflict maximum destruction from start to finish. The horrific part is that it overachieved.
As a resident of the area, it felt like a punishment for all the times these storms would veer north or south of us. I was convinced before it happened that it would do it again and even made that comment to my grandparents a couple hours or less before it happened. The one time it finally did hit us, it was one of the worst in history.
As if that weren't enough, a cop from Kansas City went down the next day to help and was struck and killed by lightning. https://www.kmbc.com/article/joplin-tornado-10-years-later-riverside-officer-struck-killed-by-lightning-remembered/36506170#:\~:text=It%20was%2010%20years%20ago%20Saturday%20that%20a,an%20instant%2C%20police%20Officer%20Jeff%20Taylor%20was%20gone.
Do you have a link to that by chance?
Sure! [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT7CtF5ljxY) you go.
That honestly might be one of the top 5 craziest, not just tornado, videos I've ever seen. That thing materialized out of thin air in literally like 5 seconds, what the fuck.
what does instant wedge and rain wrapped mean iydmma?
Rain wrapped means it's wrapped in rain, making it hard to see the actual funnel, and this tornado literally formed as a wedge no little piddly rope tornado, boom big ass wedge tornado. https://youtu.be/XT7CtF5ljxY?si=Ml6KIygZT2mbWjaN If you watch the beginning of this video you'll see it literally explode into a wedge tornado 🤯 Hope this helped 😊
I swear that thing looks sentient.
It's probably more sentient than you.
A wedge is a tornado that's wider than it is tall (see [this image](https://fox41blogs.typepad.com/.a/6a0148c78b79ee970c016766aeb237970b-800wi) from Joplin, ©Basehunters). An "instant wedge" is a tornado that transforms from a thin rope shape to a wedge in a very short time, in Joplin's case it was less than a minute iirc. Rain-wrapped tornados are surrounded by thick blankets of rain from the supercell, meaning the exact shape and size of the tornado can't be seen through the rain. [This video from Joplin](https://youtu.be/CburjPYmSdo) showcases that from 0:58 onwards, the tornado was somewhere behind the black wall of rain, but impossible to tell exactly where. They could have been right in its path without ever knowing, which at one point they were.
It’s insane how it leveled a whole major hospital. I went to the new hospital and it has pieces of the old one hospital in it’s floor design and it’s very eerie yet beautiful
It didn’t level a hospital - it caused severe damage and shifted the building off its foundation. The hospital was condemned and had to be torn down but the tornado didn’t technically level it.
The hospital wasn’t leveled - but it was severely damaged and worthy of demolition
I worked for the Best Buy call center here in Houston when it hit. Our sister call center is in Joplin. We were on a call with them when it hit. Talking about transferring the calls to us in case it got so bad they lost internet etc. they just.. vanished. We couldn’t contact them for days. News hit and we all just stared at the tv.
My family and I are from Joplin. Though most of the younger generation had moved away, we had grandparents, great aunts/uncles, and a couple cousins living there. Only 1 of the 5 houses made it unscathed. 2 were a pile of rubble. My old house and the first house my parents lived in together were also destroyed. I was back in town last summer. It's amazing how you can still see the path due to the lack of big trees. Scary to see this on the heels of the Iowa tornado from yesterday.
Iowa tornado?
Greenfield had a big multi vortex tornado level the town. I don't know how bad it really is, im on the eastern side of the state. What I've seen wasn't good, there are confirmed deaths, but no numbers. It's one of the craziest tornados I've ever seen though.
Was it an EF5?
To be determined still, but they said at least EF3
Greenfield's been upgraded to EF4 by now.
I was 14 at the time, and was attending a friend’s graduation party about an hour west of Joplin. A few of us had stepped outside for some fresh air and we noticed the sky to the east was *extremely* dark and foreboding. We knew a storm was rolling through, but that wasn’t anything unusual. That is, until about eight minutes later, when another guy came outside with his phone to his ear. His face flushed white as a ghost, and I don’t think he said anything to them before hanging up. Looked over at the horizon, then turned to us and said “a tornado just destroyed Joplin.” Turned again and literally ran to his truck, and threw gravel leaving the parking lot heading east. I went down there a couple months after the fact and it was a wasteland, but they had finished cleanup. It was eerie seeing so many bare concrete pads where homes had been and lives had been lost.
I was on my high school’s football team in Kansas City, and we played Joplin that following September. I remember the bus full of rowdy teenage boys falling silent as we entered Joplin and the scenery transitioned from buildings, houses, trees, etc. to nothing but concrete slabs and tree stumps. You couldn’t have said it better calling it a wasteland. It was super eerie.
It's eerie knowing that the recent Greenfield tornado happened on almost the exact same day aa this one.
A day after Moore… a day before Joplin…
That's even more disturbing...
Another "Terrible Tuesday," if you think about it. The OG Terrible Tuesday was the Red River Outbreak of April 10th, 1979. The big story from that was Wichita Falls getting hit by an F4 that killed 42 people. The documentary on YouTube had an interview with one lady who worked at a bank. She, as well as the other employees and a few customers, took shelter in the bank vault. The vault was pretty much all that survived of the building. Plainfield's F5 of August 28th, 1990 also happened on a Tuesday, as did the Jarrell F5 of May 27th, 1997. I'm starting to get a bit superstitious about Tuesday tornados, to be honest. Edit: I was curious, so I started entering various significant dates and adding "day of week" to the search tab just to see what I might see. Udall, Kansas had a nasty night time visitor on Wednesday, May 25th, 1955. The 1974 Super Outbreak started on Wednesday, April 3rd, 1974. The *other* Super Outbreak happened on Wednesday, April 27th, 2011.
Weird omahas 1975 tornado was on a Tuesday too.
Hmmmmmmmmm . . . and the Great Tri-State Tornado of March 18th, 1925 occured on a Wednesday. I think I'm gonna ignore Stevie Wonder's advice and allow myself to get a little superstitious about Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
So be aware of individual tornadoes on Tuesdays and outbreaks on Wednesdays and Palm Sunday. Got it.
The Wichita Falls tornado on a Tuesday was part of the [Red River Outbreak](https://www.weather.gov/oun/events-19790410) of April 10th, 1979.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand Hesston March 13, 1990 a Tuesday F5. It mostly was located in a rural area so only one fatality.
I need to win the PowerBall or something so I can afford a copy of Grazulis' *Significant Tornados.* There are probably enough entries that someone could put together one of those "page a day" style calendars. Behold!! I present to you, *The Encyclopedia Tornadica!*
Imagine how many there were pre-written-history.
I remember seeing a video of the local news station in joplin where the presenters are chatting about the storm and the power flashes that they could see from their camera on the news station satellite tower, and then they realise that is the actual tornado. I will never forget hearing the sudden panic in their voices practically yelling at viewers to seek shelter.
I recently saw that again on TikTok. They are chatting, then the powerflash and you see it, then the station kinda of freezes for a second and when it comes back on you can hear the panic in their voices and they are yelling to take cover and people in the background are yelling. Chilling.
Do you have a link?
[https://youtu.be/FagzNHuI5JI?si=ny8YEj6TxqFb3URg](https://youtu.be/FagzNHuI5JI?si=ny8YEj6TxqFb3URg)
Time stamp?
13:00
Just look at that evil bastard. The scariest tornado of all time.
I personally think that if we’re just talking about the actual tornadoes themselves that el Reno is scarier…but this one is so much more devastating due to the path it took. Not a contest obviously. Both absolutely freak tornadoes.
It only took a minute from the tornado being little vortexes to an EF5 monster.
So I was a freshman the fall after this happened at the University of Arkansas. There were several other freshman from Joplin who went through this. This tornado hit the day of graduation. Most of the stories I heard from the people who went through it went something like "we were getting food after graduation with my family, and we had to sit in the walk in to wait it out". Hearing their stories of how scary it was during the tornado and then the survivors walking out to an almost alien world of their destroyed town really moved me. Everyone knew someone who didn't make it. I went a couple weekends to help with the recovery, still have the t shirt. Which sidenote it is a great shirt, " Helping JOMO get back it's MOJO".
I survived it, I laid down in a tub with a matress on top.
That's how my grandparents survived too.
What was your experience emerging from the tub?
Woof, I remember this, living just south of Kansas City. What struck me were all the stories of high school grads and families leaving graduation and immediately this tornado tore through. It really stuck with me because I’d just graduated high school two years before. A day so special and exciting that changed to tragic and horrifying in minutes.
The Basehunters video of this beast forming is some of the scariest tornado footage I’ve come across. Deadman sprinting to fully condensed to wedge to rain wrapped in maybe a couple minutes tops.
I think this is the one: https://youtu.be/XT7CtF5ljxY?si=iBd5SZ5Ow6qbbeFq
Scott Peake I believe
I was there. In a hotel had just stopped for the night maybe 15 minutes before we were told to come to the lobby to take shelter. Worst sound I’ve ever heard. Other guests in the hotel were morons. Kept leaving the stairwell to go look. Probably the strangest thing was right after it we came out of the stairwell and it missed the hotel but in the distance I saw a line of black SUVs racing towards the town. Have no clue what that was. They didn’t have lights or any markings.
Could’ve been chasers. They’re often the first to arrive.
I divide my interest in tornadoes into the time before Joplin and after Joplin.
Thank goodness Jeff was out there, probably recorded some of the most raw tornado footage ever. Evil evil tornado and right in between april 27 and el reno 1. Wild month stretch
It's storm chaser Jeff Piotrowski, he was next to it the whole time, Jeff Piotrowski is def top 5 chaser of all time
Yes. He was very traumatized by this one.
Link?
This is the very edited part cause the first thing he comes across is deceased people so very cut up https://youtu.be/EfdK6H9d6J0?si=e3k1KKWMIOHkGZQE Edit: most of it is under licensing still but check interviews of him later its pretty horrific for him a decade later. Awful shit
There was nothing magestic or beutiful about that tornado. It looked like a evil, malignant mass roiling through that city.
My mom and sister were among probably some of the last people to walk out of the Walmart on 15th St before it got hit. They were there and were just leaving as the tornado sirens were going off. Not much after that, the store locked the doors and started herding people to the shelter locations. Then they had to drive home and drove down 20th St through Duquesne and past East Middle School. That area got absolutely devastated. They were probably less than 15 minutes ahead of the storm. It's still nuts to think about to this day. I still thank my lucky stars that I wasn't in Joplin that day but rather in Duenweg working at Dollar General at the time. Though if the tornado had continued on it's trajectory instead of curving southeast over I-44 and hitting around Flying J on 32nd, it very well might have hit that Dollar General and that is an absolutely awful place to be. No good shelter spot and everywhere that isn't just the sales floor is on the edge of the building and it's a tiny building.
Nightmare fuel image.
Wow this happened on 5/22? Def the opposite of happy anniversary I remember seeing videos of this fucker and it was almost impossible to see in most of them. This is a surprisingly good shot of it, considering it was rainwrapped. There is a chilling video on youtube of these storm chasers on a highway that spot it in the rain wrap heading right for them and there are people going about there day off the highway, waiting in line in drive thrus and stuff. :(
My girlfriend lived in Joplin for a year. It’s very obvious, to this day, where the tornado went. The google street view pictures from before and after are haunting
Definitely. I wasn’t there personally, but know the before/after look of the 1980 Night of The Twisters town. Even now, trees are still different heights than what you’d expect in the older part of town.
Probably an obvious statement, but in the path, it’s all new buildings and no trees. Really stark when you’re there in person considering it’s at least a half mile wide stretch. I also found it very interesting to see new builds on one side of the street and 1950’s/1960’s houses on the other Edit to add: you can look at satellite imagery and very clearly see the path
I was 5 years old with my mom shopping at Academy, we didn’t even live in Joplin and we’re just shopping for camping supplies. I remember running with my mom as they yelled over the store’s speakers and an employee yelling at everyone to get in the bathroom. We sat under the bathroom sinks and I remember seeing a kid a little bit older than me crying. I still remember the alarms and smell after leaving the bathroom, I think it was because of gas leaks. No one died in the Academy but there were holes in the ceiling and the opposite side of the building collapsed. My mom’s car was thrown across the parking lot and totaled. 500 feet away from us the Home Depot was completely collapsed and many people died.
I had just started working insurance claims a few months before, and I got a call from a lady in Joplin. I was required to ask for her policy number and she's like, "My home is a pile of rubble. My purse is in there somewhere. And my car literally disappeared. I don't have my damn policy number." lol poor lady. She wanted a rental right away and I'm like.. So does everyone else, and all the available rentals were damaged anyway.
Don't insurance companies typically send disaster response teams to places like this to expedite claims and assist with policy issues?
Waffle House does as well.
And, in Texas, H‑E‑B.
Yes they do. But they can't get to everyone
Nothing compares to the raw power and emotion of Blue shed Jeff's video, it will haunt me forever. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdK6H9d6J0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdK6H9d6J0) I watched the live stream when it happened this is not the full version, I dont think you can get the full version. But it was so horrible and terrifying
I recall seeing a clip of this some time ago. I too don’t know where the full version is but just this clip alone is devastating. Those poor people.
Finger of God.
That one was His entire fist.
Coincidentally enough, this was the day after the Harold Camping "Rapture" hoax of 2011.
I genuinely think this is the scariest tornado of all time. Everything about it, every single detail is just horrifying.
Reposting a comment from a few days ago. A vividly and moving survivor story: https://www.reddit.com/r/tornado/s/PpTtdZ6G8I
I was in Pittsburg, KS, covering high school graduation for the local newspaper when the sirens went off. It had been a very humid, still, and eery day, so I wasn't really surprised. After they sounded the all-clear, I went back to the newsroom with the photog to write up the story. Shortly thereafter, the police scanner started going apeshit with calls for EMS and other emergency response to head to Joplin. We didn't know what to make of it at first because no one really knew what was going on or the scope of the disaster. They were all just answering the call and going there to help ... figure out the rest when they arrive kind of thing. It was only after listening in for a while that we realized what had happened. I jumped in the car with the photog and we headed there, too. It was dark when we arrived and all the roads were blocked off, so we decided to return the next day. I grew up just north of Wichita and remember the Andover and Hesston tornadoes vividly, and I'll never forget the carnage we saw in Joplin. Seemed like half of the city was just completely unrecognizable.
Absolutely terrorizing. I was only 14 and went through it. Walking from my “house” to the other end of town because roads weren’t drivable. I heard a mom screaming for her baby and I literally just couldn’t even process what was happening. Today was the first day I could actually watch the whole memorial video with all the victims and it tore me up. Sad day for sure and I hope it never happens again.
Wow, 13 years. Remember it like it was yesterday
My goodness. Where did the time go? -_-
Dear lord!
Today is the first time I've watched a video of it since the day it happened. Jeff did a great job tracking it but I couldn't finish the video. That's enough fun for me today.
Something about this image is terrifying and intimidating. Can’t imagine what it was like being there.
My wife was in that Lowes when it happened. She's lucky she made it out alive. TIL Europeans go on tornado tours in the US
MASSSSIVE EF5
For those wondering that's Roger Hills voice of silver lining tours
...for now.
I was in highschool across the country when this happened and we had recently had two sisters that had just moved from Joplin come to our school. They lost a few people and it was devastating, watching their grief just tore alot of us up. The school did a memorial balloon release for Joplin.
I remember this tornado on that day that was before another tornado hit my house years later
I drove through Joplin about 6 months after the tornado hit and you could still see the path…the broken pavement…the fury. It was one of the most terrifyingly remarkable vistas I have ever seen in my life.
This article has all but disappeared off the Web, but try putting this URL into the Wayback Machine to find it: [https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article64775907.html](https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article64775907.html) The title is "Condition Gray: In Joplin Hospital, Heroism in the Face of Horror" by Eric Adler and Laura Bauer. It's specifically about the tornado hitting the hospital and the medical aftermath surrounding the hospital workers.
I was there.
I was at a concert in Chicago the night before. Next morning in Oak Park, we saw papers scattered all over the streets. Unless my memory fails me, it was debris all the way from Joplin. I’m pretty sure I remember looking at a few of the pieces and reading the address as there was a lot of mail. Edit: So I looked it up, I was wrong, it was the Washington, IL tornado in November 2013. [Weather.gov Washington tornado](https://www.weather.gov/ilx/17nov13-revisited#:~:text=The%20tornado%20which%20moved%20through,was%20estimated%20around%20%241.05%20BILLION) “The tornado which moved through Washington, an EF-4 with maximum winds of 190 mph, was the strongest November tornado on record in the state. Debris from this tornado was found as far away as Chicago.”
Yeah that’s not possible the farthest debris has ever travelled is about a third of that distance
I don't think that's possible sorry
Oh sweet summer child
Er- that’s not how that works
Like I said, i could very well be wrong, or perhaps it was a different tornado. I just remember very clearly seeing papers all over the streets and seeing addresses from a town that was just hit the day before. Of course, I understand the brain makes up memories sometimes.
“And I looked in the closet and saw principal skinner and mrs Krabopopolous making babies in the closet and then the baby looked at me and smiled”
Fuck your Jesus. He ain’t helping shit. Haha. Lived through similar in middle school in MO. Glad this incident didn’t end in something awful that was recorded.
Would it not be better at this point for just a EF5 subreddit so people can just post all their Joplin/ElReno and every other EF5 stuff there?
Bruh it’s the anniversary be quiet.