I stopped watching cable news a while back- basically when KO went off the air, I shut down all cable news. I just don’t watch it any more. I used to have it on in the background like radio all day, but nowadays I just open itunes and hit shuffle. So I didn’t even know this had happened until I read the Times this morning:
Much of this southwestern Missouri city lay in ruins on Monday morning after a massive tornado, the latest storm to ravage the Midwest and South this spring, tore through the area, killing at least 89 people. Officials say they expect the death toll to climb.
The twister, which touched down at about 6 p.m. Sunday, ripped apart buildings, touched off fires, uprooted trees and tossed cars, leaving them mangled stacks of metal.
The pictures are horrifying.
Daddy-O
Unbelievable. But Al Gore is fat…never forget.
sb
Horrific.
Awful thought–part of me wished the WalMart could have been destroyed. But there it was, in the background of the wreckage.
Thoughts and prayers with the people of Joplin.
Linda Featheringill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQnvxJZucds&feature=share
First person, during the event.
They call it a video but there is almost nothing to see. The audio is awesome, though.
I think those people were caught in a convenience store or something.
Campionrules
Terrifying footage. I have co-workers that left work today to go to Joplin and see if they could find their relatives. You can donate to red cross at their website and they are encourage donations rather than self-deployed volunteers. In other words – stay away and let the professional search and rescue do its job. There will be plenty of work left over in the clean up stage.
And before this thread gets derailed. Let’s get one thing clear. Violent Tornados – and the increased amount of them – has nothing to do with Global Warming. Zilch. Zero. If anything AGW will actually decrease the amount of violent storms. Wind shear decreases with the changing temperature.
D. Mason
Oh wow, my heart goes out to these poor folks. I hope they can get the help they need and get back on their feet sooner than later.
4tehlulz
Funnel cloud spotted over Joplin this morning.
Villago Delenda Est
Just keep saying to yourself, “there is no global climate change. There is no global climate change.”
You’ll be back in Kansas, with Auntie Em smiling at you, in no time flat. Well, the house around her will also be flat, but, whatever…
Villago Delenda Est
@Campionrules:
The conditions to create more of these violent storms, more frequently, is fed by the extremes of global climate change.
But, go ahead, believe it has nothing at all to do with it.
Radon Chong
I hope no one dares suggest that warmer ocean and atmospheric temperatures caused by ever-increasing levels of greenhouse gases results in more energy in the weather system leading to more powerful storms, because that would be shamelessly exploiting this terrible tragedy for base political purposes. It would be worse than when gun control advocates used the Tuscon shootings to cravenly call for curbs on the availability of high-capacity magazines.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I drive thru there tomorrow.
Was down there two weeks ago. Imagine my shock when I saw a Gas and Pee photo on regular rotation at CNN and remembered that’s where I stopped to gas and pee two weeks ago on the way back from OK City.
I-44 was closed for a little while overnight. When MoDOT closes an interstate, it’s serious shit.
D-Chance.
The twister, which touched down at about 6 p.m. Sunday, ripped apart buildings, touched off fires, uprooted trees and tossed cars, leaving them mangled stacks of metal.
IOW, the tornado acted like a… tornado. And in the springtime, no less, when tornadoes like this tend to spawn EVERY FREAKING YEAR.
Sad, yes. Unexpected or driven by some lefty cultish apocalyptic death wishes, no.
And, one final dire prediction… it’s going to be hot in August.
SiubhanDuinne
@sb:
Lord knows I’m no fan of Wal-Mart and never EVER shop there. But please don’t wish for their destruction in a tornado, hurricane, or other disaster. They (and Target, and similar big box stores) have a sophisticated emergency response infrastructure in place and are often the first ones in with water and food, clothing, blankets, flashlights and radios, and other needed items. in vast quantities. I think of them as almost as important at these times as the Red Cross and FEMA.
CaseyL
I’ve never been caught in a tornado; the only natural disasters I have direct experience with are earthquakes, floods, and (the tail end of) a hurricane.
When I was a kid, one summer night in Philly I looked up at the sky and saw a wall of blackness coming closer and closer. It was, to my 9-year old gaze, an impossible and inexplicable sight, the sky being in two pieces: daytime blue and darker-than-night black. I didn’t know anything about weather and had no idea what was going on, and what I felt was… awe. Awe, anticipation and not one scintilla of fear. I was too fascinated.
Now I’m going to say something that will make me sound like an insensitive sh*thole, so let me say first that my heart (and a fair bit of my money) always goes out to the people – and the displaced animals – who get hit with these kinds of disasters.
Here’s the insensitive sh*thole part: Watching Nature unleashed is awe-inspiring and beautiful. In all honesty, I have to say I love it – even when the ground is moving and rolling beneath me and I don’t know how bad it’ll be. I always have and I hope I always will.
SiubhanDuinne
@CaseyL:
Me too.
4tehlulz
@Villago Delenda Est: Nope.
arguingwithsignposts
Clearly, you don’t read your comments, because i mentioned it last night. saw a tweet saying “stop reading twitter and turn to the Weather Channel now,” and saw the WC guy walking through the destruction next to the hospital. Bad stuff. And there’s supposed to be more serious weather in the midwest today.
bubba
The Home Depot was flattened. they are usually one of the first to respond.
gwangung
@4tehlulz: That does not mean “nope.”
arguingwithsignposts
@CaseyL:
I’ve been through a couple of close calls wrt tornadoes, and been through a couple of hurricanes – one when we were holed up in our house for a cat 2, with no power for a couple of days, another driving through a tropical depression back to my house near the gulf. And a small earthquake.
It’s certainly awe-inspiring. I wouldn’t call it beautiful. Especially watching a tornado rip the shit out of a lot of human lives. I don’t love it. I respect it. That’s about all.
befuggled
@gwangung: I think it means too small a sample size. There may well be a correlation, but we don’t have enough data to rule out other possibilities.
4tehlulz
@gwangung: I guess that depends on the meaning of “insufficient” is.
wmd
What is it with tornadoes and red state/bible belt states? Seems like there’s a correlation with God Fearing Jeebus lovers and tornado devastation.
jonas
The mind reels at the damage nature can do. Those pictures are absolutely harrowing — it’s like the place was leveled by an atom bomb.
IIRC, I’ve commented here and elsewhere about being cautious before attributing individual weather events like this to climate change — after all, people can point to some bad cold snap and say “see? all that stuff is bunk!”. Weather is not climate, just like your personal finances aren’t the economy. But after what happened last month in Alabama, I’m wondering if a more disturbing trend isn’t emerging here, along with the Mississippi floods and the epic drought in Texas — which is now officially worse than the Dust Bowl droughts of the mid-30s. One wouldn’t wish these disasters on anyone, of course, but these parts of the country also tend to be the most resistant to the idea that climate change is real and needs to be addressed with with something other than prayers. Maybe this year will be a wake-up call.
4tehlulz
@wmd: Hilly terrain is a liberal plot.
Tim, Interrupted
Joplin is a couple of hours east of my hometown of Winfield, KS. Sure does seem like twisters are becoming regularly more intense.
Wonder why that might be? Circular wind currents caused by the circumference of Al Gore’s mid section?
Tim, Interrupted
@Campionrules:
Hmmm…nice attempt to pre-edit the thread. How about some links on how GW will DECREASE tornadoes?
I’m fairly certain you are full of it, but I’ll hold off on MY links til I’ve seen yours, since you’ve made this bold and scientifically valid assertion first.
Citizen_X
The pictures from Joplin, MO are insane–damage is total in many areas.
ALSO, residential areas of north Minneapolis got hit by a tornado yesterday, and were badly damaged (though not as bad as in Joplin)! At least one person is reported killed.
lonesomerobot
@D-Chance.: Good for you, you predicted heat in summer. I predict at least one more idiotic comment from you on this thread.
Both sides of my family are from the Joplin area, and I can tell you that in my lifetime I have no recollection of anything hitting that area that approached the devastation this tornado caused. Yes, there have been tornadoes in the past, but never quite this severe. Moreover, it isn’t at all an annual occurrence for SW Missouri to see an EF4+ tornado. I think the last time it happened was 1983. Is there a connection to climate change? I dunno.
But if you came here to push the stupid argument that climate change or “global warming” doesn’t really exist or has nothing to do with severe weather, I could care less. It sure does seem like getting in a few hippie punches made you feel like a big awesome person. So how about this: the things that we would need to do to combat climate change, true or not, would also move us toward energy independence (and greater national security as a result), and as some solace for us tree huggers, give us cleaner air & water. So are you against those things or do you just enjoy spouting the neanderthal view?
techno
We had tornadoes yesterday in Minneapolis. It wasn’t much as these things go but someone got killed and all the TV stations pre-empted regular programming all afternoon to look for hook echoes on their fancy radar displays. Large areas of North Minneapolis are a mess this morning.
But compared to what happened to Joplin, we are VERY fortunate. Goes to show the difference between a Force 2 and a Force 4 (5?) storm.
FDRLincoln
My wife’s best friend lives in Joplin, and his house was destroyed. He is OK, but several of his neighbors were carried away in body bags.
My wife was going to visit him this weekend, but cancelled because we are low on money right now. She wasn’t planning on coming back until today, so she would have been right there when it happened.
For the first time in my life, I am glad we were broke this month.
David in NY
@Campionrules:
I thought the first sentence should be, “We don’t have accurate enough data to know whether there is an increased number of especially violent tornadoes, or whether that has anything to do with climate change.” If you resort to Google and get reputable, knowledgeable sources, that’s what you find.
What’s the basis for your second sentence?
Flugelhorn
Pointing to a tornado and using it as proof of, or even a hint of global climate change is really asinine. Some of you may think a tornado is some kind of new-fangled weather phenomenon, but they have been hitting the same exact areas of the country consistently since Sir Walter Raleigh rolled his first cig.
Honestly. You would think that there had never been a natural disaster prior to the opening night of “An Inconvenient Truth”.
arguingwithsignposts
@Flugelhorn:
What kind of idiot statement is that? Strawman much?
DBrown
First off, I only hope the best for these victims of that storm and hope the death toll does not climb any further (it is terrible enough and the horror for those who lost loved ones is beyond belief.)
Yes, to the fools who state the obvious that no one can prove this storm was made or became worse due to AGW but the fact is, AGW is real, does make storms worse and far more terrible storms are in our future thanks to our refusal to reduce CO2.
Look back on these times as the Golden Age because as the climate gets really bad, fuel runs out and $4 gallon gasoline looks cheap, and food costs climb like no tomorrow, we will dream of these times as the good life lost and not in our lifetime will it occur again.
Maybe fusion will be developed in twenty years but even then, cheap fuel is gone and AGW will bite hard and kill hundreds of thousands in the world – most of the victims will be mostly third world people (of these, mostly children) who never caused this disaster (either AGW or consumption of all easy to get liquid fuels.)
Citizen_X
@4tehlulz: 1) Those reports are a bit dated by now. The IPCC report is four years old; that weatherunderground post, three.
2) Masters makes a good point in that (second) post: it is not possible right now to count all tornadoes. Doppler radar only shows you the parent storms, leaving small tornadoes in uninhabited areas uncounted. So the “insufficient” from the report certainly refers to a lack of data.
3) Nevertheless, the larger phenomena–major thunderstorms, droughts, hurricanes–can be tallied, and are expected to increase. On page 8 of the IPCC report, there’s a table showing expected results of increased greenhouse gases. Increases in “heavy precipitation events” are rated “very likely,” and increases in “area affected by droughts” and “intense tropical cyclones” are rated “likely.”
The passage about the small-scale phenomena follows, on page 9.
Maude
@FDRLincoln:
I heard on the radio that people were wandering around in the streets because their houses were gone. It is to weep.
What happens to people who are caught up in this awful economy without savings or resources and they lose it all?
Once in awhile I think that I am okay because I didn’t have the money to be somewhere when there was danger. Like owning a fast car etc.
Dr. Loveless
@Linda Featheringill:
That audio is terrifying. And not just the sound of the tornado — the sounds of panic are even worse. I’m the sort of person who becomes deceptively calm-looking when I’m shit-my-pants scared and I do not deal well when others around me are more emotional. That lady screaming “Lord Jesus! Lord Jesus!” would have driven me completely insane with panic.
ChrisS
Weather is weather and climate change is climate change. These types of storms happen every year in these areas at this time.
Whether they’re more violent or not there’s little data that quantifies that. There are thousands of weather records extreme measurements every where and in every direction. Just because records are broken in Podunk, NH or Mesa, AZ, or wherever, doesn’t necessarily correlate to global climate change. Humans are releasing greater amounts of C02 into the atmosphere, but what effects that has on day to day weather is extremely poorly understood due to massive positive and negative feedback loops, including ones that climate scientists aren’t even aware of.
Additionally, the reason that the IPCC and climate change scientists tend to shy away from linking storms with global climate change is because the models simply do not have the spatial resolution to identify storms with any kind of accuracy.
Carl Nyberg
@befuggled:
Are tornadoes increasing in frequency? Size? Wind velocity?
Other than global warming, what other hypotheses exist to explain this?
Divine action? What else?
If a patient goes to the doctor presenting symptoms, and the doc is 50+% sure the symptoms are caused by being overweight, do you wait to commence diet and exercise until you’re 100% sure the problem is being overweight?
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t hurt the planet or society. It costs a few well-heeled industries some money.
Jewish Steel
Before this thread gets derailed I want to make sure everyone knows that automatic rifle shooting sprees do not challenge the sanctity of our 2nd amendment rights.
Now move along. Nothing to see here.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
In my chunk of the Midwest/Upper South, weather patterns have escalated to “bigger” – longer durations of rain/drought cycles, more frequent violent storms.
What was somewhat anomalous is now routine.
Hypnos
1) The IPCC report is the result of political compromise. It tones down the science as far as it can. For example, the 2007 report completely omitted sea level rise from melting ice sheets, as the state of the science was still uncertain. All major scientific studies published since have shown that sea level rise will be far worse than expected.
2) In fact, pretty much everything associated with Climate Change is happening much faster and more intensely than expected. Starting with the canary in the goldmine, the Arctic sea ice, which is disappearing 50 years ahead of schedule.
3) Extreme weather events are absolutely associated with Climate Change, especially those relating to increased or decreased precipitation. Climate Change has put 4% more moisture in the air. It has fucked up ENSO. Extra snow in the winter plus extra rain in the summer means things like the Pakistan floods, Australia floods, Colombia floods, and the Mississippi too (record sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t help with precipitation either). That will be a yearly occurrence in 10 years time. On the other hand, in 20 years, Texas and the US south west will be a dead desert. Check forecasts for the Palmer Drought index in 2030.
4) The current fires in Alberta are due to the bark beetle infestation, caused by Climate Change. They will come to the Rockies pretty soon. Siberia is on fire already, much earlier than last year, and we’re looking at a potential repeat of the 2010 blazes in Russia.
5) Here’s an April quote from Kevin Trenberth: “It is irresponsible not to mention climate change. … The environment in which all of these storms and the tornadoes are occurring has changed from human influences (global warming). Tornadoes come from thunderstorms in a wind shear environment. This occurs east of the Rockies more than anywhere else in the world. The wind shear is from southerly (SE, S or SW) flow from the Gulf overlaid by westerlies aloft that have come over the Rockies. That wind shear can be converted to rotation. The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft. With global warming the low level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms and increase the buoyancy of the air so that thunderstorms are strong. There is no clear research on changes in shear related to global warming. On average the low level air is 1 deg F and 4 percent moister than in the 1970s.”
Climate Change is what this century will be about. Everything else is bullshit.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Dr. Loveless:
Same here – just listening to the recorded panic was firing my neurons. I’ve been through a couple of close tornado calls with my wife and kids and pets, but being in a confined area full of panicky people (a sizable percentage of whom didn’t sound like they had any sense) would have inspired me to choke the shit out of somebody. I don’t know who was bugging me the most – the Jesus crier or the woman shouting (I think) “Don”, or something like that. I guess Don was on the other side of the pile, or something.
elftx
I happened to have the Weather Channel on last night as the Dallas area was under storm threats and saw the reporter in Joplin. He mentioned he and his crew had been chasing the storm but had not seen the tornado due to the wall of rain. They arrived in Joplin just after the tornado hit and he was overcome with emotion for a few minutes.
This morning I heard on the news that x-rays from the hospital there had been found 60 miles away.
They also showed radar from that storm and pointed out a round white area which apparently is very uncommon and indicated a lot of debris lifted up into the storm.
Absolutely devastating. And yet at the same time they are so fascinating to watch.
Berial
With all our technological improvement in weather tracking and prediction the number of deaths from tornadoes has been trending down in the US, but when population centers get hit as has happened this year the number of deaths will inevitably jump up.
Thoughts from the weather channel:
Cassidy
I was wondering since God is always punishing us for the gay or being liberal, is this God punishing a bunch of midwest yokels for voting Republican? And no, I don’t feel much sympathy. You don’t want to get hit by a tornado, don’t live in “tornado alley”.
Fred
Tomorrows white wing headline.
“While Tornados ravage Missouri, Obama’s go on European vacation”
S. cerevisiae
Extreme precipitation events have increased in frequency
Dr. Loveless
@Cassidy:
Don’t want to die in an earthquake? Don’t live in California.
Don’t want to freeze to death in a blizzard? Stay out of the Northeast.
Hate hurricanes? Avoid Florida.
Etc., etc.
I do feel sympathy, even for the ones who don’t want me to have the right to marry. These are human beings. I don’t give a damn what their politics are.
Geoduck
The whole thing is also a comment on how far CNN has slid in recent years; in the immediate aftermath of the tornado, they were still showing a special on Mel Gibson.
Cassidy
@ loveless (on my phone): Good. I’m glad for you. I personally don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who don’t move out of natures way. She’s a destructive bitch sometimes. Secondly, these are the same people who go on about gov’t involvement in their lives and how their rights are violated… blah, blah, blah. Now they can’t wait to get that gov’t handout, but fuck everyone they’ve screwed in the past. I feel the same way about Texan’s and the drought. Fuck’em. They shouldn’t get one cent of federal money. Figure it out and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Gretchen
@Cassidy – Missouri is a purple state, and I’m betting that some Democrats got hit too.
@Carl Nyberg – thanks for the weight loss analogy – I’ll be using it. It makes me crazy that people think we shouldn’t lift a finger about climate change until we’re absolutely positive that it’s a horrific problem. It’s like not buying fire insurance on your house because you’re not sure it’s going to burn down.
Ash Can
@Cassidy: This is snark, right?
FDRLincoln
Cassiday: God you are an asshole.
My wife is a liberal democrat. Her friend down there is a republican (although trending away gradually as the extremism of the party becomes harder for him to justify).
Did he deserve to get his house destroyed? Would my wife have deserved to get injured or killed if she had been down there visiting him?
Fuck off.
Cassidy
@Ash Can: Nope. My sympathy for people who live in places nicknamed “Tornado Alley” is non-existent. My sympathy for people who opine about too much gov’t in their lives, then turn around and what “big gummint” to save them from their stupidity is non-existent.
@FDRLincoln: Yes he deserved to have his house destroyed. Same as if you build your house on the beach in a known hurricane path. If you build your house where forest fires happen every year in California, that’s your fault. He made it just fine apparently; so would have your wife. Being a drama queen doesn’t get anywhere.
I’ve said before that conservative minded people are not people to me. Don’t be surprised. Fuck’em. Especially Texas and their drought.
Kathy in St. Louis
Pat Robertson will be on soon, asking why God hates Missouri. Well, no, not really, because this is his heartland. This is a terrible tragedy, but it really made me wonder how these unfortunate folks are any different than the poor souls in New Orleans were years back when the evangelists took to the screen to tell us that God was punishing that “city of sin”.
Albert Mond
1) Don’t feed the trolls.
2) Nasty extreme weather out there not just a Midwest phenomenon. There was a funnel cloud spotted near Condon, Oregon a while back. Sirens went off but the cloud dissipated and residents just shrugged and went back to their business.
3) Stay safe y’all.
Kathy in St. Louis
Flugelhorn@32. You must live somewhere other than the Midwest. I have grown up on tornadoes, tornado watches and tornado warnings. If we had one every 3 years when I was younger, I would have thought I was in Tornado Alley. This makes about the third one so far this spring.
You and others like you can do all the naysaying you wish, I believe my own eyes. The numbers have hugely increased, as has the intensity of the storms.
ArchPundit
Actually there is a great exhibit right now at the Saint Louis Science Center showing the increasing frequency of powerful storms and tornadoes in Missouri and surrounding areas. It’s not a secret or even a question.
Does it demonstrate Global Warming on its own–no. Is it another example of what happens when climate changes more dramatically than has been normal–probably.
jinxtigr
@Campionrules: Balls.
It’s very, very simple. There doesn’t even have to BE a model, much less anything predictive- in fact it’s the opposite of predictive.
Weather is a chaotic system. Climate is a gauge of the energy in that system. Climate can be tracked in a broad, general sense. Weather cannot- it is chaotic, meaning it follows the mathematical rules of chaos as first discovered by Lorenz with (surprise!) a toy weather modeling equation.
Chaos works like this: if you have very little energy, things are stable. As the energy in the system increases, the range of possible states expands. At some points, the system can fall into predictable chaotic patterns: in weather, this would be knowing the general force of storms and cyclones, having a basic idea of how big these things are.
As the energy increases, the range of possible states continues to expand, and what you used to know about ‘how big tornadoes are’ stops being useful.
I’ll repeat that: as the energy increases (as the climate imperceptibly creeps upward in temperature), you stop being able to predict how big things like storms and cyclones will be.
If the CLIMATE stopped heating, and cooled off, the WEATHER would return to the tornado sizes people are used to.
It’s not going to do that.
As the CLIMATE continues to heat, by seemingly meaningless numbers (what’s a degree or two? right?), the WEATHER can and will start throwing up outlier events, storms and tornadoes that are unprecedented in size and destructiveness.
What we don’t know (?) is whether this is also causing the earthquakes- seems likely enough but I don’t know the laws under which tectonic plates move, they might not really be fluid enough to have chaotic behavior.
Weather does.
Climate sets the base energy level for weather.
Climate change directly causes the increase in potential destructive force of weather, because weather is a chaotic system.
It has NOTHING TO DO WITH STUDY OR THEORY! It is a mathematical formula like 2+2=4! There is nothing even slightly ambiguous about any of this!
Right now I would say, as a longterm plan get the hell out of any place, anywhere in the world, that is ‘tornado alley’ or ‘hurricane central’ or any of that. Seriously.
Because this is just a little teaser of what we will end up facing in just ten years and it’s too late to change that even if everyone suddenly woke the FUCK up.
Please, work to communicate these very basic and obvious points, because it can get worse or it can get ridiculously worse- and we as a species are stupid but we don’t really deserve what chaos can throw at us. The planet will be fine- it’s a big rock. Life on it? That’s the 100-year, 1000-year question.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Just found this picture of a couple who were Katrina evacuees: http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-201_162-10007861-2.html?tag=page
Holy shit. That’s really all I got.
And so many wishes for peace and healing for them and everyone else in Joplin.
jinxtigr
For anyone who can’t read long posts, here’s your take-away:
Next year’s tornado will be worse.
Bet your life on it. It’s not up for debate. If this one was bad, next year’s will be worse. The year after- worse still.
Within fifty years, we will lose an entire state to this. Either tornado alley or hurricane central. Get out.
ArchPundit
@Cassidy:
Tornadoes are very different events from say floods in flood plains, hurricanes along coast, and forest fires. Tornadoes traditionally hit a small number of occupied places and if you took the probability of getting hit by one even in Tornado Alley, you would get a ridiculously low probability of such an event.
In contrast, floods in flood plains, forest fires in forests, and hurricanes right on the coast are going to happen in those places and do damage to almost everyone in the area often affected by them.
Tornadoes are more like megamillions lotteries, the others are like pick 3.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@jinxtigr: This is the single most comprehensible explanation of the circumstances that we have created for ourselves that I have read to date.
Thank you. I’ll be lifting from it extensively. Is there somewhere I can contact you if I put it on my blog? (I can’t find a contact page on your music site). Are you on twitter? Carrier pigeon? Anything?
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@jinxtigr: Ok, as you can see I am entirely on board with what you’ve written in the longer version, but I have a question:
I’ve heard of really, really terrible tornado seasons in the past. If this one is a result of the damage we’ve caused our own climate, why weren’t those? (If the question makes sense).
asiangrrlMN
This is heartbreaking. We had tornadoes in MN, too, and we were ‘lucky’ that only one person was killed and thirty injured. Here is a video of the aftermath. My heart goes out to the people of Joplin, Missouri.
jinxtigr
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: I’m jinxtigr on twitter, but you don’t have to credit me, just GET THE WORD OUT. This isn’t about me, and I’m too weird to be a pundit anyway ;)
As to the terrible tornado seasons: weather is chaotic. It ALREADY wasn’t stable. It’s too big to be stable.
The reason for terrible tornado seasons in the past is that weather was already chaotic.
Climate change means that it’s still chaotic but the possible maximum destruction goes up and up and up.
It’s not the fact of ‘fluke bad weather’ that’s an issue: that was already inherent in the system. What we are changing, and changing rapidly, is the scope of what that can mean.
Think of it like this: any given weather event could be considered as a marker for future events within one order of magnitude. So you get a tornado- might get another one a tenth the size, might get one ten times the size, don’t expect a thousand times the size.
Get one ten times the size, now expect a possible maximum of ten times the size of that, because you’ve established what’s within the range of possibility. Get one twice as bad, suddenly you’re considering possible storms 200 times as bad as what you once thought normal.
In a situation of climate change never assume a record weather event is something that will hit and go away forever, because it’s just demonstrated the range of the pattern of behavior. Not the maximum limit- it just demonstrated the range weather goes across now. You can safely expect that any given weather event is part of a chaotic pattern and that pattern just showed you weather could go there, anytime.
Because outlier weather can’t happen. It’s always part of the chaotic system, always showing the possible range of behavior.
If that seems like it’s worse than it used to be… o_O then what the hell have I been saying? That’s the whole point of climate change.
icedfire
The tornado that hit Minneapolis went over my house as a funnel cloud…it lifted off the ground about 3 miles or so away from me, while it was on a pretty direct path. Those areas that did get directly hit were largely lower-income neighborhoods, which only compounds the tragedy.
The devastation here is heart-rending…the devastation in Joplin even more so. Those of you trying to use these events to argue a political point, or worse, condemn a group of people should be ashamed of yourselves.
Sheesh.
Robert Sneddon
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: Increasing population density and development means big tornadoes have more chance of ripping up a suburb or even a city centre. More towns, more ‘burbs, more targets and more film at 11 reporting going on than there ever was fifty years ago.
It’s the same with the Mississippi floods right now; the current flooding isn’t a superflood, a once in a millenium event, it’s just that thousands of homes have been built on floodplains since the last Big One and that’s why it’s become a major disaster for those folks whose homes and livelihoods depended on the floodplains not being, you know, flooded.
Anthropic Global Warming doesn’t help the situation; pumping more energy into weather systems is going to cause more energetic weather. Either move somewhere safer or be prepared to lose everything around you and get on with your life, if you survive, as the Japanese do — they’ve got nowhere to move to.
jinxtigr
@icedfire: Yo, if you just possibly mean me with the remark about ‘people who use these events to argue a political point should be ashamed of themselves’, I have one remark back at you and it doesn’t even involve swearing.
It’s this.
Some people faced with a tragic disaster can sit, and weep, and pray, and do nothing, change nothing.
Some people can put on protective gear, go in with shovels, dig out survivors. They’re called first responders, and I’m not one of those.
Some people can explain how to be safe the NEXT time the disaster comes around, bigger and badder.
I am absolutely, totally okay if you cannot or will not be one of the people involved with the ideas as we all revise our plans and work out what we need going forward- whether that’s policy, or funding more first responders and emergency systems, or simply wrapping our heads around the ‘new normal’. You don’t have to do any of this. Go pray.
Don’t even think about acting like I am playing politics in explaining this weather/chaos stuff. It is damned insulting. The grown-ups need to dig out the dead and injured- and plan against the danger of future tragedies.
ArchPundit
@Robert Sneddon:
What’s interesting is that the farmland the Corps flooded in Missouri had the flowage rights owned by the federal government as a reaction to 1937. Yet many of the people there acted like they didn’t expect their land to get flooded. The people in Louisiana in fairly similar situation with the feds owning flowage rights weren’t happy, but accepted the decision much more easily. The Missouri situation isn’t a natural disaster–it’s a man-made one. Louisiana is a bit more complex given it’s a man made canal the water is being diverted with.
brettvk
I live in SW MO, luckily (this time) 60 miles northeast of the devastation. I’d like to find out where the magic state is in the US that is never subject to natural disasters — no tornadoes or earthquakes, hurricanes or flooding or killing heat or wildfires or blizzards…
We’re all subject to an indifferent universe, and the very fact that someone is alive to post asshole snark on a blog demonstrates not their vast wisdom in choosing their dwelling place, but only their sheer luck in surviving the myriad deaths around them. And it’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll still be alive an hour from now. So a reflective person would stop being an asshole.
Chet
@CaseyL:
No worries. In the realm of insensitive sh*tholery, that isn’t even in the same hemisphere as, say, Elizabeth Wurtzel’s reaction to 9/11.
jinxtigr
Because man-aggravated climate change on a massive scale is totally random. Got it. Sorry I missed the memo. I shall move to Oklahoma right away and burn me a bunch of coal.
That was snark and being an asshole (it’s Balloon Juice, I would hope you’d seen assholes before, but one never knows). It’s a mite frustrating, a mite popped-vein blood-pressure-spike frustrating, when people are setting the house on fire, and they gripe that their drapes are being blown around by the wind, and you say ‘first put down the matches’ and they say ‘hey, fire happens, now have respect for those hurt by the burning drapes. Oh, and you’re an asshole, quit telling us what to do.’
I don’t know all of your politics and agendas, other than guessing that some of them might not quite be down with the whole climate change thing, but people need to begin preparing for further storms and tornadoes that will come in ever-increasing sizes. If you don’t, people die, and it’s not because of an indifferent universe or God’s will (I suspect if we’re in his image we’re expected to be responsible with his gifts), it’s because our world is changing in specific ways, rather quickly as these things go, and we’ll see it happening in specific places through specific events.
We can’t trust to sheer luck anymore. If nothing else, we must plan for what’s becoming normal and common. I am sorry if that makes me seem like an asshole but ‘we all doing what we can’ and (if you mean shut up about the global warming political agenda) you cannot have the last word on that or people die in great numbers that could be protected.
And anyway, tornadoes and weather ARE on-topic in this thread…
arguingwithsignposts
@Robert Sneddon:
Which is why the tornado hit a town that was founded in the 1800s, ditto the Alabama tornadoes. Or why the tornado ripped through downtown Fort Worth over a decade ago.
icedfire
@jinxtigr: I meant more the people opining that red states get what they deserve, or that living where there is any possibility of a weather disaster means that you deserve to suffer them. I should have been clearer about that.
I’m a chemist and an empiricist at heart, when AGW gets brought up I sometimes forget to remind myself that people are willfully ignorant about the science. It doesn’t register as a political topic to me, simply because the data realistically admits only one conclusion.
Cassidy
They do get what they deserve. If you’re a jeebus freak and blew your lifesavings on rapture bullshit, you deserve to be destitute. If you are a middle aged conservative, you deserve to lose your gubmint help in medicare, ss, etc. and eat catfood. If you live in an area known for destructive weather, well….sucks to be you. Get a helmet. They deserve every ounce of misery they would heap on others.
Davis X. Machina
Fifty-plue years on, it is still easy to trace the path the 1953 tornado took across Worcester, MA and environs.
That one was a mile-and-a-half across at its widest.
arguingwithsignposts
@Cassidy:
FSM, you are a moron. You assume that all those people could move? Did you even realize what happened in the 9th Ward in New Orleans, you dumb fuck?
I am trying to restrain myself from wishing you got a freak weather phenomenon dropped on your sorry ass.
WaterGirl
@arguingwithsignposts: I had the same uncharitable thought. At least I ‘m in good company.
brettvk
Y’know, I don’t assume that everyone on the coasts is more intelligent, wealthier, better educated, more liberal and more deserving of long life than I am; a short perusal of the web reveals that the knuckle-draggers flourish everywhere in our blessed land, and many have excellent dentition and wardrobes. Likewise, I expect that discerning citizens of bluish states might know that enlightened folk live and work even in flyover country, and many if not most of us have excellent reasons for being there.
Cassidy
@arguingwithsignposts: Whatever dude. You’ve always got a choice of where to live. A tornado in “Tornado Alley” is not a “freak weather phenomenon”.
OzoneR
@Gretchen:
Not in Joplin, Joplin is the reddest part of the state. But that’s irrelevant. It’s irrelevant whether the area hit was a red area or a blue area.
Cassidy
It’s relevant when they want that “Big Gubmint” handout to help them out of this disaster. They can pull themselves up by their bootstraps like all good conservatives espouse.
arguingwithsignposts
@Cassidy:
Ayup. Let’s just round up the family and head on off to cali.
DickWeed.
Cassidy
@arguingwithsignposts: Plenty of people have done it.
Drama Queen
OzoneR
@Cassidy:
yeah, and wherever you live, you’re subject to big disasters. Here in New York, our city gets shut down by blizzards fairly often. Hell, we even got tornadoes now too.
EvilleMike
@jinxtigr: Ignore the potshots and keep telling us what we need to know.