Tornadoblogging - Joplin, MO (Bumped for incredible new video)

Update/bump (6:00 AM Central time) I just added a video below the fold that was posted on YouTube by a chopper pilot who flew along the damage path in Joplin shortly after the tornado struck. It's a little shakey and in an oddly vertical format, but the amount of damage it shows is incredible.

Watching the video, you keep thinking that there can't be more, but it seems to go on and on forever. Last night there was a CNN piece with the following quote:

"I would say 75% of the town is virtually gone," said Kathy Dennis of the American Red Cross."

Which sounded a little hyperbolic to me since she might have been reporting that from the scene and didn't have the perspective the rest of us have from a distance. After all, Joplin isn't a tiny rural town but rather a medium-sized regional city of 50k with a metro population of 174k. One tornado can't do all that damage, can it?

After watching the vid I'm not so sure she was off the mark by much.

Added: Video below the fold

Update: The Weather Channel has stopped the on-site livestream for the evening. Too dark to really show anything.

Original Post:

There's been another tornado outbreak like the big one in Alabama last month. But just a short time ago Joplin, MO got creamed by what looks to be a mile-wide tornado. Entire neighborhoods are flattened and a hospital was damaged so badly that the patients had to be evacuated to another hospital.

Many deaths occurred with this storm and many victims are likely still burried in the rubble. But it just got dark there making search and rescue much more difficult. To make matters worse there are numerous gas leaks in the area and fires have begun popping up in the mounds of rubble.

The Weather Channel has wall to wall coverage plus are livestreaming from near the hospital that got hit. Here's the link to that

Japser County enforcement (Where Joplin is located) have an online streaming scanner. It's absolute chaos there but they're doing the best they can with what resources are available.

I know other areas got hit today, including Minneapolis and tornadoes are threatening numerous areas even now. So I'll add more to this as I find links.

From "Jose" in the thread. This is the aftermath in the area around the hospital shot earlier by The Weather Channel:

Not much video of the actual tornado posted yet (I'm sure many more will be added). This is of someone filming it off their tv:

posted by Genghis at 06:54 AM

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