Greensburg Tornado Anniversary
May 4th, 2009 at 1:55 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
<–downtown Greensburg, Kansas twelve days after the storm. Click here for impressive full screen shot. Picture on the right is the twister illuminated by lightning. Today is the anniversary of the 5/4/07 Greensburg, Kansas Tornado. The twister was a monstrous, wedge EF5 with wind speeds of roughly 205 mph. The storm was an incredible 1.7 miles wide and destroyed 95% of the town of Greensburg with significant damage in the remaining 5%. The tornado was on the ground for 28.8 miles. Eleven people lost their lives in Greensburg and two others in the next county over and the death toll would have been higher, except that the NWS did a great job with the tornado warning and sirens sounded 20 minutes before the twister arrived. Nearly 1000 homes and businesses were destroyed. Twenty-five tornadoes touched down that evening/night with another 84 the next day. Click for more great aerial damage pictures, more pictures here, radar and damage path, and before and after pictures and the rebuilding, A total of 39,172 meals were served by the Red Cross and 20,000 by the Salvation Army (The Salvation Army also gave out more than $147,000 in vouchers during the clean-up and over 7,000 volunteers contributed their time to help.
I have caught a few episodes of the show about Greensburg on whatever channel it is on. How they are rebuilding it green. Pretty interesting.
Wow, that is an amazing shot of the tornado at night. Night tornadoes seem to be the most dangerous since people might be sleeping and unaware, plus with this one being an EF5. I used to live in Oaklahoma, and few people have basements down there because of the hard layer of bedrock just below the ground surface. This made having a basement very expensive to dig out and build it. I hope it was a different story in Greensburg, KA. Although, you still might not be safe in a basement from an EF5 tornado.
Lets hope we don’t see anything like that around here in MI…
Ann Dixson, magistrate judge in Greensburg, gave a very moving speech a year ago at the Severe Storms and Doppler Radar Conference in Iowa. She mentioned a 5-minute period of calm after the initial impact of the tornado’s winds ripped apart their house, followed by the equally strong winds on backside of the tornado finishing what was left to be destroyed. People actually ventured outside in the eye of the tornado, then ran back to safety before the backside of the tornado passed through. (The center of a big tornado like that won’t suck you up like in the movie Twister. There’s roughly a 10% [100 mb] reduction in atmospheric pressure in the center of large tornadoes.)
By the way, the “before and after” pictures link is the same as “radar and damage path” link.
It is absolutely amazing to see the destructive power of tornadoes.
When I 1st heard of the tornado touching down in Greensburg,KS………and it demolished the town in a hour, I thought never again will I underestimate the powerful force of Mama Nature. What man spends years, decades, and maybe generations building on land…can be destroyed in a matter of minutes….a town is no exception. Steve is right. Out of all the times for a tornado to hit a town during the wee hours is the most dangerous…….and there are too many sleepy & vulnerable people for them to take action and cover. I swear the American Plains is a hotbed for east-moving nasty storms year round.
Today is the 2 year anniversary of Obama claiming this tornado killed 10,000 people in Greensburg due to global warming……
That anniversary is coming up on May 9th. And there’s no mention of global warming in any archived news/blogs sites I can find.
It needs to be mentioned all the Meteorologists that night on radio and T.V.- particuarly the guy on KSN that night- cool calm, and very helpful. See it on youtube- it comes in several parts and its quite dramamtic watching this and knowing what is happening at that moment. Really powerfull. This is textbook of why we have/need Doppler, etc…a lot of lives were spared that night.