Weather \"From the Beginning, Slowness Defined It.

Weather

"From the beginning, slowness defined it. Tedious, plodding, grinding, unrelenting slowness…And when the storm system took an unexpected turn as it spread into the central Plains, the table was set for violent weather," (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). Hoedel & Gutierrez (2012) are describing the mysterious origins of the 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado, one of the deadliest in American history. After its tumultuous journey "down the Pacific Coast, across the California highlands, over the Rocky Mountains," the weather system culminated in 200-mile-an-hour winds and a storm radius of, at times, a mile. The tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri in 2011 was rated EF-5 on the Enhanced-Fujita Scale. The scale measures approximate wind estimates, based on damage incurred. In fact, the day after the tornado hit, it was rated EF-5 and was later upgraded (Dolce, 2011). In the case of the Joplin tornado, damage was extreme and extensive. More than a thousand people were injured and 158 people died. It was not the deadliest tornado in history, although it was in the top ten. The Joplin, Missouri tornado was the costliest recorded in American history.

The event was described by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (2011) as being both "rare" and "historical." (United States Department of Commerce; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2011). However, the Joplin, Missouri tornado developed, evolved, and hit according to the most fundamental processes of meteorology. That is, "the planet's unrelenting drive to balance temperature and air pressure" is what causes any kind of weather other than clear blue skies (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). Tornados are a by-product of the earth's attempt to balance itself out and create a hard-fought equilibrium. Constantly, cold air is "pushing down on the Earth harder than lighter, rising warm air," making it so that air pressure is higher at the poles and lower at the equator (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). Yet it is the central latitudes that receive the brunt of the earth's storms. The central plains region is the worst in the world for tornados. As Hoedel & Gutierrez (2012) put it, "here, cold Arctic air from Canada, hot dry air from the desert Southwest and moist air from the Gulf of Mexico collide, with an assist from the Rocky Mountains."

The 2011 Joplin tornado can be traced back at least five days before it struck and devastated the town. A fast moving low pressure system from Siberia (from the Sea of Okhotsk to be exact) coupled with a slower moving low pressure system from Alaska, mated, and created a new system that headed dangerously towards the "giant skateboard ramp for air masses moving east," the Rocky Mountains (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). As the new system shifted its trajectory to the northeast, it also picked up moist air from the Gulf of Mexico leading to five days of "unimpeded" heavy rains in the Plains region (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). Rain was not to be the only form of precipitation to precede the tornado that hit Joplin; hail plummeted towns in Colorado and caused the snowplows to come out around Mother's Day (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). The hailstorms continued in other regions, including Texas and Nebraska. This was May 19, three days before the Joplin tornado hit. On May 20, conditions were looking worse by the minute. The low-pressure system was moving dreadfully slow, whereas "the southerly winds continued unabated, pushing more and more moist air northward into southeast Kansas and southwest Missouri," (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). This pattern continued over the next few days, a recipe for disaster.

For Joplin, what could have been typical stormy weather morphed into something more sinister: a supercell. The supercell is formed by a mesocyclone -- a "rotating column of air" inside of a storm cloud (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). Supercells are where tornados are born; the process is as miraculous as any other birth. As Hoedel & Gutierrez (2012) point out, "today, more than 100 years after the first tornado researcher set out from Kansas City, we still do not know exactly how a tornado forms or what its internal structure looks like." Moreover, scientists have yet to fully comprehend why some supercells produce tornados and others do not. What scientists know now is that a supercell certainly did produce a tornado on May 22, 2011.

Predicting tornados is tricky, because radar systems can only detect the mesocyclone and not the actual funnel cloud. This means that meteorologists rely heavily on human watchers. Already by Saturday, May 21, the National Weather Service had issued tornado warnings throughout the region -- in seven states total. A category EF3 hit a town in Kansas 150 miles northwest of Joplin that day.

The following day, May 22, severe weather parameters were "through the roof," in Joplin, leading to definitive tornado warnings ("One Year Anniversary of the Joplin Mo EF-5 Tornado"). The day started with an eerie calm, even with sunny skies. By the afternoon, thunderclouds started forming. That was when the town of Joplin, Missouri met its fate. At 2PM, a "a dark gray supercell mushroomed up into the cornflower sky and began moving eastward," (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). That supercell would collide with at least four others and created a massively violent storm.

Joplin's tornado, born as a mutant set of supercells, carved itself a path of more than 22 miles long. The funnel ultimately measured up to one full mile in width, averaging between a half to three-quarters of a mile wide along a large portion of the path. The debris signature, revealed through computer modeling, shows that "substantial debris was being tossed at least" as high as 18,000 feet (Dolce, 2011). The tornado mystified meteorologists on the ground because it had started to morph more rapidly than they could track. Sirens were sounding in Joplin at about 5PM. A "tangle of storms" was converging, and as intense as they were, the storm was moving painfully slow (Hoedel & Gutierrez, 2012). Because the storm did move slowly, it took its time damaging Joplin. The converging storms blocked out the sun. Thunder started at 2PM but it wasn't until 5:30 PM that the massive funnel took shape and terrorized the population of Joplin, Missouri.