Looking back at deadly Joplin tornado 13 years ago

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno spoke with James LaDue of the National Weather Service to discuss the long-term impacts of the Joplin, Missouri, tornado 13 years ago in terms of covering severe weather.

Transcript

00:00It was 13 years ago in Joplin, Missouri, where one of the deadliest U.S. tornadoes struck.

00:06It lasted 38 minutes and tragically killed 158 people in 2011.

00:13James LeDoux is acting director of the federal government's National Windstorm Impact Reduction

00:18Program.

00:19Mr. LeDoux, thank you so much for joining us.

00:21Before we get into the questions, I'm sure when you see damage like we've seen in Greenfield

00:27and damage that we've seen so far this year, it brings back a lot of memories to what we

00:31saw in Joplin.

00:32Yeah, it sure does.

00:36This storm here has got a lot of similarities to other very strong tornadoes and nothing

00:43like Joplin.

00:44That was the deadliest tornado since the 1950s, but it was bad enough.

00:49Well, let's talk about that.

00:51Why was the Joplin tornado so destructive and what have we learned since 2011?

00:57Well, there's so many angles to that because the tornado is incredibly destructive because

01:02one thing is, is that it develops in heavy rain.

01:06So it was hidden to the people, the populace there.

01:09They had limited time to actually take cover.

01:11So the fatality rates are high, not only because of that, but also because the tornado just

01:17overwhelmed the construction that was there in the area.

01:21Most of those houses would be flattened with the winds that the Joplin tornado provided.

01:27And when that happens, then the fatality rate starts going up.

01:32Typically a flattened house means that you could have potentially, most likely serious

01:38injuries.

01:40With what we've seen in past studies, something like on the order of greater than 1% of all

01:46households that are occupied would have fatalities.

01:49That's as high as it gets that we've seen in tornadoes.

01:52And certainly we've seen similar before that, but given the width of that tornado and that

01:59it maxed out right over the town, that was just everything putting together to create

02:06a mass disaster situation, a mass casualty situation.

02:10Just last week, buildings in downtown Houston were hit with straight line winds of 100 miles

02:14per hour.

02:15How rare is that and can many buildings withstand that force?

02:20Yeah, so as we saw that in Houston with the, what we call it the ratio now, is that we

02:27get 100 mile per hour plus winds, the glazing on high rise buildings often suffers from

02:33flying debris.

02:34And I think we saw that there's a lot of windows that were blown out.

02:39Sometimes flying debris comes from the streets.

02:41Sometimes it comes from gravel rooftops.

02:45So we start seeing that.

02:46And the last time we saw such destruction there in Houston in downtown was from Hurricane

02:51Allen in 1983.

02:53I believe that was 1983.

02:56So that does happen, but it's kind of rare.

03:00Most places, well, let's say even in the worst areas that are climatologically impacted

03:06by the ratios, that's from let's say Iowa to Ohio throughout the Midwest, they may see

03:13maybe two durations a year.

03:15Down in Houston, much more rare, maybe one every four to five years at most.

03:21And I don't think they've seen one like this in quite some time, in fact, back since the

03:2680s.

03:28With sensors and new technology, are we getting better at knowing and maybe anticipating these

03:34wind speeds?

03:35Yeah, so we're getting better, especially with the radar network, detecting winds as

03:41they are occurring.

03:45What we call the Weather Service Radar, the WSR-88D network that the National Weather

03:49Service runs along with the Defense Department and FAA, they have added new technologies

03:55to that, especially much higher resolution and much more frequent updating.

04:01Maybe down to like one minute when we do the super rapid scans in the radar.

04:07So we can detect them.

04:08For durations, though, the forecasting is still a challenge.

04:12It's getting better, but we tend to miss some.

04:16So for example, I don't think we're expecting a duration of that morning that Houston got

04:21hit.

04:22We were expecting severe thunderstorms.

04:23I think there was at least an enhanced risk of severe thunderstorms, but not to that level.

04:29Yeah.

04:30All right, James Ledoux, acting director of the federal government's National Windstorm

04:35Impact Reduction Program.

04:38Thank you for joining us here today, sir.

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