picher tornado
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008For those who don’t know, I live in Joplin, Missouri, in the middle of tornado alley. The largest tornado from two days ago, the one all over the news, hit Picher, Oklahoma and traveled 71 miles east to Racine, Missouri, then ended in Purdy, Missouri, on a path only slightly south of us. It killed six in Picher, twelve in Racine, and one in Purdy. It ended up being measured as an F4.
Picher is 25 miles southwest of us. Racine is 14 miles directly south and Purdy is 40 miles east of Racine. Picher is an ex-mining town and there are not as many people living there currently as once were, however, the damage was terrible, nonetheless. The are lead-filled chat piles all over the town and the tornado blew them all over the place, so now they’re talking of problems with that.
There were 65 tornadoes in 11 states over the weekend. Last I heard, there were 23 deaths, but the Picher tornado was the most significant.
It’s been pretty crazy around here with hearing of all the deaths and destruction. Nothing hit Joplin itself, but since Joplin is the “thriving metropolis” of the area (you have to laugh because we only have 45,000 people and nothing here, despite being the 5th largest city in this state) everything is generally attributed to Joplin.
And we’re supposed to get more of equal danger later this evening.