Joplin tornado
The 2011 Joplin tornado was a catastrophic EF5 multiple-vortex tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, on the evening of Sunday 22 May 2011. It touched down just west of the city at 5:34 pm CDT and tracked almost due east for roughly 22 miles, widening to about a mile as it crossed the most densely built part of Joplin. The National Weather Service estimated peak winds above 200 mph. It killed 158 people directly and injured more than 1,100, making it the deadliest single tornado in the United States since modern national record keeping began in 1950, and at $2.8 billion in 2011 dollars it remains the costliest single tornado ever recorded. The storm destroyed St. John's Regional Medical Center and Joplin High School, and the scar it cut through the city was still clearly visible from orbit years afterwards.
What was the Joplin tornado?
The Joplin tornado was an EF5 multiple-vortex tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, on the evening of Sunday 22 May 2011. It touched down at 5:34 pm CDT just west of the city near the Kansas state line and tracked almost due east for roughly 22 miles, growing to about a mile wide as it crossed the most heavily built-up part of the city. The National Weather Service estimated peak winds above 200 mph. Rather than a single funnel, the storm carried several smaller sub-vortices rotating around a common centre, which is why survivors on adjacent streets reported completely different experiences of it. It was the deadliest single tornado in the United States since modern national record keeping began in 1950, and it remains the costliest ever recorded.
How many people died in the Joplin tornado?
The Joplin tornado killed 158 people directly and injured 1,150, according to the Storm Prediction Center record of the event. Further deaths followed in the weeks afterwards, including five caused by mucormycosis, a rare and aggressive fungal infection contracted through wounds contaminated with soil and vegetation driven into the body by debris. That outbreak was unusual enough to be written up in the New England Journal of Medicine. The direct toll of 158 makes Joplin the deadliest single tornado in the United States since the National Weather Service began keeping modern records in 1950, and the deadliest since the tornado warning system was introduced.
How much damage did the Joplin tornado cause?
The Storm Prediction Center records 2.8 billion dollars of damage in 2011 prices, roughly 3.7 billion at 2022 prices, which makes Joplin the costliest single tornado in United States history. Around 8,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. The losses included St. John's Regional Medical Center, a nine-storey hospital that took a direct hit and was shifted on its foundations, and Joplin High School, which was destroyed outright. The hospital never reopened on that site and was replaced by a new building elsewhere in the city.
What was the Joplin tornado path?
The tornado touched down at 37.0524 N, 94.5932 W, just inside Missouri near the Kansas line, and dissipated at 36.9838 N, 94.2213 W in Newton County to the east. The Storm Prediction Center records the track as 21.62 miles long and 1,600 yards wide at its greatest extent, a little under a mile. The National Weather Service damage survey put the path at 22.1 miles. What made the track so destructive was not its length, which is unremarkable for a violent tornado, but its alignment: it ran lengthways through the residential core of Joplin rather than clipping the edge of it, so the widest and most intense part of the circulation spent several minutes over continuous housing.
Why was the Joplin tornado so deadly?
The National Weather Service commissioned a service assessment after the event, and its central finding was not a failure of forecasting. A tornado warning was issued before the tornado touched down, giving under twenty minutes of lead time, and the sirens sounded. The assessment found instead that most Joplin residents did not take shelter on hearing the first siren. Long exposure to warnings that came to nothing had trained people to seek confirmation before acting, typically by going outside to look, checking television, or waiting for a second siren. That behaviour cost the crucial minutes. Combined with an EF5 circulation nearly a mile wide crossing dense housing on a Sunday evening, and a rain-wrapped funnel that was very hard to see coming, it produced the highest death toll in sixty years.
What did the Joplin tornado look like on radar?
The Springfield WSR-88D radar recorded a textbook debris ball as the tornado crossed the city: a compact, almost circular area of extremely high reflectivity sitting at the tip of the hook echo. Reflectivity alone cannot distinguish rain from rubble, but forecasters could also see the correlation coefficient collapse in the same spot. Rain drops are uniform and return a high correlation coefficient; splintered timber, insulation and sheet metal tumbling through the air do not. That combination, formally a tornado debris signature, is direct radar confirmation that a tornado is on the ground and destroying things rather than merely rotating aloft. Debris from Joplin was later recovered tens of miles downwind.
What are the Joplin tornado butterfly people?
In the months after the tornado, a number of young children in Joplin independently described having seen butterfly-like figures during the storm, which they said had shielded them from the debris. The accounts were collected by local reporters and became one of the most widely retold stories associated with the event. There is no meteorological content to it and no attempt is made here to explain it; it belongs to the folklore that grows around disasters rather than to the damage survey. It is recorded on this page because it is one of the most searched aspects of the tornado, and because it is a genuine part of how the city remembers what happened.
Has Joplin recovered from the tornado?
Largely, yes. Rebuilding began within months and the city recovered most of its pre-tornado population and housing stock over the following decade. Joplin High School was rebuilt on a new site and reopened in 2014, and Mercy Hospital Joplin replaced the destroyed St. John's Regional Medical Center in 2015. The most visible legacy is the scar itself: the damage corridor was replanted and rebuilt at a different age to the housing around it, so the strip the tornado cut through the city stayed distinguishable in satellite imagery for years afterwards.
Joplin Tornado Track
The mapped ground track below shows the surveyed touchdown point, damage corridor, and dissipation coordinates recorded by NWS field crews. The Joplin tornado traveled 22.1 miles across Jasper County, Newton County, Joplin. Coordinates are derived from the official SPC historical tornado database.
When did the Joplin tornado happen?
The Joplin tornado touched down at 5:34 pm CDT on Sunday 22 May 2011 and dissipated the same evening.
Was the Joplin tornado an EF5?
Yes. The National Weather Service rated the Joplin tornado EF5, the highest rating on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with peak winds estimated above 200 mph.
How many people died in the Joplin tornado?
158 people were killed directly and 1,150 were injured, making it the deadliest single tornado in the United States since 1950.
How wide was the Joplin tornado?
The Storm Prediction Center records a maximum width of 1,600 yards, a little under one mile.
How long was the Joplin tornado path?
The Storm Prediction Center records a track of 21.62 miles; the National Weather Service damage survey put it at 22.1 miles.
How much did the Joplin tornado cost?
2.8 billion dollars in 2011 prices, roughly 3.7 billion at 2022 prices, which makes it the costliest single tornado ever recorded in the United States.