Within minutes of the tornado strike, the people of Joplin were helping one another. Neighbors searched for neighbors. People with pickup trucks took to the streets looking for people who needed to get to the hospital. Thousands of volunteers from around the country flocked to Joplin to help with the cleanup and recovery. Many of the people I spoke to, including kids, told me that their experiences on May 22, 2011, strengthened their faith, their bonds with their family, and their appreciation for life’s gifts.
To me, that’s the story of Joplin.
I feel honored to share it with all of you.
Saturday, May 14
A mass of cold, dry air that was born in the Gulf of Alaska travels down the West Coast to California. It moves east, crossing the Rocky Mountains. In eastern Colorado, it collides with a stream of warm, moist air that blew up from the Gulf of Mexico. A violent storm system is born.
Sunday, May 15
The system unleashes a powerful thunderstorm across Colorado. Small tornadoes touch down east of Denver.
Saturday, May 21
The system gains strength as it marches east into Kansas. At 9:15 P.M., a tornado touches down in the tiny town of Reading, population 231. It severely damages the downtown. A fifty-three-year-old man is killed.
Sunday, May 22
The day dawns bright and clear in Joplin, Missouri. There are forecasts for thunderstorms for later in the afternoon.
1:30 P.M.: The National Weather Service issues a tornado watch for Joplin and surrounding areas. A tornado watch means that the conditions are right for tornadoes, but that there is no specific threat.
2:00 P.M.: The storm system moves into eastern Kansas. Fifty miles northwest of Joplin, it forms a violent supercell, which unleashes rain and hail over the town of Parsons.
4:30 P.M.: There is so much energy in the air that two more supercells develop to the south of the main storm. In Columbus, Kansas, twenty-five miles northwest of Joplin, rain and baseball-size hail fall from the sky. The three supercells begin to move east, toward Joplin.
5:00 P.M.: The National Weather Service issues a tornado warning for areas in Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. A tornado warning is more severe than a tornado watch. It means that a threat is imminent — that a tornado is almost certainly coming — and that people should take shelter. But this warning covers only the northeastern portion of Joplin, and weather forecasts suggest that the worst of the storm will hit north of the city.
5:11 P.M.: Joplin’s twenty-eight tornado sirens wail. They sound for three minutes and then go silent. No tornadoes touch down.
5:17 P.M.: A new tornado warning is issued that includes all of Joplin.
5:20 P.M.: Four young storm chasers, driving on a road four miles west of Joplin, witness the moment when wisps of clouds transform into a black churning tornado. Within minutes, the tornado is wrapped in a curtain of rain. It is completely invisible as it heads into Joplin.
5:30 P.M.: Another team of storm chasers, Jeff and Kathryn Piotrowski, is following a storm into Joplin. The two are among the first to realize that the gray cloud to the west is a massive rain-wrapped tornado. Jeff stops to alert a Joplin policeman, who is sitting in a parked car. “Get the sirens going,” Piotrowski warns.
5:31 P.M.: Joplin’s sirens sound a second time.
5:32 P.M.: The tornado, now three-fourths of a mile wide, begins its attack on Joplin.
5:43 P.M.: Weather forecasters stare in shock at their radar screens; the area above southern Joplin is filled with pink splotches, indicating debris from the city that a tornado has thrown thousands of feet into the sky.
The tornado grinds on for thirteen more miles, laying waste to a third of Joplin.
6:12 P.M.: The tornado disappears into the sky.
I learned so much about tornado science and storm chasing while researching this book. Here are the answers to just a few questions that might be on your mind.
Where do tornadoes strike?
Tornadoes have touched down in every part of the world except Antarctica (as far as scientists know). But the vast majority of tornadoes happen in the United States. Since scientists started keeping track, the United States has been struck by ten times as many tornadoes as Canada, which ranks second. Half of all US tornadoes hit in the central plains; the area from northern Texas to North Dakota has often been called Tornado Alley. The South is another tornado-prone area in the United States. Mississippi has actually been hit by twice as many tornadoes as Kansas. But every state except Alaska has been struck by tornadoes.
How often do tornadoes strike in the United States?
An average of 1,000 tornadoes touch down in the United States every year. But in some years, there are far more. The year 2011 was unusually active; 1,691 tornadoes touched down, including 758 in April alone. On April 27, 2011, 200 tornadoes struck in that one day, the largest daily total ever recorded.
What causes tornadoes to form?
Scientists have been studying tornadoes for 150 years, but these storms remain one of the great mysteries of science. We know that tornadoes are created within violent supercell thunderstorms. But not all supercells give birth to tornadoes, and scientists have no way of predicting which storms will unleash deadly twisters and which ones will fade away.
What do storm chasers really do?
Storm chasing is very dangerous, and nobody should attempt to chase a storm unless they are very experienced. Many storm chasers are scientists determined to learn more about how tornadoes work. Storm chasers are actually an important part of America’s tornado warning system. Weather forecasters don’t know for sure that a tornado exists until it actually touches down. Very often, the first to see a tornado are storm chasers, who notify police and weather forecasters so that people can be warned.
The character of Dr. Gage is based on three chasers I discovered in my research. Tim Samaras spent years trying to record sounds from inside tornadoes. And Jeff and Kathryn Piotrowski spotted the tornado as it was closing in on Joplin. It was Jeff who alerted the police, who called for the tornado sirens to be sounded for the second time that day. Very likely their work saved lives.
Tragically, Tim Samaras, who was famous for his caution, was killed in May 2013, when his car was overtaken by a rain-wrapped tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma.
Get informed.
Go to the website Ready.gov.
Read the tornado safety information carefully (have your parents read it, too!).
You will learn everything you need to know there, but here are some especially important tips:
• Be aware of the weather, especially if you live in a tornado-prone area and during the spring and summer, when most tornadoes strike.
• If the weather looks stormy, look and listen for weather alerts on TV, a reliable weather website, or a local radio station.
• Take tornado watches and warnings seriously. If you are urged to take shelter, do it immediately.
• Go inside if there is danger of a tornado (there is really no safe place outdoors in a tornado).
• Stay away from windows and do not open them.
• The safest place in a building is a basement. If there is no basement, take shelter in an interior room on the building’s lowest level, away from corners, windows, doors, and outside walls. Try to get under a very heavy table or desk. Cover your head with your hands to protect yourself from flying debris.
• Cars and trucks are not ever safe in a tornado. But if you are caught (as Dex was), buckle your seat belt and cover your head with your hands.
• If you are taking shelter at home, put on a bike or ski helmet. This might sound silly, but storm chasers wear them when there is danger of flying debris.
Here are some resources I found if you’d like to explore further.
To see the path of the Joplin tornado:
http://www.tripline.net/trip/Path_of_the_Joplin_Tornado-0424207775021003AD43C13C53060EBC
My inspiration for making Jeremy a Navy SEAL was a speech written by A
dmiral William H. McRaven. He gave the speech at the graduation ceremony at the University of Texas, Austin, on May 17, 2014. You can (and should) read it for yourself right here:
http://www.utexas.edu/news/2014/05/16/admiral-mcraven-commencement-speech
Some tornado books for you:
Disaster Strikes: Tornado Alley, by Marlane Kennedy, New York, NY: Scholastic Inc., 2014
DK Eyewitness: Hurricane & Tornado, by Jack Challoner, New York, NY: DK Publishing, 2004
Inside Tornadoes, by Mary Kay Carson, New York, NY: Sterling Publishing, 2010
Tornado!: The Story Behind These Twisting, Turning, Spinning, and Spiraling Storms, by Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2011
Selected Bibliography for I Survived the Joplin Tornado, 2011
These are the sources I relied on most heavily in my research.
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, by Mark Bowden, New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999. Paperback reprint, New York: Grove Press, 2010
“The Gathering Storm,” by Cindy Hoedel and Lisa Gutierrez, Kansas City Star, December 9, 2011
“Heavenly Father! …” by Luke Dittrich, Esquire, September 22, 2011
Hunting Nature’s Fury: A Storm Chaser’s Obsession with Tornadoes, Hurricanes, and Other Natural Disasters, by Roger Hill with Peter Bronski, Berkeley, CA: Wilderness Press, 2009
“The Last Chase,” by Robert Draper, National Geographic, November 2013
No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL, by Mark Owen with Kevin Maurer, New York, NY: Dutton, 2014
“Storm Chasing the Joplin EF-5 Tornado,” created by Jeff and Kathryn Piotrowski. Journey Through Tornado Alley series. (Storm Productions Inc., 2011), DVD. TwisterChasers.com
Storm Kings: The Untold History of America’s First Tornado Chasers, by Lee Sandlin, New York: Pantheon Books, 2013
Stormstalker blog (stormstalker.wordpress.com)
Tornado Alley: Monster Storms of the Great Plains, by Howard B. Bluestein, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999
Tornado Hunter: Getting Inside the Most Violent Storms on Earth, by Stefan Bechtel with Tim Samaras, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2009
Tornado Warning: The Extraordinary Women of Joplin, by Tamara Hart Heiner, Pikeville, NC: Dancing Lemur Press, 2014
Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather, by Mike Smith, Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2010
When the Sirens Were Silent: How the Warning System Failed a Community, by Mike Smith, Wichita, KS: Mennonite Press/Mike Smith Enterprises, LLC, 2012
Witness: Joplin Tornado, documentary video by National Geographic Channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_oyBGrxfpg
Lauren Tarshis is the author of the New York Times bestselling I Survived series, which tells stories of young people and their resilience in the midst of unimaginable disasters. Lauren has brought her signature warmth and exhaustive research to topics such as the September 11 attacks, the destruction of Pompeii, Hurricane Katrina, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, among others. Lauren lives in Westport, Connecticut, and can be found online at www.laurentarshis.com.
Text copyright © 2015 by Lauren Tarshis
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