Lessons from Joplin Tornado

The 22 May Joplin tornado killed 160 people, the most people killed by a single tornado in the United States.

Source: Army Corps of Engineers
The NWS recently issued a report on the tornado, and there is also a nice article on Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth blog.  Have a look.  Preventing such large losses of life is more than just a meteorological challenge.  Societal, economic, and engineering factors are important contributors and need to be addressed for society to become more weather and climate resilient.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

America's Rainiest City?

Image
Ketchikan, Alaska is known for two things: salmon and rain.  I know this well as I have been here several times visiting family.  The combination of wind and rain often makes it feel like you are living in a car wash. Ketchikan, which is located on the inland passage in southeast Alaska, has fully embraced it's status at the Rain City .  It proudly displays a "liquid sunshine gauge" on the boat dock showing just how wet it is. A closeup shows that they claim an average rainfall of 12.5 ft (150") per year.    That's a lot of rain and, perhaps not surprisingly, Ketchikan is widely promoted as the rainiest city in America (e.g., destimationalaska.com ).  Being a meteorologist, I began to wonder if this was really the case.  There are the usual challenges in evaluating such a claim.  What is meant by a city?  What is the period of record?  Is the data reliable?  Etc... For the purposes of this post, we'll concentrate on clima...
Read more

The NWS Is Hiring

What is probably the biggest hiring action in modern National Weather Service history is now underway.  If you are looking for positions with that agency, government boilerplate with links are below.   The  DHA  announcements   for  the   Standing Register  Meteorologist, GS-1340-05/07/09  positions   have been posted. The  announcements are set to open  May 1, 2026  -  September 30, 2026 . PR-424133 ("Harder to Fill" Locations): Job Announcement # (DHA):  NWS-26-12947704-DHA https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/867259300 PR-424134 ("East" Locations): Job Announcement # (DHA):  NWS-26-12947756-DHA https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/867260400 PR-424136 ("West" Locations): Job Announcement # (DHA):  NWS-26-12947773-DHA https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/867260700
Read more

Temporary Halt of the Dismantling of NCAR

Image
The National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesa Lab.  Source: Aaron Seltzer/Getty Images. Earlier this year, the Trump administration moved to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). One component of that dismantling was temporarily halted earlier this week by a Federal judge in Colorado.     NCAR is run by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which was founded in 1959 and is a non-profit consortium involving more than 100 institutions of higher education.  In February, the National Science Foundation (under the direction of the Trump Administration) informed UCAR that it would transfer management and operations of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer Center (NWSC) to a third-party operator.  UCAR's lawsuit argued this was a violation of federal law.  The temporary halt was imposed by after the Federal judge in Colorado decided that the transfer was arbitrary and capricious. More information is available at...
Read more