Last Night's Tornadoes

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

It was one of those Spring evenings you knew something had to happen. I was watching NWS radar from afternoon on.

The "dry line" was just west of us. It was 65 degrees in one place and 75 100 miles west. It was heavy and muggy.

One line formed 100 west (Quapaw) and the other 100 miles east (Mayflower, AR). We had wind and lightning, but the storms skirted us. DW got home from her entertainment gig just as the last one hit.

In addition to the deaths, a $14M school set to open this Fall got destroyed.

We just had our homeowners insurance cancelled and listed as a reason was the tornado claim we had in 2005, about this time of year. I rode that one out on our dock, with 2 guys and 2 gals putting new flotation on it. My 90-some-year-old nun Aunt had called me 9 times from PA to warn me, but I never heard my cellphone because we were running a generator.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

I had no idea it was that bad

[susieq Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close susieq]

Glad you and yours are safe.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

Thanks.

A friend of a guy on another forum and two of his kids were killed in AR. Left a wife and seven other kids.

[susieq Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close susieq]

OMG!! ~ Horrible news!! Life can be so cruel sometimes. Prayers to all affected.

[riverdees05 Platinum Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close riverdees05]

In that part of Missouri, hope you got another company to insure your home.

[jackio Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close jackio]

Thank goodness your family is safe. How horrible.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

In that part of Missouri, hope you got another company to insure your home.

Done. Our nephew was able to return some of the favors we have given him over the years.



But I'd hate if we had a claim. The three that did us in with State Farm were all this time of year.

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

it only took two claims for State Farm to drop us, and one was a lighting hit,

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

Glad to hear you are okay, JLB. Sorry to hear about the guy's friend's kids and wife.

Seems like southern Missouri and northern Arkansas are really getting slammed these last few years. I was thinking we get almost as many tornadoes here, but they don't do as much damage -- looked it up, and I'm sort of right. When it comes to the average of all tornadoes, Missouri's just a tad "ahead" of Indiana (6.5 per 10,000 square miles, versus 6.1), as I expected. But when it comes to the number of particularly violent tornadoes (E-3 to E-5), it's the opposite of my expectation -- 0.4 per 10,000 square miles for Indiana; 0.3 for Missouri. We get more of the big guys, but seems like they do less damage, and Indiana's got a much higher population density than Missouri (183.4/ sq mile versus 87.9). It's very odd.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-inf...atology/trends

That's the averages for 1991-2010, which I suppose isn't really long enough to be significant. Still, Missouri has never had the most tornadoes, or the most vicious tornadoes when I've checked (Kansas is always way ahead of it, and Illinois, usually, as well). When it comes to tornadoes, Missouri just seems to buck the averages. Missouri was the first hit by the massive "Tri-State Tornado" event in 1925, which left the longest tornado track ever recorded in the world, for starts. That one was always at the top of every list for years, and still tops the list for deaths. But the one that toppled it in terms of financial hit is the one in Joplin, 2011. And I've yet to see a top ten tornado list that doesn't includes St. Louis, 1896. I sat down some years back and analyzed states for various disasters, but I was using average number of tornadoes and the like; realized Missouri has that sort of history. It didn't look so anomalous on the top ten lists until after 2011. Missouri's gotta make the insurance guys tear their hair.

[JLB Please excuse me, I'm a Dick. Not a moron just a Dick Find all posts View Profile Close JLB]

it only took two claims for State Farm to drop us, and one was a lighting hit,

Actually, when you get right down to it, it was not two claims that did you in, it was the last one , same as us.