You may have heard about the F-5 tornado that went through Kansas about a week ago, completely destroying the town of Greensburg. From what I've heard, the pictures that I've seen on the internet and TV don't do justice to the complete anihilation of the town. Basically, 95% of the town is gone, nearly every building has been flattened, and about the only thing left standing is the grain elevator.

This town is about 50 miles away from where I live, and their school was one in our league for sports, etc. I know several people that have relatives from Greensburg and we have been kept up to date on the progress there. On Saturday I am planning on traveling over there with a group to help with the clean up. It's amazing to see the outpouring of support for a community that was hit like this, and it's a tribute to the human spirit of people in the Midwest that they are still for the most part trying to stay positive. I don't know how you could keep going at a time like this but I'm proud to live in a part of the U.S. that could come together like this in a time of tragedy.

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LS: TheMonarchy
The Bearded Hume Player/Coach for the Washington Generals
"I got the fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"

F5 tornados are insane. F6 are almost impossible to detect and its possble that this could have even been an F6 (from what ive read and heard, its hard to measure damage after winds exceed those of a F5.

Im so happy I dont have to deal with weather like that.

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I've had a few small tornados down near where i live, seen em while driving on the 401 in the distance. I doubt it was even an F1 lol

We had a small tornado touch down in Texas awhile back, probably about an hour or so away from where i live...it was out in a section of country where nothing was damaged, but it came relatively close to a city as well, but dispersed before it did anything to the city...the wind was still strong enough to damage a few trees and things like that, but nothing serious.

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Does the scale go over F5?

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"My dreams are all dead & buried. Sometimes I wish the sun would just explode. When God comes and calls me to his kingdom, I'll take all you sonsabitches when I go"

Sup Ori

We only have funnel clouds here if anything lol. I'd shit my pants if I saw a tornado on the ground.

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F5 and F6's are the tornados to watch for

these are the big arse tornados which if you look close enough at them you can see the old man in the tornado

was on discover channel years ago showing tornado videos, one F5 tornado in texas some1 got home video of and every1 in the video saw an old man sort of thing in the tornado coming at them.

"the old man in the tornado" is actually the deadliest of all tornados, it is a big arse F5 F6 tornado with 4-5 smaller tornados inside of it coming out of 1 vortex thingy. when it happens ppl can see the 2 tornados openning down, and 2 openning up ( arms and legs of the old man)

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"all men die, and no brave man lets death frighten him from his desires"

Lotsa tornados in MN. I'm going back to MN on saturday, hopefully can catch some spring weather action.

But yeah... tornados are serious business. But it's really rare for them to hit large cities. I wonder why that is.....I always wondered if factory emmissions messed with weather patterns and kept that stuff at bay most of the time.

I'm thinking it's more of a "all of the buildings break up the winds from circulating into funnel clouds thing"

Also, anyone have a pic or actual video they can link showing this "old man" in a tornado scenario? I have never heard of this.

yarr dont canada get ice storm or bizzard(s?)?

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I think the last tornado I was in was back in 2001 or something. I remember it destroyed the (now) Bank Of America building in Downtown fort worth, Tx. My friend and I drove around afterwards and it finally hit me what happened.

During the tornado it was just like a big joke. Nothing big was happening to us just a lot of crazy winds but after seeing all the damage to downtown I was like "Oh shit. That was real..." Was a weird feeling to have something like that happen so close to home (about 8 miles from where I was at the time).

I am pretty sure the new Fujita scale only goes up to EF 5 (Enhanced Fujita). I am still in shock about the Greensburg tornado, as I lived for 8 years (all through high school and 2 years of Junior College) in Pratt, which is just 30 miles east of greensburg. I knew a few people there, and knew the town fairly well. Had some mean parties there.

I wish I could actually go out there and help, but due to school still and work, it would be utterly impossible. So I just do my part w/ donations, still wish I could actually go out there and help.

This was the first EF5 ever and the first F5 since the Oklahoma City Tornado on May 3rd, 1998. Hard to belive this HUGE outbreak of tornados in TX,OK,KS was exactly 9 years from the May 3rd-5th outbreak in 98.

I have talked to a few friends out in Greensburg, and they say none of the pictures do it justice. The words to describe it coming from them are, "It looks like Hiroshima or Nagaski when teh Atomic bombs were dropped there". Everything is just flattened and gone.

What amazed me though, where only 9 lifes were lost in greensburg, and if you look at the destruction, you can thank the the trained storm chasers and the weathermen for such an early detection of the tornado and to get an adequate warning out.

the scale was just bumped up to 8

Intensity Wind Speed Range Old Description New Description
F0 40-72 mph Weak Weak
F1 73-112 mph Moderate Moderate
F2 113-157 mph Significant Significant
F3 158-206 mph Severe Severe
F4 207-260 mph Devastating Devastating
F5 261-318 mph Incredible Incredible
F6 319-379 mph Inconceivable Mind-boggling
F7 380-460.5 mph Unthinkably Staggering
F8 460.6-525 mph Unimaginably Stupendous


http://www.ecoenquirer.com/tornado-intensity.htm

trying to find the old man video, was a home video on discovery channel years ago

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"all men die, and no brave man lets death frighten him from his desires"

http://home.austin.rr.com/candylind/cac ... alking.jpg

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"all men die, and no brave man lets death frighten him from his desires"

Wiki knows all and only goes up to f5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujita_scale

but an f8? I was told the fastest wind speed ever was just over 225

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"My dreams are all dead & buried. Sometimes I wish the sun would just explode. When God comes and calls me to his kingdom, I'll take all you sonsabitches when I go"

Three vortices were seen merging as the giant killer tornado formed north and west of Jarrell. Indian legend calls this a "Dead Man Walking", and says that if you see the Dead Man Walking in a tornado, you will die. LOOK HERE to read a Poem posted on tornadoproject.com that was about a different tornado that caused similar destruction.

guess i was wrong,

apparently called a dead man walking

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"all men die, and no brave man lets death frighten him from his desires"

Update -
I'm a teacher and coach at a nearby town, as I said before, and I was very happy to see Greensburg athletes at the Junior High Track meet. I guess they are sending their athletes to sporting events to finish out the spring, and Nike supposedly donated new uniforms for all their sports teams.
Going to help clean up on Saturday still, and the first guy's house we are supposed to be helping clean up is their head HS basketball coach that I coached against this year. I'll tell you all what things look like afterwards.
-Orig

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LS: TheMonarchy
The Bearded Hume Player/Coach for the Washington Generals
"I got the fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"

Yea, from what Orignal said, the track teams and softball team was given all new uniforms and equipment from sporting goods company. Not sure who, the News didn't disclose it. They did say that Best Buy is paying for the schools graduation and giving every senior a scholarship (amount was undisclosed). Titlest gave the entire golf team new custom golf clubs. And today, the golf team went out and won their first tourney since the storm, having three golfers in the top. Also, Pizza hut today, donated 10% of their total sales from their Kansas Businesses to United Way Greensburg disaster relief fund. Lets just say, it took 1 1/2 hours just to get through Pizza Hut. I ended up giving up and just driving down to order a pizza...took another hour just to have it ready.

I am amazed at the outpour of help this city has revieced...but really when was the last time you saw an entire city destroyed by a tornado. A comic in the newspaper last Sunday really summed it up. Showed a Paramedic running to the aide of a victim w/ the caption "Mother Nature's Worse brings out Human Nature's Best."

Sorry for a double post, my internet sucks right now and I don't feel like waiting 5 minutes to edit my post.

To masterg, seriously.....I have a very good gut feeling your Fujita scale is a fake. 1) Its not called the Fujita scale anymore, back in Feburary they renamed it to Enhanced Fujita scale to better estimate wind speeds in the environment. This is more for the rural settings where there are no instruments to measure wind speeds. They want to be able to look at a tree, and by the damage it sustained can estimate the wind speed that it took to damage that tree. Its what they did in Greensburg and the surrounding areas. 2) Seriously...Dorthy Gale.....I won't even go there, but that is def. a fake name. Also, look at the site and some of the links to other articles. Its just National Enquire for weather. Before you go posting crap like that, please for god sakes read the site, its a good way to give people the wrong information.

And yes, I am a weather nut, and yes I do keep track of things like that. I mean in Kansas you get the extreme ends of the scale all year round and need to be prepared at any moment

i couldnt really careless about the scale, i found it while looking for that dead man walking picture. just thought it was interesting

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"all men die, and no brave man lets death frighten him from his desires"

I think the largest tornado in Jacksonville was a F-3 and that was coming off of a hurricane several years ago, did a decent amount of damage too. I can't even remember which hurricane it was that caused the tornado, maybe it was Rita. When I lived in Orlando a tornado absolutely raped a trailer park there, I remember more than a few people died. I actually saw that tornado in the distance driving south on Colonial , I have never actually seen one myself other than that one time.

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Why do those people even live there in the first place, huh? freaking idiots. This is god's way of punishing them.

/sarcasm.

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wow @ that picture MasterG, I bet those stormtrackers or whoever took that photo shit themselves.

actually the real good "dead man walking" tornado was a home video taken by civi's in their home as it passed by and they aired it on discovery channel in 2000/2001 but no1 can seem to find it now, found a "ask google" thread about it, they cant find it

name comes from indian legend/song supposedly:

The Dead Man's Walking
Tranquil blue and billowy white, turns gray and dark, hint of night.
Spring showers gone, rocks of ice, things outside will pay the price.
Quietness, stillness, sirens sound. Heart racing, to the underground.


Gentle breeze, soft and warm, turns violent, cold, funnel form.
Electric blue brightens the dark, sounds like the world's being torn apart.
Protective walls secure all around, blown to bits, fall to the ground.


Chaotic, loud, cover your ears, close your eyes and feel your fears.
Eternity, eternity, so long, but so fast, will this day be my last?
Then silent, still, is it gone? What if I move, what if I'm wrong?


The stench of mud and wet grass, electric sparks and broken glass.
It took the trees, it took the homes, it shattered lives and broke some bones.
It has no guilt and no remorse, just takes what it wants while on it's course.


Listen close, nature's talking, it just might mean the "Dead Man's Walking".

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"all men die, and no brave man lets death frighten him from his desires"

Well, I'm pretty tired after Saturday, but it was well worth it. We took 65 people (our total town population is 500) to work north of town. Early in the morning we drove through town, and people were right, pictures don't do justice to the amount of damage caused. Basically, about one block on the west side of town, and two blocks on the east side of town got damage but were not destroyed. Everything else is gone. The downtown area and bigger buildings were only mostly damaged (half of every building gone), but the residential areas are totally flattened. We worked on a guy's farm north of Greensburg about 2 miles. He was a guy I coached against this past year, so it was good to be able to help him out. His family was very lucky, because the tornado missed his house and only took out his barns and other buildings. It was unbelieveable how much trash and debris was around the guy's house two miles away from town. We probably found about two plastic sacks full of pictures, and lots and lots of building materials like insulation, wood, tar paper, and shingles. After working about 2 hours at the farm, it just hit me. We had 65 people working pretty much non-stop on the guy's farm, and we were just making a small dent in the amount of work that had to be done in the area. It was just unreal to me how much there was and still is to do. I heard that a Mennonite group went in and built 3 houses outside of town, just as an example of the outpouring of assistance Greensburg is getting from people in the area. I am proud of where I live, and I would never live anywhere else. You just can't beat midwestern people, we take care of our own.

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LS: TheMonarchy
The Bearded Hume Player/Coach for the Washington Generals
"I got the fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"