The 18th Anniversary of a True Monster.

Warning, this post might be a bit graphic for some, read at your own risk.

Today is the 18th anniversary of the Jarrell, Texas tornado. The tornado produced some of and maybe the worst damage ever seen.
There were many anomalies with the small tornado outbreak that occurred on May 27, 1997. The tornado moves in a Southwest direction due an outflow boundary that had stalled as a Northeast to Southwest line in central Texas.

The Jarrell tornado started off small, but rapidly intensified into a 3/4th mile wide multi-vortex tornado. The tornado obliterated the Double Creek estates. A lot of F5 tornadoes are known to sweep houses of their foundation and dump it yards and sometimes miles away. The Jarrell tornado, however, left no debris in the hardest hit areas. The tornado grinded everything in it's path to unrecognizable pieces. A 10 ton dump truck was sucked up by the tornado was never found again. A recycling plant that was supported with Steele beams only had a few beams left that were bent into pretzel shape. First responders couldn't tell the difference between humans and animals, anything with flesh was sandblasted into oblivion. The tornado literary wiped the neighborhood off the face if the Earth.

Many people believe that the damage the tornado produced was due to it's slow moving nature, but there are flaws with this hypothesis. If the tornado had done it's damage because of it's slow movement and not it's wind speed, the tornado would have left a lot more visible debris on the ground. Another thing is that the there have been many tornadoes that have moved as slow or slower than Jarrell's but none have produced damage even close to Jarrell's level. A prime example is the Bowdle, South Dakota, tornado of 2010, which became stationary at one time.

Though no mobile Doppler radar's were within range to measure the tornado's wind speed, due to the extreme damage meteorologist hypothesize that the tornado could have had wind speeds of up to 400 miles per hour at it's peak intensity. This would make it the strongest tornado ever recorded if it had been. Though no F6 tornadoes have never occurred, this tornado has thought to be the closest there was to one. Though as of now an EF-6 tornado is not possible, all it takes is for a tornado to destroy a downtown to have the category reinstated.

Though the Jarrell tornado could have been bad, the day could have been a lot worse. If the outflow boundary had stalled about 10 miles further south, the tornado would have gone straight through Austin, and if the boundary had stalled about 100 miles north or so then the state of Texas would have experienced it's worst nightmare; The tornado would have went through the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

a reply to: IngyBall

Concrete maker truck? That made my day

Your written with letters thing was very boring.

It's just nature kid

a reply to: AK907ICECOLD

what are you saying? The point of this thread was to inform people about the anniversary of a truly devastating tornado and possibly the strongest tornado to ever occur.

a reply to: AK907ICECOLD

Stop trolling the op. If you have something to say about what they wrote,then say it. If you have questions,ask.

Tornadoes are fascinating and frightening. I have been in 4 personally. I grew up in tornado alley (Missouri) and yeah,we have had some real scary ones. It is a shame that they didn't get a measurement on this one. Would have been nice to see the numbers on it.

I had not heard about the Jarrell tornado until your post. In 2004, I was living near the Hallam Nebraska tornado path. This tornado leveled the school my children attend. The width of the tornado was 2.5 miles wide, it was an awesome force of nature. Thank you for sharing the Jarrell tornado, I will go read more about it.

a reply to: IngyBall

This is the main reason my wife and I don't move south to enjoy the warmer weather. Up north we get snow storms and maybe an occasional wind storm, but we don't have to worry about losing our life or home when we hear about a storm approaching. The worst thing we experience is having to shovel out our driveways and sidewalks. It's not too bad when you own a snow blower.

Living in paradise has it's disadvantages too! No thank you, I'll deal with the cold weather and snow. Stay safe down there!

a reply to: warpig69

The crazy thing is that the Jarrell tornado had F5 wind speeds spreading up to a half a mile, that's unheard of, most F5 wind fields are usually very small. It is believed that's Jarrel's F5 wind field is the largest ever recorded, and the tornado was only 3/4th a mile wide. I believe that Nebraska tornado held the record in Max width until the 2013 El Reno tornado.

a reply to: IngyBall

While it was a big and bad one, I don't believe it is even on the top 25 tornadoes in the US by any means. I do remember this one though.

a reply to: WeRpeons

Well I wouldn't call Central Texas paradise, though the landscape is beautiful, the summers are harsh. But yes along the coast you have to worry about hurricanes. Here in North Texas and in Oklahoma you get everything lol, you can go from drought to flooding, and vice versa, and reach 120 degrees in the summer, and reach 0 degrees in the winter. Heck, a category 1 hurricane is even possible in North Texas when it moves inland. Just about every location is at a risk for a natural disaster in the U.S, whether it be a blizzard, hurricane, tornado, flood, drought, earthquake, or volcano.

a reply to: IngyBall

Loved the thread and I am off to read more about this tornado. Thanks OP and do not let the trolls get you down keep posting and sharing stuff like this.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

well it depends on how you rank tornadoes, it's not going to be on the top 25 deaths because it was a small town, but where the tornado hit, it had an almost 100% death rate. It's not going to be in the top 25 for costliest tornado because again it hit a small town. There is no real chart for tornadoes that have done the worst looking damage. If the tornado had hit a ton of 20,000+ it would very likely be on the list, if it had hit Austin or Dallas, it would likely be number one. Again this tornado destroyed a steel building, and probably at the very least twisted the frames of sky scrapers, the 1970 Lubbock tornado did this and it wasn't nearly as intense.