The Greensburg superstorm tornado, 10 years ago
I had been blogging for AccuWeather for less than two years when a massive EF-5 tornado demolished the town of Greensburg, in Kiowa County, Kansas. Although words like "decimated" "completely destroyed" and "demolished" are often used to describe tornado damage, this entire town was nearly reduced to a pile of rubble. You can read the coverage during and after the storm on the list of my blogs below.
Greensburg, KS May 16, 2007 - The center of town resembles a bomb site twelve days after it was hit by an F5 tornado. Cleanup and reconstruction will take years. Photo by Greg Henshall / FEMA
Enterprisesolutions.AccuWeather.com
Additional factoids about the Greensburg Tornado in this NWS PDF:
Among the more important ones are:
-
The storm was on the ground for 65 minutes
-
It destroyed 961 homes & businesses
-
39,172 meals were served by the American Red Cross
-
A total of $71,300 in government assistance and loans helped rebuild
-
800,000 cubic yards of debris removed
-
57,766 volunteer hours were logged
Mike Umscheid,, meteorologist at the Dodge City NWS office, has an excellent PowerPoint presentation on the event, including 3D radar images. In it, he gives the tornado the "superstorm" moniker which I used in the title of this blog to describe this rare and unusual event.
