Talk:1997 Central Texas tornado outbreak

Traffic Jam

This section is largely copied from a credible source, with very small changes in text and placement. The source isn't cited inline, also. I feel that this merits a cleanup. Dirtydan667 18:29, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

second deadlist tornado in the 1990's?

This claim seems dubious given that there are three tornadoes that occurred in the 1990's that had higher fatalities - not one. eg.

Plainfield Tornado, Birmingham Tornado of April 1998, and 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak. TerraFrost 05:46, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

(talk) 23:57, 5 June 2009 (UTC)Murdergirl

I was on the ground for this one, both literally IN it and covering the aftermath as a local journalist for the Killeen Daily Herald. I can assure you that, despite the limited number of fatalities, the damage assessment alone would have rated this #2 for the decade. The Wiki article states that only the concrete slabs were left of the homes in the subdivision; what it fails to mention is that, of the 58 (not 38, as the article suggested) homes that were inhaled by that monster, there were roughly 9 concrete slabs left on the ground after it had passed...all the rest had been blown away. Indeed, the area was almost unimpressive to look at, as virtually nothing was left behind on first examination.

Closer looks, however, revealed a different story...we saw hides that had literally been stripped off of the cattle, clothing that had become so rigid in the winds that a lightweight jacket had buried itself halfway through the side of a cow, asphalt was blown completely off the road, down to the subgrade, and vehicles were identifiable ONLY as vehicles...makes, models, colors, even distinctions between cars and trucks were almost impossible to make. Some of the pieces of people that were found had blades of grass driven into them like nails, as the estimated wind speeds (or so we were told by the NWS at the time) were in excess of 365 mph.

As to the number of fatalities, bear this in mind before deciding that this storm wasn't among the worst of the decade....of the 27 Jarrell dead, I believe only a handful of bodies were recovered in one piece (two, a mother and her infant daughter, were found huddled under a bathtub, dead but otherwise unscathed). Indeed, it took 3 days before local councilmen even released an estimate of fatalities. As a print journalist, after watching a councilman stammer ands stutter and try to explain why names of dead weren't being released to a demanding and very insensitive media, I finally said, "So what you're telling us is, you're not finding people, you're finding pieces of people," to which he responded, "Exactly." There simply was no delicate way to put it; those victims were literally shredded, and despite a half-mile long S&R human line of searchers holding hands, pieces (such as a foot in a shoe)were still missed and showed up in photos we took later in the week. This tornado, and particularly the absolutely reprehensible behavior of my fellow journalists, was what prompted me to leave journalism entirely.

Cleanup Tag

I placed a cleanup tag on the article recently, the page needs many more references, and some things should be removed. I just got done reading the NWS service assessment on the event, and I did not see anything about some of the things mentioned in the article, specifically the "Overpass Traffic Jam." I will try to clean it up this weekend. Southern Illinois SKYWARN 01:58, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry, I will be adding text back and more sections on other tornadoes. I will be using the NCEP website to find other, smaller tornadoes to add to the table. Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 04:01, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I guess I lied. I wll try to start work on the article by the begining of March, but I do have two newsletters to work on. As I said above and as JForget said below, the NCDC database needs to be used to expand this article. I just made the tornado table based the service assessment from the NWS. I planned on continuing work on the article, but my computer had major problems. I got a new computer in December, but then I had lazy problems. :) Southern Illinois SKYWARN (talk) 02:50, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

--209.180.160.241

More then one day outbreak

I've check NOAA storm archives and there were something like 70+ tornadoes across the same areas (Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas) on May 25 and 26 likely from the same system. Not sure if we could mention those (or at least be listed) in this article. I am pretty sure looking at the maps, it is the same system or at least an outbreak sequence.--JForget 03:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Name change

Added year per Wikipedia:WikiProject Severe weather/Tornado's naming convention. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:00, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ewx/html/wxevent/1997to1999/may27event.htm
  • In 1997 Central Texas tornado outbreak on 2011-05-25 06:25:41, 404 Not Found
  • In 1997 Central Texas tornado outbreak on 2011-06-08 04:39:09, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 04:39, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Well constructed homes?

This article states that "many" of the homes in the Double Creek subdivision were well constructed. I've seen this claim several times in accounts of the Jarrell tornado.

This contradicts a 1998 study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST Technical Note 1426). Their researchers did a random check of foundations in the subdivision and found sill plates that had been nailed to the foundation, rather than bolted as required by building codes (note that Jarrell had not adopted a building code at the time of the tornado).

The article in question can be found at fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build98/PDF/b98068.pdf

Tgiesler (talk) 19:35, 4 July 2014 (UTC)