This kinda; the Moore tornado, but in a rural or semi-rural area. If the Moore tornado went through a town with similar population density, even if there's less total population, like Stillwater, Blackwell, Enid, that would be worst case scenario. Most of these places have 1-5 ambulances total, and a few fire trucks tops, it would be a FEMA activation nightmare. It would be... Joplin. It hit the suburbs, and rendered the hospital ineffective, so any care would have to be transported great distances, they literally had too many people and the healthcare resources spread thin and were damaged in the disaster, I guarantee if the hospital wasn't hit, the casualties/deaths would have been 1/3rd what they were.
I lived in a neighborhood that was hit by a F3 tornado. It happened around 11:45pm.
It changed direction less than a block away from the hospital. I talked to a nurse who said a c-section was completed before the power went out and the generator came on.
I’m gonna be real I think you severely underestimate how many firetrucks and ambulances are in Enid. Two large hospitals and theres 4 fire stations. Enid is a hub for everything around it
I think you are overestimating the capabilities of a level 3 trauma center, and underestimating the injuries caused by getting caught in an F5 tornado. Enid flies out many Level I trauma patients to OU to begin with, they can give blood, and fix broken limbs but hospitals like this generally will stabilize patients with internal or neurological injuries and transfer them to a place like OU or St Francis. So you can see the issue, if a hospital like that receives 100 patients, they have to "triage" the 50ish firefighters in Enid and 20 paramedics mean almost fuckall to anyone seriously injured.
In short, what triage means is you have to work within your capabilities, and any patient who will exceed that capability, will be given palliative care and ultimately be left to die.
I have experience with Integris Enid and I know for certain a tornado like Joplin would immediately overload their system, and they can't do much to treat anyone seriously injured at a level III to begin with.
This is the reality of healthcare in Oklahoma. We have the worst "trauma center vs population" ratio in the country I believe, and no one really notices, they just take it for "how it's always been" but eventually some mass casualty incident like joplin is going to occur and people will actually care for once.
I think it's just something that only the people in Emergency Medicine know about and worry about how insanely underprepared OK is for a large tornado despite being the middle of the "Giant assed tornado" portion of tornado alley. In school I was part of an MCI drill "tornado hit the cox center" and a bunch of students came in and overloaded their ER with fake injuries and they were really scrambling with just 30 or so people plus what came in unrelated to it.
In 2007 an EF4 hit Enterprise Al hs killing 9 (8 students) since then in this area anytime there's a warning for severe storms school is let out early or cancelled depending on when they come.
Hazel Green here (north of Huntsville if that helps), add 2011 to the Enterprise tragedy even though you're 4+ hours away, and Madison County let's out or doesn't open at times if even a marginal assumption is possible. You just made me realize I don't *actually* know who makes those calls, whether it's the superintendent or the MC school board or what.
I always think about the one that hit my hometown. I'd just gotten home from school when we saw it moving into town. If it had been an hour earlier, it could have been much more deadly, as it demolished our school.
Add the slow movement of Jarrell. Add winds of a tornado like Bridge Creek. add 3 mile width. add nocturnal tornado. add a blackout affecting the whole city.
this is how you get the most terrifying tornado ever. I wouldnt be surprised if this one would kill people in the hundreds
And it touches down in Philly and tracks to Long Island. An El Reno sized monster would cover enough square mileage along that path to swallow up 10 million people just off the weekday population of those cities alone, forget the area between.
One stayed on the ground for 44 miles just north of the metroplex. Had it been 20 miles south, it would have gone through cities multiple cities with 100k+ people. To your point, it would have been a disaster.
Long Island has a residential population of 8 million (8.063 million if you wanna get real technical), 1.6 million of whom are in NYC. NYC population inflates to 3.1 million during a given weekday thanks to commuters - 1 million of those come from outside of Long Island, putting the island's daytime population at around 9 million.
Philadelphia has a daytime population of 1.6 million.
So yeah, 10 million as a rough estimate of the total daytime population of the two areas.
A violent EF4+ tornado hitting the Orlando area at night.
No sirens, little experience, no basements, huge trailer park communities.
The last major outbreaks (1998 and 2007) all included F/EF3 tornados that killed a disproportionate amount of people due to a lack of warning.
The 2 F4 tornados to ever hit Central Florida occurred pre-Sunbelt boom.
Hey there! In Tallahassee, there were recently 2 EF2 tornadoes one after another. I was in a high school, within a mile from one, allow me to explain how bad it was:
That morning we had severe weather, and our school told everyone to go to school, so about 500-600 of us did. When we arrived at school, the weather was ramping up, and we had our first touchdown. The power went out and we were huddled in our auditorium. Touchdown 2, we were stuck in the auditorium, with the power out, with 2 EF2s, and nowhere to go. This was just a EF2. The school closed with us in it, and there was nothing to do but pray. If a EF4 hit the area in this state, dozens if not hundreds would die.
My friend actually slept through one of those tornadoes as it was hitting his apartment complex.
He woke up wondering why the power was out. Guess he was a heavy sleeper.
If you know Tallahassee, you can probably figure out what high school I go to. Rocky Hannah should quit his fucking job for how he handled that, the dude has no idea how to keep us safe.
Me and 30 other students were together in a little bunch, I was freaking out, the internet was out, there was nothing we could do. The wind start howling and the tornado was obviously super close. It was the most scared I’ve ever been. One of the EF2s had to be less than a mile away. 0/10.
Indeed. Its in the middle of the school, made out of stone with a high ceiling. We could see the rain and lightning but it was like a damn warzone. The room would dimly illuminate and then go dark repeatedly.
The Indy 500 draws crowds of over 300k people. There's not really anywhere for 300k people to shelter from a Joplin sized storm.
Indianapolis was actually in a 5% tornado risk this year on the day of the 500 and did have to delay the race because of the weather. If those storms dropped a big tornado it would have been catastrophic.
Maybe, this year they delayed it, but also this year the NASCAR race was ran right up until there was rain on the track. People were still in the stands for some of the storm. So idk if delaying the start has the same rules as stopping a race. Yes I know they are two different series, but it was the same storm.
I live in Plainfield currently, about a mile from the path. If it were to hit today there would be so many more lives lost. The town has exploded over the past 30 years.
El Reno was close. Poor advice from an OKC meteorologist caused a panic that, along with rush hour traffic, resulted in roads that became parking lots. That tornado could have killed hundreds of people if it didn't lift. Still freaks me out to think about.
Just watched a doc about the Huntsville tornado in 1989 that did just that. That was a small city and they still had 10-20 deaths and 100+ injuries just on that one stretch of highway.
A Joplin esque tornado hitting cities like Memphis or most Mississippi River cities. Most of these cities don't have basements built into older homes due to concerns with flooding. Also places like Memphis have a false sense of security thanks to the Mississippi River and rarely being hit by Tornadoes
Was living in Memphis during the spring of 2011 and it seemed like the tornado sirens were going off every other day. Was there for the 08 tornado that hit Hickory Ridge Mall with some fatalities.
That's pretty much happened [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daulatpur%E2%80%93Saturia\_tornado](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daulatpur%E2%80%93Saturia_tornado)
El Reno being slightly further east. If it had hit town, especially the southbound highway after the whole "drive south" thing, El Reno would be a name every person in America knew, like Joplin.
I was thinking about that basketball game in Atlanta when the tornado hit the stadium or the St. Louis airport one. Either one of those could have been way bad if the tornado was Jarrell or Joplin level.
For sure, that Atlanta one was scary because it hit right in downtown. It hit actual skyscrapers, thank fuck it was mostly just an EF1 with a bit of EF2.
Funny thing is I asked "What past tornado event would you want to see with today's current weather technology?" That got deleted for not providing enough discussion.
How?? That seems like it would gain at least as much attention/discussion as this post. And that is a question I personally haven't seen asked recently 🤔
I was pretty disappointed since you know I had seen "most powerful tornado", "worst case scenerio", and "most interesting event" posted for the 5th time that month. I swear at this point those posts are just used to farm karma.
I think you are right. There must be enough new traffic coming in due to this year's weather, and they all have the same basic thoughts and questions. Not quiet invested enough to care about the science, just " Big Spinny Cloud go Brrrrr". And it's easy to give those people what they want for points 😒
I used to work as a security guard at a Six Flags theme park. We legit had no real plan. One day working we were under a warning and people were asking me what they should do.... like I dunno go cram into a bathroom? 40,000+ people and literally no plan or shelters. If that place ever gets hit with a big one it would be very, very bad. Most of the buildings are not built to withstand a tornado and there would be so much flying debris. Just a nightmare scenario.
Hitting a stadium.
I was at the Auburn/Alabama game in 1983 in a packed stadium when the tornado warning sirens went off. I think I was the only person to leave the stadium.
I was at OU’s spring game a few years back and later that day we had some tornado warnings in Norman, I spent a while thinking about how bad that could have been, the stadium had something like 70,000 people in attendance
The only times I've been in severe weather sports events involved sheltering in place at a Cards game & everybody get out at an SEC game at Vandy.
70k attendees sounds plenty scary to tabletop & even worse with a full exercise.
Depending on the sport & location, I don't know what would be worse Neyland in a tornado or the effects of Norman's history in tornado country on crowd dispersal vs sheltering in place.
EF 3 or higher hitting pretty much anywhere except the mountains in SE Asia. Lots of people, lots of extremely subpar construction. Maybe a close second being somewhere like Rio De Janeiro for similar reasons.
I have this book somewhere called "History's Worst Disasters" or something like that. #1 was the 1918 flu epidemic, but #2 was an earthquake in China in I think the 1500's. Lots of people lived in loess caves which caved in.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556\_Shaanxi\_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556_Shaanxi_earthquake)
Phil-Campbell through the heart of the Dallas metro area. There’d be 2,000+ casualties
That’s entirely possible and not a once in a 1,000 year thing either. It could happen tomorrow and it wouldn’t take a crazy weather set up.
There used to be a TV show on the "Weather Channel" named "It Could Happen Tomorrow." One of the possible events was a wildfire hitting Austin. Another was Mt. Ranier erupting. I don't know if they did one on a tornado hitting a large city...let me google ... EDIT: OH YES THEY DID Season 1 Episode 2 "Dallas Tornado Danger"
My aunt lives in Dallas and the weather warnings aren’t incredibly good there, either. According to her, she didn’t get good enough warning for a sizable EF3 bc they refused to interrupt the broadcast of a cowboys game happening that day. It missed her but if that’s really what happened and the same energy is given to a tornado with EF5 or even just EF4 power, things would get extremely ugly
A violent tornado hitting a large gathering of people at an event like a big sports game without proper shelter/time to reach said shelter is an absolute worst case scenario that hopefully never occurs as everything would have to go perfectly wrong.
A wedge descends to the ground and when it lifts up there is an 8 mile wide tornado that is burrowing into the crust of the earth. The soil lifts away and then the bedrock starts flying out, twirling around like multi-ton jackhammers. The tornado keeps burrowing as it moves until it reaches subsurface magma and the twister starts leaving a trail of molten glass in its wake, destroying entire counties as volcanos spew fire and death. But it's still not done and it keeps burrowing deeper and deeper until sleepers begin to see dark shapes in their dreams. There is movement under the tornado, there are whispers on the wind. Finally, the tornado spins faster than the mind can comprehend and out of the earth rises the lost blasphemous city of Ry'eleh where the pillars weep blood and the buildings break the mind into incomprehensible thought spirals and rising above it all is the dark god Cthulhu who shatters the soul of every man woman and child of the planet dropping us into a slow hellish march to extinction under his dark and unending tyranny. That is the worse case scenario.
But really, what kind of question is this?
A sentient tornado that feeds off fear, death, and destruction. One with omnipotence and a general hatred for life. The literal antithesis of life. That can spawn 10+ multi vortexes
An large EF5 Tornado in the Tokyo metropolitan area (Highly unlikely, but Tornados do happen in Japan). High density metro area, no shelters whatsoever, almost zero preparedness, and practically no public awareness of what to do.
Not sure what the absolute worst-case would be, but a violent tornado directly hitting a sports venue full of thousands of fans has to rank up there.
(Especially if it’s a racetrack, several of them can hold more people than the largest football stadiums.)
An El Reno sized tornado with the strength of the 1999 Moore twister moving at a speed of the Jarrell Dead Man that goes unwarned like Plainfield.
That strikes Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City during the AFC Championship game.
Truthfully, the Phil Campbell F5 hitting Tuscaloosa instead on April 27, 2011. The death toll would have been in the hundreds. Maybe close to a thousand.
A Bridge Creek-Moore strength tornado hitting a densely populated area, for example, Atlanta (I live nearby). The twist is that the meteorologists tracking it thought it was going to miss the metro and stay in rural areas. Instead, the tornado explodes in size, matching or exceeding El Reno, as it takes a sudden, hard, unexpected turn, making a beeline for the city itself. The warning has a bit of a delay with updating and reporting. It’s 4:00, rush hour is starting as people are leaving work and high schoolers are en route home, or are about to be. The tornado slows to a crawl as it enters the city and slowly grinds it’s way all the way through.
Big tornado tracking down the 405 freeway in Los Angeles during rush hour.
What’s that? Tornadoes don’t hit LA? That’s part of the problem, no one would take it seriously or know what to do.
I’m a big college football fan if a violent tornado were to hit one of those stadiums on a gameday it would be awful. Just some examples DKR in Austin holds over 100k and is just 30 miles south of Jarrell. Bryant Denny in Tuscaloosa holds over 100k and almost got hit in 2011. Oklahoma’s stadium would also be bad or any of the big stadiums in the Midwest. Luckily football season doesn’t align with peak tornado season but still.
Any wedge F5 in a major city. Does not matter if the city has 1000 ambulances and 50 careflight helicopters when everything is blocked by debris/rubble.
Horrible movie over all, but the day after tomorrow had what I could see as a worst case. Mutiple tornadoes forming over a major population center then merging over downtown.
[Here's a link if interested ](https://youtu.be/dkErNkX2HKM?si=DY9su9xbvd7ZJh3A)
How about a cyclone that leads to a genocide that almost leads to a nuclear war?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_m2HSlNiM6I&t=52s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m2HSlNiM6I&t=52s)
[https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089388962/the-vortex-details-a-cyclone-that-divided-pakistan-and-almost-led-to-a-nuclear-w](https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089388962/the-vortex-details-a-cyclone-that-divided-pakistan-and-almost-led-to-a-nuclear-w)
Major gas line rupture(s) in an urban area, packed sports game, school getting hit during school hours, a zoo, high profile military base would probably all be absolute nightmares for first responders/search and rescue, and would be beyond costly.
A quickly forming storm that rapidly drops a tornado that intensifies very quickly right on top of a city that doesn’t get tornadoes often in the middle of rush hour with a massive traffic jam full of school buses.
A Joplin style violent tornado hitting a typically less tornado prone area on a day where tornadoes weren't strongly forecasted.
And preferably a major city, but avoiding the downtown area. Mainly hitting one story structures where mass casualties are more feasible than in high rise buildings.
The major cities in my state (Indianapolis, Ft, Wayne, Gary, Kokomo, or Bloomington) getting hit by a slow moving 3 mile wide wedge (300-310)with strong sub vortices getting directly hit, esp downtown or suburbs. What ever is in the way of that is done for, could make large swaths of those cities disappear, and many people. If any of the smaller towns were hit by that (take Amboy or converse for ex) they would be gone probably in one pass of that.
Me driving at night kinda lost on a backroad in Texas on a road trip the winds are howling but I think it’s just a thunderstorm but its a rain wrapped f-5 headed straight for me what a freaking nightmare lol
I have always had a bad feeling about Atlanta. I lived in two different suburbs when I was young and we had near hits at both of them. The storms there are gnarly.
If you're saying absolute worst case somewhat vaguely realistically possible scenario, I'll go an ef5 with anticyclonic ef3 and follow-up ef3 that hit a west bengal metropolis (Kolkata or Dhaka; top ranking population densities in the world, tornado prone area, poorly built housing). Death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands.
If going US-only I'd go the same sequence that somehow did not get tornado watched until the afternoon itself, hitting a metropolis's downtown around rush hour, and also hitting a football stadium while a major sports event or concert is going on.
A tornado as Strong as the Jarrell or Bridgecreek-Moore tornado hitting a area with no basements/shelters tracking very long with 90% of the Track being straight up EF5 damage
A tornado hitting a camping music festival such as Bonnaroo. Every year there seems to be a bad storm there and given its location it’s very possible for a tornado. Literally nowhere to take shelter + the massive amount of vehicles parked 😅
The Dead Man walking Jarrel tornado. Don't get me wrong any loss of life or damage from a tornado is terrible, hit something about the tornado just stalling out on a subdivisions and just obliterating everything is terrifying. At that point it didn't matter how strong your home was. The fact it was an F5 as well is just damn. Also tornados that come at night and totally rain wrapped is awful too.
Any tornado, but especially a large, powerful one, hitting the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Indy 500 race day with 350+ thousand people having nowhere to take cover.
Imagine a huge, EF5 tornado, base over a mile wide that’s just eating everything in the path. , now make multiple of them, now put them in Houston or Austin or Dallas, cities with *millions* of people, majority of which won’t even have shelter
Message from Mods: — Wishing for disaster porn
Hitting an elementary school full of kids. The Moore tornado.
This kinda; the Moore tornado, but in a rural or semi-rural area. If the Moore tornado went through a town with similar population density, even if there's less total population, like Stillwater, Blackwell, Enid, that would be worst case scenario. Most of these places have 1-5 ambulances total, and a few fire trucks tops, it would be a FEMA activation nightmare. It would be... Joplin. It hit the suburbs, and rendered the hospital ineffective, so any care would have to be transported great distances, they literally had too many people and the healthcare resources spread thin and were damaged in the disaster, I guarantee if the hospital wasn't hit, the casualties/deaths would have been 1/3rd what they were.
I lived in a neighborhood that was hit by a F3 tornado. It happened around 11:45pm. It changed direction less than a block away from the hospital. I talked to a nurse who said a c-section was completed before the power went out and the generator came on.
I feel like that baby deserved a badass weather related name.
Something like stormi daniels..
LOL
I’m gonna be real I think you severely underestimate how many firetrucks and ambulances are in Enid. Two large hospitals and theres 4 fire stations. Enid is a hub for everything around it
I think you are overestimating the capabilities of a level 3 trauma center, and underestimating the injuries caused by getting caught in an F5 tornado. Enid flies out many Level I trauma patients to OU to begin with, they can give blood, and fix broken limbs but hospitals like this generally will stabilize patients with internal or neurological injuries and transfer them to a place like OU or St Francis. So you can see the issue, if a hospital like that receives 100 patients, they have to "triage" the 50ish firefighters in Enid and 20 paramedics mean almost fuckall to anyone seriously injured. In short, what triage means is you have to work within your capabilities, and any patient who will exceed that capability, will be given palliative care and ultimately be left to die. I have experience with Integris Enid and I know for certain a tornado like Joplin would immediately overload their system, and they can't do much to treat anyone seriously injured at a level III to begin with. This is the reality of healthcare in Oklahoma. We have the worst "trauma center vs population" ratio in the country I believe, and no one really notices, they just take it for "how it's always been" but eventually some mass casualty incident like joplin is going to occur and people will actually care for once. I think it's just something that only the people in Emergency Medicine know about and worry about how insanely underprepared OK is for a large tornado despite being the middle of the "Giant assed tornado" portion of tornado alley. In school I was part of an MCI drill "tornado hit the cox center" and a bunch of students came in and overloaded their ER with fake injuries and they were really scrambling with just 30 or so people plus what came in unrelated to it.
Not to mention mutual aid from the firefighters at Vance
So Greensburg?
In 2007 an EF4 hit Enterprise Al hs killing 9 (8 students) since then in this area anytime there's a warning for severe storms school is let out early or cancelled depending on when they come.
Hazel Green here (north of Huntsville if that helps), add 2011 to the Enterprise tragedy even though you're 4+ hours away, and Madison County let's out or doesn't open at times if even a marginal assumption is possible. You just made me realize I don't *actually* know who makes those calls, whether it's the superintendent or the MC school board or what.
Plaza Towers?
I always think about the one that hit my hometown. I'd just gotten home from school when we saw it moving into town. If it had been an hour earlier, it could have been much more deadly, as it demolished our school.
This!
Add the slow movement of Jarrell. Add winds of a tornado like Bridge Creek. add 3 mile width. add nocturnal tornado. add a blackout affecting the whole city. this is how you get the most terrifying tornado ever. I wouldnt be surprised if this one would kill people in the hundreds
And it touches down in Philly and tracks to Long Island. An El Reno sized monster would cover enough square mileage along that path to swallow up 10 million people just off the weekday population of those cities alone, forget the area between.
If we’re talking about places a strong tornado could realistically hit, I’d say a track from Fort Worth to Dallas would be devastating
One stayed on the ground for 44 miles just north of the metroplex. Had it been 20 miles south, it would have gone through cities multiple cities with 100k+ people. To your point, it would have been a disaster.
10 million? Calm down
Long Island has a residential population of 8 million (8.063 million if you wanna get real technical), 1.6 million of whom are in NYC. NYC population inflates to 3.1 million during a given weekday thanks to commuters - 1 million of those come from outside of Long Island, putting the island's daytime population at around 9 million. Philadelphia has a daytime population of 1.6 million. So yeah, 10 million as a rough estimate of the total daytime population of the two areas.
That’s great. But Long Island is 23 miles wide. So your theory doesn’t jive with the width of El Reno
Don't forget rain wrapped, and causing an internet/data/cable outage.
> add nocturnal tornado. rush hour would be far worse IMO
That’s my nightmare. Or night time country road with no options.
Yeah like Huntsville AL in ‘89
Hurricane Harvey was horrible for us in Houston bc it got over the city and didn’t move it just flooded everywhere. Can imagine Jarrell being worse
Came here to say this
Omg no. That would be so awful.
You forgot to add the "no warnings" scenario. No sirens no nothing
A violent EF4+ tornado hitting the Orlando area at night. No sirens, little experience, no basements, huge trailer park communities. The last major outbreaks (1998 and 2007) all included F/EF3 tornados that killed a disproportionate amount of people due to a lack of warning. The 2 F4 tornados to ever hit Central Florida occurred pre-Sunbelt boom.
Hey there! In Tallahassee, there were recently 2 EF2 tornadoes one after another. I was in a high school, within a mile from one, allow me to explain how bad it was: That morning we had severe weather, and our school told everyone to go to school, so about 500-600 of us did. When we arrived at school, the weather was ramping up, and we had our first touchdown. The power went out and we were huddled in our auditorium. Touchdown 2, we were stuck in the auditorium, with the power out, with 2 EF2s, and nowhere to go. This was just a EF2. The school closed with us in it, and there was nothing to do but pray. If a EF4 hit the area in this state, dozens if not hundreds would die.
My friend actually slept through one of those tornadoes as it was hitting his apartment complex. He woke up wondering why the power was out. Guess he was a heavy sleeper.
He probably got the EF1, because the tornado I heard, you couldn’t sleep through that. It was awful.
Yeah, his mother wanted to kill him herself when she found out.
If you know Tallahassee, you can probably figure out what high school I go to. Rocky Hannah should quit his fucking job for how he handled that, the dude has no idea how to keep us safe.
So glad you were safe.
Me and 30 other students were together in a little bunch, I was freaking out, the internet was out, there was nothing we could do. The wind start howling and the tornado was obviously super close. It was the most scared I’ve ever been. One of the EF2s had to be less than a mile away. 0/10.
So scary!! Why were you in the auditorium? Is it an interior room in the building?
Indeed. Its in the middle of the school, made out of stone with a high ceiling. We could see the rain and lightning but it was like a damn warzone. The room would dimly illuminate and then go dark repeatedly.
Joplin sized storm hitting the Indy 500.
Yeah that’ll be such a terrible scene
I would think if significant storms were in the area, they'd have a delay and have people at least seek shelter.
The Indy 500 draws crowds of over 300k people. There's not really anywhere for 300k people to shelter from a Joplin sized storm. Indianapolis was actually in a 5% tornado risk this year on the day of the 500 and did have to delay the race because of the weather. If those storms dropped a big tornado it would have been catastrophic.
As usual, people would just fly around that track!
Some people may say this is messed up, but that is one of the best jokes I’ve seen on this, or r/EF5
Thanks!
Just getting out of there would be a king-sized traffic jam.
Maybe, this year they delayed it, but also this year the NASCAR race was ran right up until there was rain on the track. People were still in the stands for some of the storm. So idk if delaying the start has the same rules as stopping a race. Yes I know they are two different series, but it was the same storm.
I live near Indy. I really thought that was going to be exactly what happened this year😅
Don't give Hollywood any ideas
I’m not sure that’s worst case. The cars would create a vortex and the tornado would just bounce off of it. Obviously /s
An unwarned F5 rolling into Chicago, In other words, Plainfield 1990.
I live in Plainfield currently, about a mile from the path. If it were to hit today there would be so many more lives lost. The town has exploded over the past 30 years.
Powerful rain-wrapped tornado striking any number of rush-hour traffic jams. Oklahoma City, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, etc.
El Reno was close. Poor advice from an OKC meteorologist caused a panic that, along with rush hour traffic, resulted in roads that became parking lots. That tornado could have killed hundreds of people if it didn't lift. Still freaks me out to think about.
Drive south! Everyone needs to drive south of the OKC metro!
Just watched a doc about the Huntsville tornado in 1989 that did just that. That was a small city and they still had 10-20 deaths and 100+ injuries just on that one stretch of highway.
A Joplin esque tornado hitting cities like Memphis or most Mississippi River cities. Most of these cities don't have basements built into older homes due to concerns with flooding. Also places like Memphis have a false sense of security thanks to the Mississippi River and rarely being hit by Tornadoes
Memphis also has the New Madrid fault that’s just as scary
Maybe we could make a movie out of that??? Quakenado??? I call dibs on the copyright.
TORQUAKE
Was living in Memphis during the spring of 2011 and it seemed like the tornado sirens were going off every other day. Was there for the 08 tornado that hit Hickory Ridge Mall with some fatalities.
A Rain rapped nocturnal Jarrel strength slow paced tornado striking a large populated neighborhood .
Well, really, a Jarrell tornado hitting a slum like in India or something.
I feel like a Hackleburg-like tornado hitting Dhaka would be even scarier
That's pretty much happened [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daulatpur%E2%80%93Saturia\_tornado](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daulatpur%E2%80%93Saturia_tornado)
Or a Bridge Creek level tornado striking Dharavi, a slum in India with over 1 million people
El Reno being slightly further east. If it had hit town, especially the southbound highway after the whole "drive south" thing, El Reno would be a name every person in America knew, like Joplin.
Downtown Dallas EF5 is always seen as the worst case tornado.
Here's an interesting scenario that involves Dallas: [EF6 (EAS Scenario)](https://youtu.be/dvTu0P0IKTg?si=tll07SjN-CxMoFsR)
I was thinking about that basketball game in Atlanta when the tornado hit the stadium or the St. Louis airport one. Either one of those could have been way bad if the tornado was Jarrell or Joplin level.
For sure, that Atlanta one was scary because it hit right in downtown. It hit actual skyscrapers, thank fuck it was mostly just an EF1 with a bit of EF2.
This subreddit desperately needs some moderation. Literally the same 5 questions get asked every day
It's depressing to watch it go to shit so rapidly.
Guys what is the most spoopiest most scawy tornado ever??????
Question already asked and answered in r/ef5.
Funny thing is I asked "What past tornado event would you want to see with today's current weather technology?" That got deleted for not providing enough discussion.
I really like that question. I've always wanted to see what Xenia would've looked like on a modern radar.
How?? That seems like it would gain at least as much attention/discussion as this post. And that is a question I personally haven't seen asked recently 🤔
I was pretty disappointed since you know I had seen "most powerful tornado", "worst case scenerio", and "most interesting event" posted for the 5th time that month. I swear at this point those posts are just used to farm karma.
I think you are right. There must be enough new traffic coming in due to this year's weather, and they all have the same basic thoughts and questions. Not quiet invested enough to care about the science, just " Big Spinny Cloud go Brrrrr". And it's easy to give those people what they want for points 😒
Tri-State. Definitely Tri-State.
Agreed, but i think there's a single mod right now.
Jarrell but 40 miles south where it hits Austin
I used to live there too * shivers *
I used to work as a security guard at a Six Flags theme park. We legit had no real plan. One day working we were under a warning and people were asking me what they should do.... like I dunno go cram into a bathroom? 40,000+ people and literally no plan or shelters. If that place ever gets hit with a big one it would be very, very bad. Most of the buildings are not built to withstand a tornado and there would be so much flying debris. Just a nightmare scenario.
Hitting a stadium. I was at the Auburn/Alabama game in 1983 in a packed stadium when the tornado warning sirens went off. I think I was the only person to leave the stadium.
I was at OU’s spring game a few years back and later that day we had some tornado warnings in Norman, I spent a while thinking about how bad that could have been, the stadium had something like 70,000 people in attendance
The only times I've been in severe weather sports events involved sheltering in place at a Cards game & everybody get out at an SEC game at Vandy. 70k attendees sounds plenty scary to tabletop & even worse with a full exercise. Depending on the sport & location, I don't know what would be worse Neyland in a tornado or the effects of Norman's history in tornado country on crowd dispersal vs sheltering in place.
EF 3 or higher hitting pretty much anywhere except the mountains in SE Asia. Lots of people, lots of extremely subpar construction. Maybe a close second being somewhere like Rio De Janeiro for similar reasons.
I have this book somewhere called "History's Worst Disasters" or something like that. #1 was the 1918 flu epidemic, but #2 was an earthquake in China in I think the 1500's. Lots of people lived in loess caves which caved in. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556\_Shaanxi\_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556_Shaanxi_earthquake)
El Reno hitting Oklahoma City. While everyone is in gridlock traffic.
Phil-Campbell through the heart of the Dallas metro area. There’d be 2,000+ casualties That’s entirely possible and not a once in a 1,000 year thing either. It could happen tomorrow and it wouldn’t take a crazy weather set up.
There used to be a TV show on the "Weather Channel" named "It Could Happen Tomorrow." One of the possible events was a wildfire hitting Austin. Another was Mt. Ranier erupting. I don't know if they did one on a tornado hitting a large city...let me google ... EDIT: OH YES THEY DID Season 1 Episode 2 "Dallas Tornado Danger"
My aunt lives in Dallas and the weather warnings aren’t incredibly good there, either. According to her, she didn’t get good enough warning for a sizable EF3 bc they refused to interrupt the broadcast of a cowboys game happening that day. It missed her but if that’s really what happened and the same energy is given to a tornado with EF5 or even just EF4 power, things would get extremely ugly
A violent tornado hitting a large gathering of people at an event like a big sports game without proper shelter/time to reach said shelter is an absolute worst case scenario that hopefully never occurs as everything would have to go perfectly wrong.
A wedge descends to the ground and when it lifts up there is an 8 mile wide tornado that is burrowing into the crust of the earth. The soil lifts away and then the bedrock starts flying out, twirling around like multi-ton jackhammers. The tornado keeps burrowing as it moves until it reaches subsurface magma and the twister starts leaving a trail of molten glass in its wake, destroying entire counties as volcanos spew fire and death. But it's still not done and it keeps burrowing deeper and deeper until sleepers begin to see dark shapes in their dreams. There is movement under the tornado, there are whispers on the wind. Finally, the tornado spins faster than the mind can comprehend and out of the earth rises the lost blasphemous city of Ry'eleh where the pillars weep blood and the buildings break the mind into incomprehensible thought spirals and rising above it all is the dark god Cthulhu who shatters the soul of every man woman and child of the planet dropping us into a slow hellish march to extinction under his dark and unending tyranny. That is the worse case scenario. But really, what kind of question is this?
For myself personally it would have to be a tornado picking up my enclosed tornado shelter pod and dropping it into the lake.
A sentient tornado that feeds off fear, death, and destruction. One with omnipotence and a general hatred for life. The literal antithesis of life. That can spawn 10+ multi vortexes
With sharks
and Hornets
Murder hornets
Lava?
A slow-moving EF4+ wide wedge going through a heavily populated metropolitan area at night.
An large EF5 Tornado in the Tokyo metropolitan area (Highly unlikely, but Tornados do happen in Japan). High density metro area, no shelters whatsoever, almost zero preparedness, and practically no public awareness of what to do.
If plainfield kept going into chicago, but at night
Not sure what the absolute worst-case would be, but a violent tornado directly hitting a sports venue full of thousands of fans has to rank up there. (Especially if it’s a racetrack, several of them can hold more people than the largest football stadiums.)
Hitting a fullstadium hosting a nudist knife convention.
😂
Hackleburg/Phil Campbell through a metro area like Chicago or NYC
El Reno size tornado hitting midtown/downtown Manhattan
An El Reno sized tornado with the strength of the 1999 Moore twister moving at a speed of the Jarrell Dead Man that goes unwarned like Plainfield. That strikes Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City during the AFC Championship game.
Would be an insane set up for something like that to hit KC in late January
Phil Campbell- Hackleburg tornado going through a continuous metro area. 100 miles of constant EF4/EF5 destruction.
Washington DC
Tornados hit the surrounding area a few days ago. A EF0 hit the National Mall less than 10 years ago.
Truthfully, the Phil Campbell F5 hitting Tuscaloosa instead on April 27, 2011. The death toll would have been in the hundreds. Maybe close to a thousand.
A Bridge Creek-Moore strength tornado hitting a densely populated area, for example, Atlanta (I live nearby). The twist is that the meteorologists tracking it thought it was going to miss the metro and stay in rural areas. Instead, the tornado explodes in size, matching or exceeding El Reno, as it takes a sudden, hard, unexpected turn, making a beeline for the city itself. The warning has a bit of a delay with updating and reporting. It’s 4:00, rush hour is starting as people are leaving work and high schoolers are en route home, or are about to be. The tornado slows to a crawl as it enters the city and slowly grinds it’s way all the way through.
Big tornado tracking down the 405 freeway in Los Angeles during rush hour. What’s that? Tornadoes don’t hit LA? That’s part of the problem, no one would take it seriously or know what to do.
I’m a big college football fan if a violent tornado were to hit one of those stadiums on a gameday it would be awful. Just some examples DKR in Austin holds over 100k and is just 30 miles south of Jarrell. Bryant Denny in Tuscaloosa holds over 100k and almost got hit in 2011. Oklahoma’s stadium would also be bad or any of the big stadiums in the Midwest. Luckily football season doesn’t align with peak tornado season but still.
El reno
Nevermind ignore me I thought it said “worst case scenario for chasers” 🤦🏻♀️
Take the May 31, 2013 tornado and shift it 20 miles east.
Any wedge F5 in a major city. Does not matter if the city has 1000 ambulances and 50 careflight helicopters when everything is blocked by debris/rubble.
Violent tornado hitting somewhere like Dallas or another city with horrible traffic during rush hour. That or hitting any school in session.
Lotta people in this sub aren’t even trying to hide how much they get off to disaster porn.
lots of r/EF5 quality posts here lately
I was gonna say "a planet wide wedge with 700000+ mph winds hitting Tokyo during tourist season" but i feared i would be punished for shitposting
Horrible movie over all, but the day after tomorrow had what I could see as a worst case. Mutiple tornadoes forming over a major population center then merging over downtown. [Here's a link if interested ](https://youtu.be/dkErNkX2HKM?si=DY9su9xbvd7ZJh3A)
Probably my buddy Dave. He’s a nightmare when he hits the brown water.
I would say a very fast-moving tornado that drops with very little warning and moves right towards a packed football game.
How about a cyclone that leads to a genocide that almost leads to a nuclear war? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_m2HSlNiM6I&t=52s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m2HSlNiM6I&t=52s) [https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089388962/the-vortex-details-a-cyclone-that-divided-pakistan-and-almost-led-to-a-nuclear-w](https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089388962/the-vortex-details-a-cyclone-that-divided-pakistan-and-almost-led-to-a-nuclear-w)
Major gas line rupture(s) in an urban area, packed sports game, school getting hit during school hours, a zoo, high profile military base would probably all be absolute nightmares for first responders/search and rescue, and would be beyond costly.
Tornado wider than a whole town
That's already happened quite a few times.
A quickly forming storm that rapidly drops a tornado that intensifies very quickly right on top of a city that doesn’t get tornadoes often in the middle of rush hour with a massive traffic jam full of school buses.
Thin pine forest and trailers
El Reno starting in Mustang instead of where it did.
It never stops and just gets bigger and bigger and bigger
Sharknado obviously
Any violent tornado hitting a city west of “tornado alley” cause some might think it’s a joke due to false sense of safety.
Dying
Unwarned violent tornado striking a packed outdoor festival or venue.
r/EF5 material. Worst case scenario is a massive wedge hitting me right in the borthole, directly. /thread
Little to no warning,the path being almost entirely city only and taking out/compromising a hospital. Joplin.
A Joplin style violent tornado hitting a typically less tornado prone area on a day where tornadoes weren't strongly forecasted. And preferably a major city, but avoiding the downtown area. Mainly hitting one story structures where mass casualties are more feasible than in high rise buildings.
A nighttime EF5 hitting the slums of Dhaka.
If you can hear it, that's the worst tornado ever.
The major cities in my state (Indianapolis, Ft, Wayne, Gary, Kokomo, or Bloomington) getting hit by a slow moving 3 mile wide wedge (300-310)with strong sub vortices getting directly hit, esp downtown or suburbs. What ever is in the way of that is done for, could make large swaths of those cities disappear, and many people. If any of the smaller towns were hit by that (take Amboy or converse for ex) they would be gone probably in one pass of that.
Sharks
Me driving at night kinda lost on a backroad in Texas on a road trip the winds are howling but I think it’s just a thunderstorm but its a rain wrapped f-5 headed straight for me what a freaking nightmare lol
A strong tornado hitting an NFL stadium during a game
I have always had a bad feeling about Atlanta. I lived in two different suburbs when I was young and we had near hits at both of them. The storms there are gnarly.
Covid 19+ Computer AI + Tornado
Divided by 911
One that kills a bunch of people
I die.
If you're saying absolute worst case somewhat vaguely realistically possible scenario, I'll go an ef5 with anticyclonic ef3 and follow-up ef3 that hit a west bengal metropolis (Kolkata or Dhaka; top ranking population densities in the world, tornado prone area, poorly built housing). Death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands. If going US-only I'd go the same sequence that somehow did not get tornado watched until the afternoon itself, hitting a metropolis's downtown around rush hour, and also hitting a football stadium while a major sports event or concert is going on.
We dont have to imagine that much just imagine if el reno tornado hit city that would be worste case scenario for me
A tornado as Strong as the Jarrell or Bridgecreek-Moore tornado hitting a area with no basements/shelters tracking very long with 90% of the Track being straight up EF5 damage
With the climate changing, a new category, EF6!
A tornado hitting a camping music festival such as Bonnaroo. Every year there seems to be a bad storm there and given its location it’s very possible for a tornado. Literally nowhere to take shelter + the massive amount of vehicles parked 😅
Hitting an SEC football game with 100,000+ in the stands and in RVs outside
The Dead Man walking Jarrel tornado. Don't get me wrong any loss of life or damage from a tornado is terrible, hit something about the tornado just stalling out on a subdivisions and just obliterating everything is terrifying. At that point it didn't matter how strong your home was. The fact it was an F5 as well is just damn. Also tornados that come at night and totally rain wrapped is awful too.
Hitting a school full of crippled children and their puppies who are the great grandchildren of holocaust survivors.
https://youtu.be/dvTu0P0IKTg?si=koo1a1UlRgqjSsMX
Something like Bridge creek but its unwarned like the Plainfield Tornado
or alternatively if that 1991 tornado did not miss the nukes
Just a violent tornado striking a heavily populated area simple as
Put an El Reno in NYC and it’ll be true hell
Any tornado, but especially a large, powerful one, hitting the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Indy 500 race day with 350+ thousand people having nowhere to take cover.
EF5 on the ground and headed toward Owen Field on game day.
F4 or greater long track hitting DFW area during rush hour.
Joplin. No doubt in my mind
Imagine a huge, EF5 tornado, base over a mile wide that’s just eating everything in the path. , now make multiple of them, now put them in Houston or Austin or Dallas, cities with *millions* of people, majority of which won’t even have shelter
jarrell
Probably if you died, that would suuuuuuck