Joplin, MO, ~5 months later

[aMaff]

I was in Salt Lake City for the last 2 weeks on business. The flight back left at 8:30 in the morning which put me in "the heartland" in the late morning with the sun way overhead. Perfectly clear day, awesome day to sit by the window (which I usually don't prefer, but I usually fly at night lol). I take a break from watching a football game on my tiny TV to look at the "moving map" to see more or less where we're at and I see that we're coming up on Joplin, MO, on my side of the plane. I didn't think we'd be near enough to see it, but sure enough.

I didn't have time to grab my camera out of my bag but I had my phone handy. While not the best pictures I've ever taken, they're probably the most awe-inspiring, to me at least. From that angle, I think, it puts in frightening perspective the power that these storms can have.

It still looks like a disaster area from the air. There's a huge "brown" stripe straight east-west through the southern part of the town. I think the technical term is "ground scarring," but it just looked like that whole part of town was completely flattened.

Here are the low res pics, with links to the full res below:

http://www.mazdas247.com/members/aMaff/Joplin/Joplin1.jpg
http://www.mazdas247.com/members/aMaff/Joplin/Joplin2.jpg
http://www.mazdas247.com/members/aMaff/Joplin/Joplin3.jpg
http://www.mazdas247.com/members/aMaff/Joplin/Joplin4.jpg


What a hell of a thing.

 

[PrettyLilThing]

Yeah, we drove through whenever we moved from StL to Texas. The trees were still stripped and sideways. It was a mess everywhere. I know extreme makeover home edition helped out with 7? 8? homes but still not even close to fixing a quarter of the damage. So sad.

 

[Drbob31]

Unreal. Was touring through western Alabama a couple of weeks ago and saw the remnants of the damage there, also around half a year later. It's borderline unbelievable.

 

[mymmeryloss]

We were down in noel missouri a few weeks ago for a car show and took a trip through joplin.

I can tell u from experience that it will bring tears to your eyes.

The devastation is undescribable!