Monday, April 11, 2011

Some Videos of The Mapleton IA Tornado

It appears that Saturday evening's Mapleton Iowa tornado was well covered by storm chasers and their early warnings are credited by many for the few injuries and NO fatalities in that western Iowa town of about 1300 people.

First off- is a video from some people who were just out for a road trip- and they drive through Mapleton about an hour before the tornado struck- then encounter storm chasers and the storm itself.


Other storm chaser videos show more or less a large dust devil that grew into the EF-3 funnel that went trough Mapleton around 7:20 p.m..

I warn video viewers in advance of some coarse language and insensitivity of some of the storm chasers.

The area had been under a Tornado Watch for several hours- and the spotter reports gave Mapleton about a 10-15 minute warning before the town was hit.


There were more than 2 dozen tornado reports throughout the northwestern quarter of Iowa Saturday evening- yet there were less than 20 injuries with most of those in Mapleton- the worst of which was a broken leg.


Storm chasers entering the town after the tornado encountered darkness and confusion- and in this day of instant communications- it was more than an hour after the tornado struck Mapleton until it was apparent to the outside world just how bad the town had been struck.

More than 60% of Mapleton suffered varying degrees of damage.


I was listening to an AM radio station in Fort Dodge who were doing live severe weather reports- and even up to an hour and a half after Mapleton had been hit there were only sporatic- "unconfirmed" civilian reports that a major tornado had stuck there.


CSW was one of the first news media outlets in the nation to report the Mapleton tornado and if such a tornado outbreak occurs in MetroRegion Kansas City- our wide-area radio- camera and radar coverage will break that story here first.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

well i have to say in one of the videos i was very entertained by the peanut gallery :)

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