Joplin tornado

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The Joplin tornado was an extremely devastating EF5 tornado that struck the city of Joplin, Missouri during the early evening hours of May 22, 2011, causing catastrophic damage to Joplin and surrounding regions. As part of a larger late-May sequence of tornadic activity, the extremely violent tornado began just west of Joplin at about 5:34 p.m. CDT (UTC–05:00) and quickly reached a peak width of nearly 1 mile (1.6 km) as it tracked through the southern part of the city, before later impacting rural Jasper and Newton counties and dissipating after 38 minutes on the ground at 6:12 p.m. The tornado was on the ground for a total of 21.62 miles (34.79 km). The tornado devastated a large portion of the city of Joplin, damaging nearly 8,000 buildings and destroying over 4,000 houses. The damage—which included major facilities like one of Joplin's two hospitals as well as much of its basic infrastructure—amounted to a total of $2.8 billion (equivalent to about $4 billion today), making the Joplin...

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