Right, but as the link says, that is a county-based alert system. That’s way too large to be useful. They mention trying to get it to smaller segments, but I don’t think they’re actually there yet.
i think that is what happened. the kids could go if a car picked them up.
I don’t know where they get this but that tornado was not TWO MILES WIDE. Not that the end that was touching the ground.
Does anyone know where they get that figure?
Yes but risk is the combination of probability and outcome. It’s more rare that a tornado will hit me than say getting a splinter, but the outcome of the splinter is minimal. The outcome of a tornado has a much higher mortality rate.
I live in an area that’s seen probably a couple of dozen tornadoes in the last 50 years. One of them removed everything in it’s path. It just makes sense to incorporate safe rooms in buildings. It’s not a financial deal breaker to do so. All a school needs is a reinforced hallway. And since there seems to be some kind of unwritten law that any school building over 50 years old is evil it’s just a matter of time before new ones are built. They’ve literally replaced every school building in the city I grew up in and they’re doing it in the city I live in now. Bring forth the rebar and let there be concrete.
True, but what prompted this thread was the comments of many people on (mostly other) websites who seem to have no idea of cost-benefit analysis. “Spend whatever it takes!” sounds great on paper, but in practice cost MUST be taken into account.
I agree, as long as it’s done at the time of construction. Retrofitting can be cost-prohibitive (if it can even be done at all).
Not according to some people; they want nothing less than fully-underground reinforced bunkers (in a region where the soil structure makes building such structures tricky).
Yep, that’s the way to do it! Retrofit old buildings as best we can, write building codes to mandate that all new construction be able to handle EF1- EF2 winds and suffer only repairable damage, and make a safe room (above ground or below ground) designed for EF 5 winds code as well. Safety and cost-effectiveness married: what’s not to like? 
right after the storm the media was saying 1 to 2 miles wide.
the weather service evaluation team said it was 1.3 miles. they examine the earth and what is or was on it and can use that evidence to give it more exact characterization.
I’m very familiar with the area. I’ve looked at the maps of the storm track. If it were that wide my sister wouldn’t have a house at all.
The actual destructive part was much smaller than a mile.
Most violent tornadoes have a complex internal structure, with multiple small vortices rotating around a common central point. The small vortices have very high winds and do most of the severe damage, while the winds in the outer part of the tornado away from the small vortices are much less destructive. So that could explain how a tornado could both be very wide and have a narrow path of major destruction.
KFOR reported that the debris ball was two miles wide and I think the media just ran with that. The “debris ball” is the radar reflection of debris swirling around a tornado.
The size also fluctuated and was probably a fraction of a mile in certain places.
Re: how wide was the tornado?
Here is the NWS preliminary report. You can see that the damage ranges from minimal to major. My semi-educated guess is that they get the width from the widest area of damage, not just where the funnel is.
p.s. Here is an amazing scalable before/after graphic.
I think that a good reason to improve the shelter provided by the schools, whether its better hallways or a full scale storm shelter, is to keep the parents from thinking they immediately have to pick up a kid when dangerous weather is imminent. If the parents believed that the kids were safer where they were, then the parents can focus on seeking their own shelter. The result is fewer people driving around when the shouldn’t be.
Yeah, it actually was that wide at one point, based on the width of the destroyed area.
Where it went by your sister’s house it may not have been that wide, but tornadoes are hardly consistent in size from start to finish. The width varies over time.
The medical examiner reported that six of the children who died at Plaza Towers suffocated after being buried under a mass of bricks, steel and other materials as the building collapsed. A seventh child who died there, 8-year-old Kyle Davis, was killed instantly by an object - perhaps a large piece of stone or a beam - that fell on the back of his neck.
The seven children who died at Plaza Towers Elementary School were initially reported to have drowned because of a broken water main. Officials now say those children were asphyxiated when the building crumbled on top of them.
on a tv news show a person (with the Moore schools i recall) was interviewed. they said that after Sandy Hook people were wanting schools to have bullet proof exteriors with centrally controlled access, this would cost money they didn’t have to spend nor would they ever likely be provided. they have trouble getting enough money just to maintain education.
My sister who lives in Moore but teaches in Jones caught me up with a few things. Her school had a fire several years ago. When they rebuilt, they built a tornado safe room. It’s the library. It is completely interior and has 18 inch thick concrete walls and ceiling re-enforced with re-bar.
So I can be done.
My sisters house did get hit by debris. (and covered with mud)