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Initially a weak pencil-like tornado near the Bell-Williamson County line, the funnel rapidly intensified into a 3/4-mile-wide multi-vortex storm at around 3:45 pm CDT. Its first damage occurred three minutes later at 3:48 pm CDT in the northwestern portion of Jarrell as it struck the Double Creek Estates as a slow-moving wedge tornado, completely sweeping away the entire subdivision. It moved to the south-west, which is very unusual for tornadoes in North America. It later entered a wooded area before dissipating after damaging numerous trees.[2] The tornado produced some of the most extreme ground scouring ever documented, as the earth at and around the Double Creek estates was scoured out to a depth of 18 in (46 cm), reducing lush fields of grass to wide expanses of mud. When the tornado crossed county roads outside of Jarrell, it tore 500-foot (152 m) lengths of asphalt from the roads.[2] About 40 structures were completely destroyed by the tornado and dozens of vehicles were rendered unrecognizable after being thrown great distances, some more than half a mile. Some of the vehicles were pulverized into many pieces and strewn across fields, and others were simply never found. The vehicles that remained relatively intact were sandblasted and completely caked with mud and grass.[25] A small-steel frame recycling facility was completely obliterated, with nothing left of the structure but the foundation and a few mangled steel beams. Telephone poles in the area were snapped off at the base and splintered, and trees in the area were completely shredded and debarked.[25] Many researchers, after reviewing aerial damage photographs of Double Creek Estates, considered the Jarrell storm to be the most violent tornado, in terms of damage intensity, that they had ever seen.[26] Many of the homes in the tornado's path were well-constructed and bolted to their foundations, but the tornado left only the slab foundations, and there was virtually no debris left throughout most of the area.[27] The debris from the destroyed homes was finely granulated into small fragments, and scattered for long distances across the countryside. Several entire families were killed in the tornado, including all five members of the Igo family and all four members of the Moehring family.[28] The tornado's slow forward movement combined with its extreme intensity were likely the main factors as to why the damage it produced was so remarkably intense. The tornado also picked up large amounts of loose soil as it deeply scoured the ground, producing a sandblasting effect on the houses and their occupants. Only one person was seriously injured and less than a dozen people suffered minor injuries after the tornado, a testament to the small probability of survival in the Double Creek neighborhood.[29]
There were 27 human fatalities in the Double Creek subdivision. In addition, about 300 cattle were killed by the storm. It was reported that some of the tornado victims sustained such extreme physical trauma, that recovery teams had difficulty distinguishing human remains from animal remains scattered throughout the area. About 10 minutes prior to the main event, eyewitnesses spotted additional tornadoes north and west of Jarrell.[30]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Central_Texas_tornado_outbreak
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if you've not read about some of the extreme damage caused by this violent tornado, when you do it might raise the hair on the back of your neck.
What defence/evacuation measures do large cities in that area have in place in case something like this happens?
Tornadoes are far too random and the populations too large for something like that. You know they are going to form in a general region, but there is no exact predictive science as to where they'll touch down.
The other thing to consider is that F4s and F5s constitute perhaps 1% of all storms. The large majority are small storms.
As far as structure is concerned, a standard basement wouldn't be much help against a Jarrell type tornado, which would vacuum the contents of the basement out.
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