2011 Joplin tornado
Overall, the tornado killed 158 people (with an additional three indirect deaths), injured some 1,150 others, and caused damages amounting to a total of $2.8 billion. It was the deadliest tornado to strike the United States since the 1947 Glazier–Higgins–Woodward tornadoes, and the seventh-deadliest overall.
2011 Joplin tornado
However, the EF5 rating stood as the National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri stated that their survey teams found only a very small area of EF5 structural damage and that it could have easily been missed in the survey (at and around St. John's Medical Center). Bill Davis, head of the NWS station in Springfield, said that the results of the study "do not surprise me at all," adding that "there was only a very small area of EF5 damage in Joplin...we knew right off the bat there was EF4 damage. It took us longer to identify the EF5 damage and that it would take winds of over 200 miles per hour to do that damage." Additionally, the basis for the EF5 rating in Joplin was mainly contextual rather than structural, with non-conventional damage indicators such as removal of concrete parking stops, manhole covers, reinforced concrete porches, driveways, and asphalt were used to arrive at a final rating of EF5, as it was concluded that these specific instances of damage were indicative of winds exceeding 200 miles per hour. The presence of windowed structural debris, instances of very large vehicles such as buses, vans, and semi-trucks being thrown hundreds of yards to several blocks from their points of origin, the fact that some homeowners never located their vehicles, and the overwhelming extent and totality of the destruction in Joplin were also taken into consideration to conclude EF5 intensity.