David Von Drehle: Warm air rises. The earth is an elegant machine, and this is one of its simple and tireless engines, recycling the oceans into life-giving rains, wafting rainbow-striped hot-air balloons into clear skies, putting the dance in the flame of a birthday candle. This law must not be thwarted. There is hell to pay.
On Sunday, May 22, sometime after 5 p.m. C.T. in the Midwest, a column of warm air struggled against a ceiling of colder air pouring in from the north. When at last the irresistible engine pushed a hole through the ceiling, the pent-up energy shot upward in a mad rush, whirling and roaring. It could have happened anywhere on the mostly empty prairie. This time it happened as the air mass passed through the south side of Joplin, Mo.
It sucked the roof from St. John’s Regional Medical Center and shattered the windows, sweeping reams of medical records heavenward. It snipped utility lines like thread and pulverized St. Mary’s Church and school yet left the giant cross towering over the rubble, unscathed.
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