On May 27, 1997, three tornadoes merged into one and took a toll on the town of Jarrell, Texas. When all was said and done, more than two dozen were dead and damage to the town was extensive.
"It was especially hard, I mean the amount of people that were lost, the majority were kids you know. A lot of them weren't paying attention to the news, you know kids, cartoons and stuff." Paul Gonzales of local store HRM Cabinets said.
Today, there are new ways of warning and classifying damage when it relates to tornadoes.
The Jarrell tornado was classified as an F5 on the Fujita Scale when it happened ten years ago. The new Enhanced Fujita Scale, which just went into effect this year, now takes into consideration specific points of damage such as the corner of a roof blown off a home or a window blown in.
Larry Eblen of the National Weather Service explained the benefits of the new EF scale, which places a greater emphasis on structural engineering when evaluating severe weather damage.
"I'm referred to as a WCM -- Warning Coordination Meteorologist, [and] what I hear from the WCMs all over the whole country was they have been dying for something like this, they're out there making halfway intelligent guesses, and now they're making not guesses but good estimates based on some real engineering," Eblen said.
In the decade since the Jarrell tornado, the increased number of outlets to get weather information has also improved warning distribution. Warnings are available online, over cell phones, and via weather radio. But in order to receive the warning information, necessary measures must be taken ahead of time.
"What we need to do in some places is improve communication, and in other places, just maybe a heads up in advance, so that they are turning on their televisions, and checking the internet and looking to see what the latest is. That's probably the safest," Eblen said.
Troy Kimmel is a former television meteorologist. He was on the air the day of the Jarrell tornado. He emphasizes the importance of knowing tornado safety rules.
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Jarrell Part 4
Because of the destruction caused by the Jarrell storm, more reliable warning systems have been put into place.
 
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"I think as far as the general public is concerned, that people get it now about tornado safety, we've tried to simplify the rules as much as we can. Put as many walls between you and the outside as you can get, get on the lowest floor that you can get, I think people get it, and our death tolls we've seen have come down," Kimmel said.
"We had an F5, we know from the standpoint that F5's are hard to survive, unless you are below ground, they are just hard to survive, and the city of Jarrell was in the worst possible place at the worst possible time: at 3:45 p.m. on the 27th day of May of 1997," Kimmel continued.
But now, the town of Jarrell has made a new reputation for itself, a reputation based on safety, not the destruction left behind a decade ago. Not only is Jarrell one of the most educated towns when it come to tornado safety, most homes today in Jarrell have storm shelters.
