2008-02-05 DISC: TX / AR / MO / IL / KY / TN / MS

[Brian Emfinger]

Here is a little map I just put together to show the path the storm/tornado(s) took. The tornado started off in elevations of less than 500ft but past Atkins it went into the mountains and it went through extremely mountainous terrain as high as around 2000ft. The NWS Little Rock so far still thinks this tornado as being continuously on the ground. An air survey will be done tomorrow so they will know for sure then. BTW, I just want to say that John Robinson and the rest of the NWS LZK office are simply outstanding with absolutely everything from the warnings to the aftermath.

NWS LZK has a lot more pictures on their site now including this one of a Jeep in a tree at Zion (Izard County)

Also, if anyone missed the story about the 18 month old being found in a field after being mistaken for a doll (his mother died in the tornado)...Here it is:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080207/D8ULP2CG0.html

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

We drove up to Clinton about an hour after the tornado hit on the 5th while on our way back to Norman. Its pretty rough country from the interstate to Clinton, though the tornado would have likely still been quite visible from the highway coming from the south. There are lots of tall trees in this region, a few of which were blocking some of the side roads we drove down. I would have loved to see video of that tornado going up and down the hills near there.

 

[Bill Hark]

Here is an interesting amateur video from someone who had a close encounter with a spinup in Southhaven, MS just south of Memphis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceh_p6sOCWw

This is the beginning of the tornado that tracked south and east of Memphis.

Bill Hark

 

[Chris Hayes]

Has anyone heard about what the death toll is? I've been trying to find out but I'm seeing varying numbers. Wiki is saying it's up to 59, but I havent seen that anywhere. Wiki also says 47 tornados confirmed so far.

 

[Brandon Smith]

Here is an interesting amateur video from someone who had a close encounter with a spinup in Southhaven, MS just south of Memphis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceh_p6sOCWw

This is the beginning of the tornado that tracked south and east of Memphis.

Bill Hark

Typing "Southhaven tornado" into Youtube brings up a couple other interesting videos of the event. The first one looks like it's taken from a second story bedroom and has no sound with it. The tornado can be seen forming in the distance. The second video is very ominous. A family tapes the tornado passing just outside their neighborhood. Although you know the tornado is there, you cannot see the cloud base or the tornado in the distance. Transformers around them are blowing up as the sirens start up halfway through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLOPenXZijM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMYXBmSSdYI

 

[Chad Cowan]

Video of Jackson, TN tornado posted by Youtube user "rforry":

 

[Dave Gallaher]

The Lawrence County, AL storm has been upgraded to EF-4. Photo of two large-diameter trees snapped just above ground level is pretty dramatic. This and others are posted at the NWS survey site http://www.srh.noaa.gov/hun/ along with radar loops of both Lawrence and Jackson County EF-4s.

 

[Karen Politte]

Hey Brian,

That's a neat elevation map with the tornado track/s overlaid. Thanks for that. You sure don't see that sort of terrain lying under a tornado's track very often in the Plains - I'll second the notion that it would have been some sight to have seen this storm in daylight as it mowed through the woods and over hills and down valleys.

I had the pleasure of meeting with John Robinson et. al. during an AMS meeting the week before this event, and I'll also second that the NWS LZK and crew from NWS LZK are really an amazing team and - not only did they cover the warnings masterfully during Tuesday's dire situation - but they have had people out in the field SINCE Tuesday making sure that these tornadoes go down in the records accurately - which is a huge deal to anybody who cares about what we collectively care about. Bravo guys!

Incidentally - NWS LZK state that a fly-over of the Atkins/Clinton tornado track has been scheduled with the Civial Air Patrol for today (Feb. 8th) to help determine if it was a tornado family or if the damage was caused by one tornado with a 120-mile long track, and that there will indeed be a QRT on the scene during the day to assess the damage further. One wonders if Mr. Marshall is skulking amidst the piney woods somewhere north of here.......hope he's brought his thermals......it's 28oF out there right now. I also wonder if an EF4 will be rearing it's ugly head out of all this mess. I guess time will tell.

KL

 

[Terry Tyler]

a freind of mine in memphis was up there when all that stuff was goin down...

i told him to grab a couple shots of the storm, but he looks to be on a different side of the storm...this is the picture he took...

now, i told him there wasnt anything too outstanding about this picture, and if there was a tornado possible in this picture, it wouldent be visible because of his vantage point, and if there was something...it would be that little lowering behind the trees...you can see its obscured by the precip...

now, i showed him someone elses pictures of the same storm, but from a different angle apparently SE of him...now, im not too sure about this picture, cause the date/time says 1/13/07...but, they both look pretty similar...also, since only 1 wind report was recieved in southern, TX on 1-13-07, im assuming that the date might not have been set right...i found it on the WREG website too, saying it was from the "memphis storms" so im positive its the same storm...

well, i told him to check out the mall...and see what all happened over there, and he went down there...and he took a couple pictures...

take a look!

thats a big daddys pawnshop in that strip-mall area...and here are a couple trees tore up...

some roof damage and whatnot...

- credit sam slay for these photos...

 

[Randy Bowers]

This may seem mean and cruel, but one can't help but think "natural selection". The event was well forecasted, and from what I can tell, warnings had ample lead time. The few reports I saw mentioned deaths in mobile home parks... hmm what a surprise.

Can anyone say nail on the head??? What does one have to do to convince people in these states that late winter/early spring is "showtime" for tornadoes?

I guess it's easy to judge when you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. For those of us that have any amount of sense whatsoever, it's self-explanatory. For others, I'll spell it out for you. In many cases, survival was not possible without being underground. If you would like for me to draw you a picture or otherwise illustrate, I'll be more than happy to. But, I think the above pictures do a well enough job of that.

I’m not saying that ignorance wasn’t a factor, but was certainly not the cause for the large number of deaths.

Sincerely,
One dumb southerner that hopefully will someday learn how to pull my head out of my posterior, buy some shoes, and get my teeth fixed. Maybe I'll eventually move up to a double wide from my single wide, too.

 

[Karen Politte]

There's no point in finger-pointing after an event that has killed so many people, and that especially goes for when you're pointing the finger at the victims......even if they had had a few too many whiskeys before the NWR went off.

What I think we are failing to realize is that - outside of the chaser/weather enthusiast community - weather is really just a very, very small portion of every other person's life. It's the small sliver in the piechart of "What's Important" that never gets seen. It's something that never even warrants consideration unless it is interfering with social events. People are busy with their children, wallpapering the spare bedroom, working all hours, putting new tires on their cars and going canoeing. As much as a chaser's blood spurts out of their ears every time we see a local tornado victim who cries about how little time they had to prepare - we must bear in mind that this person is not a chaser and has absolutely no use for an internet connection in meteorological terms. They wouldn't know 250kts of GTG shear if it came up and smacked them in the arse, and a flying eagle is their Nation's proud symbol - not something to be scared of.

There is absolutely no way you can warn everybody and there is absolutely no way that you can make sure that everybody realizes the gravity of the situation. Unless the tornado is affecting their property at the time the warning comes out, most "normal" people will wait and see if the storms comes towards them......with probably only a passing thought about which room is their interior room, or the fact that they have no basement.

It is true that the Nov-Dec-Jan-Feb timeframe can be quite active tornado-wise for the southern U.S. states - but yet again to "normal" people this really doesn't concern them. They are not like us. They are not sitting at their computers every day looking at the GFS progs to see if the next Big One for Arkansas is on it's way.

Yet another factor in all of this is the fact that these storms were no slouches. They were travelling at 60mph or faster, and they contained extremely voilent tornadoes. We have all seen huge, intense shear couplets with hundreds of storms only to find out that it barely produced. Why this is, I don't know. It's one of the mysteries of tornadogenesis. On Tuesday, however, these storms all produced in a big way and had large, fast-moving, violent torndoes associated with them. What's more - Arkansas (and I'm sure states further east) have far more spread-out populations than the Plains states. Rather than one huge center of 1million+ people, Arkansas' population is very evenly distributed throughout regional cities and towns of 5, 10, 20 and 30,000 people. Consequently - when an event like Tuesday's happens and a storm produces a significant EF3 or EF4 tornado - that tornado has a far greater chance of mowing through populated areas, rather than churning harmlessly through Prairie such as in Oklahoma or Kansas.

Meanwhile, I await the QRT's findings with anticipation on the storms that completely destroyed several of my colleague's family's homes.

KL

 

[Randy Bowers]

I couldn't agree more, Karen. That is certainly an issue—the lack of awareness, and should be a great concern to all meteorologists. I think, for the most part, it is. Although, it seems the importance of good communication and the value of outreach is underestimated by a handful of meteorologists. There’s a lot of work for meteorologists to do, not just in the science itself. The perception of warnings is a problem—not just in the south, but in the plains and other tornado-prone areas as well.

 

[Dan Robinson]

The problem is despite how bad outbreaks like this can be, the reality is that the chance of getting hit by a tornado for any one person is so slim as to be negligible. Unfortunately, most people realize that and it affects their response. It's like worrying about a piece of an airplane falling off and hitting you in the head. No one is going to carry a helmet around to protect against that threat, they'll just take their chances.

This isn't to say that people shouldn't be responsible enough to heed the plethora of watches and warnings put out well in advance, but still, the "it's not going to happen to me" mentality will always be there. I think it's a matter of people getting the warnings but not heeding them. They accept the risk of getting hit because it is so slim, and therefore don't take action. Most people will never see a tornado in their lifetime, let alone get hit by one.

 

[Brian Emfinger]

What's more - Arkansas (and I'm sure states further east) have far more spread-out populations than the Plains states. Rather than one huge center of 1million+ people, Arkansas' population is very evenly distributed throughout regional cities and towns of 5, 10, 20 and 30,000 people. Consequently - when an event like Tuesday's happens and a storm produces a significant EF3 or EF4 tornado - that tornado has a far greater chance of mowing through populated areas, rather than churning harmlessly through Prairie such as in Oklahoma or Kansas.

Thats an outstanding point of which I hadn't even thought. Arkansas and states east of plains doesn't have a large population and your exactly right about the distribution. You can't go too far in Arkansas (even in the most rugged areas) without finding a community or at least a few houses. This definitely goes into (along with terrain and night time storms) why the lower ms valley can have such high death totals.

 

[Randy Bowers]

...but still, the "it's not going to happen to me" mentality will always be there [...] They accept the risk of getting hit because it is so slim, and therefore don't take action.

I agree with that, and I really don't know what can be done to change that mentality.

The risk that any one of us would be killed in an auto accident is slim as well. But most of us take precautions such as wearing our seat belt and minimizing any distractions. So, why would people not take similar precautions for tornado events (i.e. buying a weather radio)?