4/24/10 DISC: MS/AL

[Dave Gallaher]

+1 on the SPC nailing it. I don't think they could have been more on target. Cudos also to the various community officials that cancelled events a day ahead of time based on the SPC message's impact.

It's very validating to read comments like Jeff Piotrowski's regarding the visual characteristics and structure of this big Deep South storm. On several of my near-encounters I've witnessed rolling walls of cloud, rain and fog that were not identifiable visibly as tornadoes until their passage revealed damage.

The 1989 Huntsville tornado was very similar in terms of not showing classic tor features; I've never seen any good photos of it. Of course, there was very little lead time, so nobody had much chance to cam up and shoot.

 

[Ryan Wichman]

Latest update per Jackson, MS NWS:

HERE IS A PRELIMINARY SUMMARY OF THIS TORNADO:

BEGINNING POINT: 5 MILES W OF TALLULAH, LA 32.408N, 91.283W
AT 11:06 AM
ENDING POINT: 5.5 MILES N OF STURGIS, MS 33.430N, 89.054W
AT 1:52 PM
PATH LENGTH: 149 MILES
MAXIMUM WIDTH: 1.75 MILES
RATING: EF-4, WITH MAXIMUM WINDS OF 170 MPH
CASUALTIES: 10 TOTAL FATALITIES WITH DOZENS OF INJURIES

IT MUST BE STRESSED THAT ALL OF THIS INFORMATION IS PRELIMINARY
AND SUBJECT TO LATER ADJUSTMENT. A TORNADO OF THIS STRENGTH AND
MAGNITUDE REQUIRES A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF DAMAGE SURVEYS AND DATA
ANALYSIS. AN ANALYSIS OF AERIAL SURVEY INFORMATION COULD STILL
RESULT IN THE TORNADO BEING BROKEN UP INTO MORE THAN ONE PATH.

 

[Chris Hayes]

Does 149 miles qualify as being long track? lol j/k Looking up on severe plot it appears it's the longest track tornado since November, 1992 and will be in the top 15 tornado track lengths since 1950 IF it's not broken up into more than 1 track.

 

[Mike Smith]

No question! This would be in the top 0.01% of tornado occurrences.

 

[Randy Bowers]

Does anyone have a Top 10/20 list of longest tornado tracks in US History? Or perhaps even modern US History (since ~1950)?

I'm just curious to see a list and where this Yazoo City tornado will eventually stack up (once they finalize the track and everything).

I tried Google, but it let me down

Thanks in advance.

AJL

"...Number 21, the Guin, Alabama, tornado created the remarkable track across the Bankhead National Forest [...]. Doswell and Burgess suggested that the 98-mile Woodward track may be somewhat longer, so if one must speculate, a good choice for second place is either the Guin or Woodward tornadoes." -- Grazulis 1993.

Guin's path length was 103 miles. 21 tornadoes were listed with path lengths between 105 and 170 miles, however Grazulis cautioned that there is "strong likelihood that they were tornado families." Since Grazulis' publication, I can only think of two other extremely long-track tornadoes (11/21/92 in Mississippi and 2/5/08 in Arkansas), both of which fall short of 149 miles. Am I missing any?

Still searching through the Significant Tornadoes book...

 

[Alex Lamers]

"...Number 21, the Guin, Alabama, tornado created the remarkable track across the Bankhead National Forest [...]. Doswell and Burgess suggested that the 98-mile Woodward track may be somewhat longer, so if one must speculate, a good choice for second place is either the Guin or Woodward tornadoes." -- Grazulis 1993.

Guin's path length was 103 miles. 21 tornadoes were listed with path lengths between 105 and 170 miles, however Grazulis cautioned that there is "strong likelihood that they were tornado families." Since Grazulis' publication, I can only think of two other extremely long-track tornadoes (11/21/92 in Mississippi and 2/5/08 in Arkansas), both of which fall short of 149 miles. Am I missing any?

Still searching through the Significant Tornadoes book...

Thanks Randy. Isn't there a list near the beginning of the book that has that information? I know he has lists of killer tornadoes, etc., but I wasn't sure if path length was one of them.

The 08 one in Arkansas was 123 miles IIRC, but I could be mistaken. This Yazoo City tornado is definitely one of the longest in the recent past.

AJL

 

[Randy Bowers]

Isn't there a list near the beginning of the book that has that information?

Yep, and only five are listed as having path lengths greater than 149 miles. Of those, four are flagged as having a "strong likelihood" of being tornado families.

1.) March 18, 1925 - 219 miles
*2.) April 9, 1947 - 170 miles
*3.) Feb 21, 1971 - 160 miles
*4.) April 24, 1908 - 155 miles
*5.) May 26, 1917 - 155 miles

 

[Alex Lamers]

Yep, and only five are listed as having path lengths greater than 149 miles. Of those, four are flagged as having a "strong likelihood" of being tornado families.

1.) March 18, 1925 - 219 miles
*2.) April 9, 1947 - 170 miles
*3.) Feb 21, 1971 - 160 miles
*4.) April 24, 1908 - 155 miles
*5.) May 26, 1917 - 155 miles

Hmm that's interesting because when I go to the Online Severe Plot, and plot all tracks 1950-2008 with a path length >149 miles I get about 10 results.

There's an inconsistency there somewhere.

Whatever way you slice it, though, this was an extremely rare case.

AJL

 

[Drew.Gardonia]

Hmm that's interesting because when I go to the Online Severe Plot, and plot all tracks 1950-2008 with a path length >149 miles I get about 10 results.

There's an inconsistency there somewhere.

Whatever way you slice it, though, this was an extremely rare case.

AJL

4 of the 5 results that were posted were prior to 1950, so maybe that's why they didn't show up in your query.

 

[Ben Faber]

Does anyone have a Top 10/20 list of longest tornado tracks in US History? Or perhaps even modern US History (since ~1950)?

I'm just curious to see a list and where this Yazoo City tornado will eventually stack up (once they finalize the track and everything).

I tried Google, but it let me down

Thanks in advance.

AJL

Here's a list of top 10 longest tracks from the Paducah NWS site:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/pah/?n=1925_tor_gi

 

[Randy Bowers]

Hmm that's interesting because when I go to the Online Severe Plot, and plot all tracks 1950-2008 with a path length >149 miles I get about 10 results.

There's an inconsistency there somewhere.

Whatever way you slice it, though, this was an extremely rare case.

AJL

There's definitely conflicting information between SeverePlot and Grazulis' work. I'll have to dig a little deeper to find out the exact differences in the two datasets. I think data on SeverePlot is derived from the Storm Data publication, but Storm Data contained surveys that were conducted prior to the early/mid-1970s in a retrospective manner and without great detail. Grazulis explains somewhere in this book how his methodology was quite a bit different and involved work of much greater detail. Someone else on the forum may know more about the differences in the two. I'll try and find the section where he talks about that.

One example is the February 21, 1971 tornado which also coincidentally happened in Mississippi. SeverePlot shows a ~170 mile continuous path length, but Grazulis has it flagged as a tornado family in his list of longest tornado tracks. Skipping forward to the narrative on that particular tornado, he says: "Twenty-one people died at Pugh City, two at Swiftown, six at Morgan City, two died 2m west of Greenwood, and four people died near Money. From there to Oxford, damage was less severe and the tornado path was not continuous."

 

[E. Clark]

Here is an interesting site that provides kml overlays on Google Earth maps of various outbreaks and tracks, including those of the 1974 Super Outbreak.
.
Sorry about the length of the link.
http://www.tornadohistoryproject.co...&dwid=on&dlen=on&dcou=on&format=basic&p=1&s=1

 

[mikedeason]

Just a quick report. I was not able to chase this event, but was at home (about one mile north of Parrish, AL) when the Walker Co., AL tornado hit. After all my years chasing and living in the plains, I have to say this was one of the very few times I was actually "spooked." We received quite a bit of hail up to 1.5" in diameter at my location and could hear the wind south of us. What made this especially scary for me was the rapidity with which it developed.

I was able to survey the damage in Parrish this past Sunday. There is quite a bit of EF0-EF1 damages throughout the residential section of town with many trees uprooted and several roofs removed. One building was destroyed, but it appeared to be a pole/sheet metal garage type of what I would consider to be generally poor construction. The great thing is there were no major injuries or deaths here, although one Albertville resident did die as a result of a fall while talking shelter.

 

[Terry Tyler]

Did anyone chasing or viewing storms in MS/AL on Saturday experience problems with Grlevel3 ? I think this post is appropriate for the DISC thread of the day. If it isnt, sorry mods you can remove it.

I had chronic data outages from about 1130 on throughout the day. My internet was working perfect, but the program would never update. I rebooted several times and even cleaned my temp/registry files but the program still failed to update. FYI I am using one of the newer versions of the software and am not sure if this a problem with the program itself, the NWS cutting off the level3 feeds to conserve resources, or too many people pulling on the level3. I would like to know if anyone else experienced this on 4/24/10 and what could have caused this problem if this just is happening to me.

 

[Tony Cook]

Terry, there is an active thread about the issue. See:
http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=23716

TonyC