4/9/09 DISC: OK/KS/TX/LA/AR/MO

[Sam Shamburger]

Preliminary storm surveys from NWS SHV show a long-track EF2 tornado passed all the way across the city on April 9th, including moving through the downtown area and Barksdale AFB:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/productview.php?pil=PNSSHV


This appears to be the third tornado in history to strike downtown Shreveport:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/downtown.html

 

[Lanny Dean]

Shreveport sup srv

After getting home from chasing north of Tulsa I was getting everything out of the truck and noticed I still had StormLab open and running.
I was getting ready to shut it down when I noticed the image below...as some of you know StormLab deos not have the smoothing affect like GR does (which I actually like) even so, you can still clearly see the couplet
and I thought It would make a nice addition to this post. I kept telling my wife that there was no doubt this storm was producing a tornado and Shreveport was in toruble.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

The reported tornado in Miami, OK was delivered by an emergency manager, so I'm a bit surprised to not hear of any results of surveys from that part of the storm yet, especially since Tulsa confirmed the damage east of Vinita as EF-0. Does anyone else know whether the Miami damage was in fact due to a tornado?

An old high school buddy of mine is reporting 600 homes damaged in Mena, Arkansas. I had no idea it was that bad there ...

 

[Brian Emfinger]

An old high school buddy of mine is reporting 600 homes damaged in Mena, Arkansas. I had no idea it was that bad there ...

Yes, Mena is pretty bad. The tornado ripped through a good portion of the city. I don't know where the city boundaries are exactly but it looks like about 1/3 of the city was damaged including the major damage swath that ripped right through the center of town. The width when it hit Mena Street appears to be about .4 miles.

I posted a blog entry HERE showing before and after pics using Google's Street View.

Here is latest damage survey:

THIS WAS THE TORNADO THAT HIT MENA. THE TORNADO BEGAN 0.7 MILES SOUTH SOUTHEAST OF THE TOWN OF POTTER.
IT STAYED ON THE GROUND THROUGH MENA...AND LIFTED 3.2 MILES
NORTHEAST OF THE COMMUNITY OF INK. THE PATH LENGTH WAS 14.5 MILES.
THE PRELIMINARY RATING FOR THIS TORNADO IS AN EF3...WHICH CORRELATES
TO A WIND SPEED RANGE OF 136 TO 165 MPH.
THERE WERE THREE FATALITIES IN THE CITY OF MENA...AND AN UNKNOWN
NUMBER OF INJURIES.

and another tornado from I believe the previous supercell:

THE SECOND TORNADO AFFECTED NORTHWESTERN POLK COUNTY.
THIS TORNADO ACTUALLY BEGAN IN LE FLORE COUNTY OKLAHOMA IN THE TULSA
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY NEAR THE TOWN OF BIG
CEDAR. IT CROSSED THE STATE LINE 6.3 MILES NORTHWEST OF THE POLK
COUNTY COMMUNITY OF ROCKY. THE TORNADO CONTINUED ON THE GROUND FOR
2.7 MILES BEFORE DISSIPATING 4.7 MILES NORTH NORTHWEST OF ROCKY.
COUNTING THE TIME IN OKLAHOMA...THIS TORNADO WAS ON THE GROUND 9.2
MILES.THE TORNADO WAS RATED AN EF1...WHICH CORRELATES TO A WIND SPEED
RANGE OF 86 TO 110 MPH. DAMAGE WAS LIMITED TO TIMBER IN THE OUACHITA
NATIONAL FOREST...WITH HUNDREDS OF TREES BEING BLOWN DOWN.

edit: The Google Street View before and after is now viewable on the bottom of my chase/damage report - HERE

 

[T Newman]

With regard to the Mena, AR storms, I went and grabbed some of the archived data and did a little researching on the storm. I was reading the NOW section for 4-09-09 and there was a few people trying to figure out which storm actually hit Mena and caused the tornado.

I found there was one supercell in southern LeFlore County, OK that moved into northern Polk County, AR that spawned a tornado - going north of Mena.
South of that storm, another storm developed in OK and moved east into Polk County, this time on more southern track. This storm would be the one that spawned the tornado that hit Mena.
Right on the heals of that storm to the south, another storm developed and moved north and merged with the storm that spawned the Mena tornado. It seemed as though when the southern storm merged with the one about to go right over Mena, it caused the rotation to strengthen, not to mention drop some good hail on the southern side of town.
I made a little PDF that may explain things a little more and some of the velocity products with it.