Feb. 21, 1971 Mississippi Delta Tornado Outbreak

[Brian Stertz]

I am trying to start on a detailed case study of the Feb 21, 1971 outbreak that seemingly devastated much of the Mississippi Delta that day. I have yet to find a good source for the specifics of each of these devastating and long-tracked violent tornadoes. I have located some of the info in the Significant Tornadoes (Grazulis) , Storm Data, and J.Finch's excellent historical weather site. I have hit a snag though as far as the specific tracks etc. though as there is a discrepancy betwen Storm Data and Significant Tornadoes. Since this has been 35 yrs. ago, the information is pretty scarce. Please let me know if there are any good sources about this wild outbreak.

 

[Alex Lamers]

On the local office website here (MKX) it is ranked 12th of the all time outbreaks.

12. MISSISSIPPI DELTA OUTBREAK

* February 21, 1971
* Especially Mississippi, also Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee
* 10 tornadoes
* 121 deaths
* 1524 injuries
* Damage ?
* 4:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Unfortunately, as with the Palm Sunday Outbreak of 65, can't find much info on it. You might be able to get a decent map with SvrPlot.

 

[Fred Gossage]

Originally posted by Alex Lamers
On the local office website here (MKX) it is ranked 12th of the all time outbreaks.

12. MISSISSIPPI DELTA OUTBREAK

* February 21, 1971
* Especially Mississippi, also Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee
* 10 tornadoes
* 121 deaths
* 1524 injuries
* Damage ?
* 4:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Unfortunately, as with the Palm Sunday Outbreak of 65, can't find much info on it. You might be able to get a decent map with SvrPlot.

You can also use the Upper Air Archives at Plymouth State (google it) to get detailed upper air field overlays....... the data goes all the way back to 1957...

 

[Brian Stertz]

From what I can tell, it looked like the 2 main long tracked violent tornadoes had there beginnings on a strong convergence line (does not appear to be a dryline or cold front) which was east/southeast of a developing triple pt. low. The conv. line was aligned along or slightly west of the Mississippi River. This was an axis which stretched north-south and was marked by strong southeast or even east winds to the east of this conv. line...to strong south or south-southwest winds on the west side of this conv. line. It looked like the tornadic supercells had mega juice and extremely high SRH to sustain the violent tornadoes as they raced north-northeast at 50-60 mph. The surface prog at 3pm had a developing triple point low near Monroe LA...and at 500 mb, a powerful negatively tilted wave was rotating into the Lower Mississippi Valley with a 90 kt. 500 mb jet noted at Jackson at 6pm. The 500 mb jet was very diffluent. The 500 mb low was over Wichita Falls TX. Back to the northwest in the cold air over W.Oklahoma, TX Panhandle, C.Kansas, a raging blizzard was burying the area. Snow drifts of 10-20 FEET were common as 50-70 mph winds roared across the Plains. Buffalo OK had the Oklahoma snowfall record of 36 inches from that particular nasty storm. I am still working on putting all the pieces together to have a small case study of this powerful storm.