Killer Tornado in Evansville, Indiana

[Chris Hayes]

At least 7 people have been killed by a tornado in an Evansville, Indiana mobile home park. Just got it via CNN breaking news.

 

[Josh Durkee]

My home town

 

[Jay McCoy]

I am waiting for NWS to confirm but on ABC this morning they had reports of the damage path being 3/4 of a mile wide from emergency workers on the scene!!

Hitting at 2am in a trailer park is pretty well a worst case scenerio. Especially in November. Most wx people expected severe wx but I bet not many in the general public took notice even with the watches being posted.

 

[George Tincher]

A tornado touched down around 2 am in Henderson County, KY. A horse racing track was hit there and numerous horses were killed. The tornado then moved into Indiana. A trailer park in the Evansville, IN area was hit hard. So far there have been 15 reported deaths, most in the trailer park.

CNN was reporting the tornado had a damage path 3/4 mile wide with a path length of 20 miles. The video CNN was showing definately indicated major damage. I don't want to try to make any F-Scale predictions at this time, but it appeared to be a powerful, long track tornado.

There's lots of other potential wind and tornado damage in other areas too. I was watching a very strong shear couplet move right over Munfordville, KY (in Hart County) earlier this morning as well. There was damage in that town from a possible tornado, but how severe I don't know. There was also a report of damage and possible injuries in SRN IL. There's other scattered wind damage reports over the entire area.

There was a total of 27 tornado warnings issued overnight in MO, IL, IN, KY, OH and TN.

 

[George Tincher]

News now reporting several mobile homes were picked up by the tornado and tossed into an adjacent lake. Officials fear there are still other people trapped in the wreckage of these mobile homes.

 

[nickgrillo]

Current death toll from this tornado is 15... From the arial views shown on TV, I would judge damage to be F3/F4...

 

[Angie Norris]

MSNBC currently showing damage video...looks like strong F2, maybe weak F3...some pretty well built structures totally missing roofs, but walls are still up.
Yep, pretty much worst case scenario...middle of the night, I'm guessing pretty much rural type area, so probably little if any warning/lead time on this thing coming in, in the time of year when tornadoes are the last thing on most people's minds.
Where's the best place to find archived model runs, surface obs, etc? I was working in our forecast lab yesterday and totally missed this as far as my forecast went (the stuff further north and east for today I got). I need to look back and see what I did wrong on this one.
Angie

 

[Josh Durkee]

part of the same area (Newburgh) was hit by an F2 last year too.

My brother was sending me messages all night last night while it was going down.

 

[Andrew Khan]

Wow, very sad. I wonder what the F-Scale of it was? Was this the same one that started in KY?

 

[George Tincher]

Just chatted with a firefighter/spotter friend of mine who lives in Munfordville, KY and he says that the south end of that town is pretty heavily damaged as well. Fortunately, it appears there was nobody killed in that particular town though.

 

[Angie Norris]

MSNBC mentioning possible damage in TN as well. I'd guess probably in north central TN?
Looking at SPC, 8 counties reported wind damage, but Henry County has reported structural damage to 3 homes, along with trees and powerlines down. Time was 0830Z. Sounds like this would be the most likely suspect. All the other reports were just either trees or power lines down.
Angie

 

[Michael Auker]

Hart County (Munfordville) always gets hit. There seems to be a mini tornado alley through Warren, Hart, Barren, Metcalfe, Green, and Adair counties. They have had multiple strong tornadoes and fatalities over the last 10 years. Pellyton, in Adair county, got hit with an F-3 in 1997, and a F-3 and F-2 in 1998. What are the chances of that?

 

[Brett Adair]

That is a strong indication of a tornado. Folks, we had plenty of ingredients for tornadic activity and I was just telling a friend before I went to sleep that these storms were just entering the area of highest favorable shear with many different level jet maxes converging. Sad situation.

 

[George Tincher]

Yeah, that environment was pretty ripe for tornadic development. It seems that what was a line of storms actually started to break down more into individual cells as it hit that more favorable environement. Here are some of the conditions that were present in these areas:

0-1 km SRH in excess of 340 m2/s2 was observed in Louisville overnight

70 knots of H85-H7 flow

Dewpoints in the low 60's

 

[George Tincher]

Here's some updated info from the Paducah NWS office:

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PADUCAH KY
248 AM CST SUN NOV 06 2005

..TIME... ...EVENT... ...CITY LOCATION... ...LAT.LON...
..DATE... ....MAG.... ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE....
..REMARKS..

0159 AM TORNADO 1 S EVANSVILLE 37.97N 87.54W
11/06/2005 VANDERBURGH IN EMERGENCY MNGR

*** 19 DEATHS AND 200 INJURIES *** INITIAL TSTM WND
DAMAGE REPORT UPGRADED TO TORNADO. PRELIMINARY SURVEY
INDICATES F3 DAMAGE. INDIANA HOMELAND SECURITY REPORTS
14 DEATHS AT EASTBROOK MOBILE HOME PARK. ANOTHER 5
DEATHS NEAR DE GONIA SPRINGS INDIANA FROM SAME TORNADO.
PRELIMINARY PATH WIDTH APPEARS TO BE 500 YARDS AND
TRAVELED APPROXIMATELY 15 TO 20 MILES TO THE NORTHEAST.
PRELIMINARY START IS NEAR SMITH MILLS KENTUCKY TO DE
GONIA SPRINGS INDIANA. THIS PRELIMINARY LSR WILL BE
UPDATED AS NEW INFORMATION IS RECEIVED.

&&

$$

DLL/SMITTY