Rolling Fork Tornado

[Jamie H]

Superb posts Steve, and feel free to chat about MiLB any time - I regularly watched the Vancouver Canadians when I lived there!

Can I offer one other thing which came to mind? Maybe a few blankets or foil blankets would be helpful for immediate survivors?

 

[Todd Lemery]

I just want to mention one quick thing that I don’t think I have seen mentioned yet as this thread is getting off topic. Further comments on how to help after a tornado should be made in the appropriate threads. This one is for the Rolling Fork tornado. When you do come across a Rolling Fork type scene and you stop to help. Please get your vehicle off the roadway as much as possible. It’s easy to forget about your vehicle once you get out of it and start searching or helping.

 

[Jeff Wright]

RE the lights in the vortex, I seriously doubt an airborne vehicle spinning, moving, twirling, etc., would keep the lights pointed towards the viewer for as long as they did. It's likely something that has a 360 degree light source.

I don’t know. Small lights don’t have a lot of sail area and thus are likely to be slammed into other surface debris.

I seem to remember footage of a pick-up truck about half-way up the funnel that was pointed down. I think most vehicles held aloft will point downwards…like the gravity gradient keels on some satellites.

Thus only a sporadic flash of a side-view light of a vehicle with a car alarm would be visible…headlights smashed or pointed down away from the viewer.

Had this been an individual light attached—say—to a sail-like awning the twister carried aloft after using as a pull-tab…the light may have been more continuous.

 

[Mike Smith]

NWS has upgraded the storm to "high end EF-4" with 195 mph winds. Full statement here: IEM :: PNS from NWS JAN