Tornado nearly hits Slidell, LA NWS WFO, 88D

[Kevin Scharfenberg]

Based on sketchy early information, it looks like a tornado passed within a mile of the NWS forecast office in Slidell, LA (near New Orleans) this morning (24 November) at 12:40 am CST. The 88D is co-located with the WFO at Slidell airport. The reports are numerous homes damaged, and a few destroyed, very near the WFO, with four injuries. The 88D and WFO continued operating without interruption througout the event, even though they recorded 70 mph winds in the RFD as the tornado passed just to their northwest.

Here are a couple of images of ground-relative velocity. The first image is at 19.5 degrees at 12:40 am. This is the last clear look at the tornado before it gets too close to the radar. The max inbound is 78 kts and the max outbound is 36 kts separated by about 250 meters (range from radar about 1.7 km). The next view of the tornado came at 12:44 am, at 7.5 degree elevation angle (about 1.8 km from the radar). The max inbound was 29 kts and the max outbound was 86 kts.

[Broken External Image]:http://cimms.ou.edu/~kscharf/klix_tornado1.png
[Broken External Image]:http://cimms.ou.edu/~kscharf/klix_tornado2.png

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Holy cow. Thanks for posting the story.

Tim

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Wow. The Torn warn for this cell mentioned that the tornado passed extremely close to the office. At least the end was result wasn't this:

Del Rio didn't fair so well a few years ago when it had a close encounter with a supercell

Aaron

 

[Eric Flescher]

Slidel storm

I heard about the Slidell storm on the local newspaper. Slidell I remember because I was there in 1987 for a NASA sponsored workshop. We stayed in the Slidell holiday Inn. The Copeland restaurant sure had some great cajun food. Latest Copeland made it to the Kansas City area. We have eaten there a couple of times and it is still good.

Someday I will get back to New Orleans which is a real hoot of a place. I have been there several times.

So was a tornado actually spotted by observers?

Dr.Eric Flescher ([email protected]),Olathe, KS -Storm Satori-http://members.aol.com/kcstormguy/stormsatori/stormsatori.htm