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At least 100 feared dead after tornadoes devastate six US states:
US President Joe Biden has pledged support to states affected by a swarm of devastating tornadoes that demolished homes, levelled businesses and left at least 100 people feared dead.
Describing the tornadoes as likely "one of the largest" storm outbreaks in history, Biden on Saturday approved an emergency disaster declaration for the worst-hit state of Kentucky, where at least 22 people have been confirmed dead.
"It's a tragedy," said a shaken Biden. "And we still don't know how many lives are lost and the full extent of the damage."
He added, "I promise you, whatever is needed – whatever is needed – the federal government is going to find a way to provide it."
The powerful twisters, which weather forecasters say are unusual in cooler months, destroyed a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, ripped through a nursing home in neighbouring Arkansas, and killed at least six workers at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said the collection of tornadoes was the most destructive in the state's history. He said about 40 workers had been rescued at the candle factory, which had about 110 people inside when it was reduced to a pile of rubble.
[...] Mayfield Fire Chief Jeremy Creason, whose own station was destroyed, said the candle factory was diminished to a "pile of bent metal and steel and machinery" and that responders had to at times "crawl over casualties to get to live victims".
[...] The tornado outbreak was triggered by a series of overnight thunderstorms, including a supercell storm that formed in northeast Arkansas. That storm moved from Arkansas and Missouri and into Tennessee and Kentucky.
Unusually high temperatures and humidity created the environment for such an extreme weather event at this time of year, said Victor Gensini, a professor in geographic and atmospheric sciences at Northern Illinois University.
"This is an historic, if not generational event," Gensini said.
If early reports are confirmed, the twister may have touched down for nearly 250 miles (400km), he said, a path length longer than the longest tornado on record, which tracked for about 220 miles (355 km) through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana in March 1925.
[...] The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center said it received 36 reports of tornadoes touching down in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
[...] In Edwardsville, Illinois, Fire Chief James Whiteford said at least six people were killed when an Amazon warehouse collapsed. Some 45 people survived.
[...] In Monette, Arkansas, one person was killed and five seriously injured when a tornado tore through a nursing home with 90 beds.
Also at phys.org, CNET, and CNN
(Score: 4, Informative) by dalek on Sunday December 12 2021, @01:54PM (1 child)
I have a lot of thoughts on this, in no particular order... Sorry for the long post, but I have a lot to say about this.
Cool season tornado outbreaks may be rare, but they are very dangerous when they do occur. The peak tornado frequency in the US is in May, but the peak for strong tornadoes is in April. There's a bigger north-south temperature difference earlier in the year, which produces a stronger pressure gradient in the upper atmosphere, and stronger upper-level winds. This generally means vertical wind shear (change in wind speed and/or direction with height) is stronger during the cool season, which is favorable for supercells and tornadoes. The strong upper-level winds also cause faster storm motions, which is a big factor in long track tornadoes. There are also more nighttime tornadoes in the cool season. All of these make cool season tornado outbreaks very dangerous. The peak of tornado season is earlier in the Southeast than in the Plains, and there's also a secondary peak in the fall. Although it's not part of tornado alley, there are still a lot of strong and violent tornadoes in the Southeast.
There have been fairly recent attempts to examine the damage from the tri-state tornado and determine if it was actually a single tornado. There wasn't a proper damage survey done in 1925, and it's very challenging to get good data for an event nearly a century ago. Some of those areas are very sparsely populated, so it's hard to know if it was a continuous track. If it was a single tornado, recent analyses suggest it was actually 235 miles long instead of 219 miles.
There really weren't any other tornadoes with tracks even close to that length, making it a huge anomaly. The general consensus among meteorologists is that one supercell spawned multiple tornadoes along that 235 mile track. If this quad-state tornado really is a single track, it would be comparable to the tri-state tornado, and show that it really is possible to have tornado tracks of that length.
Tornado deaths are considerably more frequent in the Southeast than in the Plains even though as many or more strong tornadoes occur in the Plains. If this had occurred in Oklahoma and Kansas, even if it affected densely populated areas like Oklahoma City and Wichita, I have to wonder if there would have been fewer deaths. Tornado forecasting in the Southeast is challenging from a meteorological perspective.
But many of the reasons for more tornado deaths in the Southeast are societal. Part of this may be the result of building codes and better shelters in parts of the Plains. There's probably a better level of preparedness to receive warnings and alert people to take shelter in businesses, schools, and other public places. Part of the issue may be how the public responds to tornado warnings in the Southeast versus in the Plains. I hope that this event, awful as it is, will encourage better tornado preparedness in the Southeast, similar to what is done in the Plains. That was one of the objectives of the VORTEX-Southeast program, to examine and try to address the societal issues that lead to more tornado deaths in the Southeast.
We really need to know what happened in the businesses where people died so that we can prevent that from happening again. Did they receive tornado warnings in a timely manner? Were there places where employees could safely shelter from tornadoes? Were employees able to stop working and take shelter, or did they feel they should just continue working? How sturdy were the buildings? The answers to these questions will help us know what went wrong and what can be done to prevent similar loss of life in the future.
From what I can tell, the issue was not with the forecasts and warnings. I didn't follow the event from start to end, but I looked at the radar a few times during the evening. The National Weather Service office in Paducah had tornado warnings out on the supercell that produced the quad-state tornado, using enhanced wording to say that it was a particularly dangerous situation. When I looked at a couple of the warnings, the impacts listed at the end of the warning said that the damage threat was considerable. Although this is one step below the maximum impact that can be listed, which is catastrophic, it still conveyed that this was a very serious situation.
Farther north, there were two rounds of storms affecting the St. Louis area. The first round was a line of storms had several thunderstorm cells along a roughly north-south line, moving northeast. The St. Louis office pretty much just put a tornado warning on every cell within the line, likely because conditions were favorable for tornadoes to rapidly develop pretty much anywhere within the line. Because of the rapid storm motions, they were issuing tornado warnings for the county in which the thunderstorm was in and also for one or two counties ahead of the storm. There was a second line that was much smaller but definitely had some strong rotation over St. Louis County, and I believe this was what actually caused the damage farther east in Edwardsville. Again, the St. Louis office issued warnings a county in advance, so they tried to give plenty of lead time.
From what I can tell, the National Weather Service did a really good job issuing warnings for this event. I don't think the forecasting was a problem at all. But I hope we can get to a point where tornado deaths are as rare in the Southeast as they are in the Plains.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12 2021, @05:54PM
The storm continued to the NE without tornado touchdowns, for example, near Buffalo, toward the eastern end of Lake Erie, 75 mph winds were measured yesterday December 11. The storm also moved a lot of Lake Erie to the east, I believe about 2 feet of storm surge or seiche.