Death Toll Up To 30

April 3, 2006, 7:17 am
Posted by James Spann in Weather Discussions
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Reports from various media sources now indicated that at least 30 people have died in Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee from the big tornado outbreak yesterday and last night. One of those who died in Dyer County, TN was an 11 month old infant.

Hardest hit areas:
Newbern, TN
Rutherford, TN
Caruthersville, MO
Circle City, MO
Fairview Heights, IL
Hopkinsville, KY

Here is an image I captured last night of the tornadic storm that moved through Dyer and Gibson counties, Tennessee last night:

This was when the tornado was moving through Rutherford.

Storm surveys will be ongoing today... I will report findings as they come in...
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Posted by Lori  
on April 3, 2006, 8:12 am
I saw a very interesting "dashcam" video of a police officer driving through some amazing inflow. It appeared that either debris was blowing in front of him or some rather large hail. The rain was completely horizontal. I would love to watch it again and share a link but I switch channels all morning to catch the various storm reports and can't remember where this was. I heard a report on CNN saying that a lot of homes only had their foundations left, I'll be very curious to see the rating of some of these tornadoes.

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Posted by   www
on April 3, 2006, 8:14 am
That is what scares me about tornadoes... being here alone and not being able to protect my children.

So especially saddened to hear of the 11 month old's death.

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Posted by Craig  
on April 3, 2006, 8:48 am
Wow... how reminiscent of April 8, 1998 as we heard the death toll climb higher and higher hour by hour... how tragic

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Posted by Craig  
on April 3, 2006, 8:50 am
As I recall just 3 or 4 years ago western tennessee was hit very hard by a massive tornado in the town of Jackson. We never know when our turn will be no matter where we live!

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Posted by Craig  
on April 3, 2006, 8:55 am
Sorry to keep posting back to back... in that radar picture is the tornado inside the hook where the blue dot is or is it out nearer the "d" in "Rutherford?"

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Posted by  
on April 3, 2006, 9:33 am
Craig, I would guess that the tornado likely descended from the clouds near the blue dot inside the hook, just to the NE of Rutherford.


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Posted by  
on April 3, 2006, 9:37 am
One more reason to have a weather radio with SAME encoding. Didn't really expect any bad weather last night...but got it...

Matthew

Praying for those to our NW...

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Posted by   www
on April 3, 2006, 9:51 am

Craig: Cut and paste this URL into your browser. This might give you a more precice and accurate answer than mine...

http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsname=Wikipedia+Imag
es&dekey=Tornado+radar+hook+echo.gif&linktext=

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Posted by  
on April 3, 2006, 11:57 am
I can't help but notice we always seem to have real bad weather, a super outbreak of tornadoes or even snow one time during the first week of April. It seem to always happen on my birthday, April 3rd. Her is a list of red weather days that have happen on April 3rd.

April 2-3, 1974 Super Outbreak of Tornadoes
April, 3, 1987 6 inches of Snow
April 2-3, 2006 Bad Tornado outbreak in the TN, MO, IL and KY.

May God be with the family that has lost love ones.

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Posted by mark  
on April 3, 2006, 1:08 pm
Craig:

I think that the actual tornado is generally going to be to the west or southwest of the blue spot in the hook. Remember that the return on that radar is representing precipitation several thousand feet from the surface. It can't see the actual tornado, but instead sees the precipitation wrapping around the mesocyclone that causes the secondary circulation that becomes a tornado.

Typically the tornado forms on the rear (southwest) flank of the mesocyclone. I believe that the inflow notch will generally precede a tornado and the rear-flank downdraft follows it.

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Posted by  
on April 4, 2006, 7:51 am
The most likely spot for the tornado is inside the "ball" of high reflectivity at the end of the hook echo...so it is probably right over the dot signifying the town of Rutherford if not slightly to the northeast.

Here's a remarkable hook echo pic, showing the Moore/OKC tornado of 1999...the high reflectivity (actually going to white on the color palette) is actually partially due to the debris that the F5 tornado has picked up along its path:
http://www.mindspring.com/~jbeven/ar040032z.gif



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Posted by   www
on April 4, 2006, 10:31 am
That Oklahoma tornado produced what may be considered the highest wind ever reported in a tornado. The Doppler On Wheels program estimated wind of 318 miles per hour near Bridge Creek. There was even somewhat of a debate over whether to rate this as an unprecedented F6. Very interesting.
A discussion of this is found here:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/19990503/may3faqs.html

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