Meteorologists said the warm weather likely contributed to the tornadoes, which result from atmospheric instability that is created when dry, cold air is pushed over warm, humid air and generates an updraft. Record temperatures were recorded Friday in most Gulf Coast states as well as in the parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky where the tornado hit. The unusual timing and location of the outbreak is raising questions about the influence of weather and climate change. “The weather community will spend years and probably decades trying to decipher the why,” Evan Bentley of NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma wrote yesterday on Twitter. Much remains unknown about the recent tornadoes including their strength, number and cause. Bombing raids that you’d see in old footage, and that’s exactly what it looks like. “Someone described it as a scene from World War II. Whitney Westerfield (R) said Saturday on CNN. “There are just entire swaths of Mayfield that just aren’t there anymore at all,” Kentucky state Sen. The devastation overwhelmed Kentucky communities and officials unaccustomed to tornadoes.
Tornadoes are rarely more than 15 miles long and generally last less than 10 minutes. The length of the tornado outbreak astonished meteorologists, who measured one tornado stretching 227 miles as it blasted from Arkansas northeast into Missouri and Tennessee before cutting a swath of destruction through northwest Kentucky. The worst year for billion-dollar disasters was last year, when NOAA recorded 22 events. That means 2021 would rank second in the number of billion-dollar disasters since NOAA began in 1980 tracking weather-related events that cause more than $1 billion in property damage. The tornadoes likely will be the 19th “billion-dollar disaster” chronicled by NOAA this year. A February cold snap in Texas caused massive power outages, $21 billion in damage and 172 deaths. Hurricane Ida caused $65 billion in damage and killed 96 people as it swept from Louisiana to New York. The tornadoes come at the end of another year of huge destruction from natural disasters. “It’s going to be a long recovery,” Criswell told ABC’s "This Week." “At this magnitude, I don’t think we have ever seen one this late in the year,” Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell said Sunday on CNN’s "State of the Union." “The severity and the amount of time this tornado or these tornadoes spent on the ground is unprecedented.” The deadliest recorded December tornado occurred in 1953 in Mississippi and killed 38 people, NOAA records show.ĭecember and January are by far the least active months for tornadoes in the United States while April and May are the most active, NOAA records show. The outbreak is certainly the deadliest to have occurred in the United States during a winter month, according to an E&E News analysis of NOAA tornado records dating to 1950. Deaths also were reported in Arkansas - where the outbreak began late Friday afternoon - and in Missouri and Tennessee. Six people were killed early Friday night when a tornado blew down the walls of an Amazon warehouse in southwestern Illinois. history.īeshear said at least 80 people were killed in Kentucky and the state’s death toll “is going to exceed 100.” It’s likely to be one of the deadliest tornado events in U.S. “This sickens me to see what has happened.”Īlthough the exact death toll remains unknown, the outbreak is almost certain to be the deadliest since the devastating Joplin, Mo., tornadoes killed 158 people in May 2011. “The worst-case scenario happened - warm air in the cold season, middle of the night,” John Gordon, the National Weather Service chief meteorologist in Louisville, said at a briefing Saturday with Kentucky Gov. And it struck at night, when tornadoes are unusual - and particularly deadly because people are asleep and unlikely to hear warnings.
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