The Associated Press reported early Monday that at least 39 people had been killed and many others injured on Friday and Saturday by an expansive outbreak of extreme weather associated with a powerhouse storm system that moved through the central United States. Two intense rounds of tornadoes caused most of the higher-end damage, but wildfires torched hundreds of structures, and highway accidents related to sudden, blinding dust caused almost a third of the fatalities.
The destructive episode was exceptionally well predicted by NOAA’s National Weather Service, including the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center. The areas of peak concern were highlighted up to six days in advance, and a number of the tornado reports on Saturday fell within the day’s “high risk” outlook (level 5 of 5) from southern Mississippi to central Alabama. Fortunately, only one tornado thus far across the multiday episode has reached the “violent” category” (EF4 or EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale). Note that the highest risk levels are designed to capture the most concentrated areas of significant severe weather (hailstones at least two inches in diameter, wind gusts of at least 75 mph, or tornadoes rated EF2 or stronger); they are often, but not necessarily, associated with violent tornadoes.
As of late Sunday, the Storm Prediction Center’s preliminary tally of tornado reports (filtered to avoid duplicates) included 79 from Friday through early Sunday, together with 506 reports of severe wind gusts and 156 reports of severe hail. Thunderstorms shifted east of the Appalachians on Sunday and eased somewhat, as high winds became the main threat; more than 200 severe gusts were reported, mainly from West Virginia and eastern Ohio into western Pennsylvania and New York.
Read: Climate change and tornadoes: Any connection?
The multiday tornado swarm began on Friday evening as several intense supercells rolled from southern Missouri and northern Arkansas across the Mississippi River, spawning multiple twisters. Twelve people were killed in Missouri, including five in a single home in southeast Missouri’s Wayne County.
The worst of Friday’s tornadoes, striking near Diaz in northeast Arkansas, was given a preliminary rating of EF4, with estimated top winds of 190 mph and at least two sections of EF4 damage. More details are still to come from the NWS/Little Rock office.
The Diaz twister is the strongest U.S. tornado since the catastrophic one that struck Rolling Fork, Mississippi, nearly two years ago. Given that at least one well-built home was completely destroyed, it’s not out of the question that any subsequent damage surveys might find enough evidence to boost the Diaz tornado to an EF5 rating — although as noted in a recent study, even well-built homes swept off foundations are now less likely to produce a top-end Fujita rating because of a quirk in how the Enhanced Fujita Scale was created.
Read: New study reveals potential cause of a ‘drought’ in violent EF5 tornadoes
A rapid influx of deep Gulf moisture enhanced the fuel available to Saturday’s storms, which turned tornadic by midafternoon. One long-lived supercell dropped a string of tornadoes from northeast Louisiana to east central Mississippi. Eight tornadoes in Mississippi have been rated at least EF2.
Saturday’s outcome might have been even worse had the storms not gradually shifted away from tornadic-supercell mode as they moved through Alabama and into Georgia on Saturday night. Still, there were at least two EF2 tornadoes in central Alabama and at least one EF3, with at least three people killed, according to the AP.
Read: How to make your home more tornado-resilient
Deadly dust in the wind (and fire and smoke) across the Southern Plains
On the dry side of this massive storm system, the weather was starkly different, yet extreme in its own ways. Thick clouds of blowing dust kicked up across the Southern Plains on Friday made it all the way to the western Great Lakes by early Saturday.
Across Oklahoma, a top-end fire weather threat on Friday became all too real, as widespread wind gusts as high as 83 mph pushed bone-dry air across a parched landscape. More than 130 fires were reported throughout the state, including some in and near larger communities, including the college towns of Norman and Stillwater.
According to the state’s emergency management department, more than 200 homes and almost 100 other structures were destroyed, including a farmhouse near the town of Luther owned by Gov. Kevin Stitt. Hundreds of people were evacuated for hours on end, and some 170,000 acres were burned — more than three times the area of this year’s Los Angeles-area Palisades and Eaton Fires combined (although those fires were vastly more destructive, consuming more than 15,000 structures).
Four fatalities in Oklahoma were related to the fires and high winds, but the huge clouds of dust kicked up by the fierce winds took even more lives across neighboring states. Farms and ranches, even those adjoining each other, can vary enormously in how much dust they produce, so motorists can go from good visibility to near-zero conditions in seconds, and tightly packed, high-speed traffic can quickly become a deadly force.
In the Texas Panhandle, three people were killed in dust-related crashes. One wreck in Amarillo County included 38 vehicles, according to the state’s department of public safety. The worst accident was along Interstate 70 in far western Kansas, where eight people died and 55 were injured in a horrific pileup that involved more than 70 vehicles. One state trooper called it “probably the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Highways on the tabletop-flat terrain of the High Plains are frequently closed when blowing snow is predicted to cause ground-blizzard conditions, and sometimes during warmer weather when potentially dust-laden high winds are predicted or materialize. On Friday, apart from accident-related closures, several U.S. highways in eastern Colorado and several state highways in Kansas were closed amid wind gusts of 75 to 85 mph.
Severe weather should take a relative break this week, with no tornado outbreaks expected. However, critical fire weather conditions (level 2 of 3) were predicted to return to a broad area of the Southern Plains on Monday, stretching from Colorado Springs to Oklahoma City and south to the Mexico border. A similar area for Tuesday also has a level-3-of-3 “extremely critical” zone (see Fig. 1 above) that includes the West Texas cities of Amarillo, Lubbock, and Midland/Odessa.
Jeff Masters contributed to this report.
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