I rarely sleep before a severe weather event unfolds. I don't know why. Admittedly, severe weather does get my blood pumping. I like storms. I HATE the destruction they cause, but I have always been fascinated with them. You kind of have to be in order to be any good at forecasting them.
I did end up falling asleep around 5am. I woke up at 8:30am. By then we already had tornado warnings. Paul had been in an hour at that point. I got ready and came into work.
We remained on the air pretty much the entire day, nearly 10 hours total with only a couple of times getting enough of a break in warnings to go back to programming.
If you read my post from Wednesday, you know that I was supposed to start vacation on Wednesday. After looking at data on Tuesday and seeing the trends in the data, I called my wife after Tuesday evening's news and told her that we were going to have to postpone our trip to Virginia. I had a sick feeling about Friday. That last time I had a sick feeling about severe weather was April 24, 2010 - the Yazoo City tornado.
Paul and I were on the air tag teaming weather coverage as the supercell storm came into Hinds County from Claiborne and Warrnen counties. We had already had some reports of some damage south of Vicksburg, mainly trees power lines and power poles. The storm got stronger as it tracked closer to Raymond and my private thought was "Oh no, this is going to be bad."
A little after 11am, the tell-tell sign on radar that likely means a tornado is on the ground, showed up. It is called a debris ball. It showed up on the storm that moved across Yazoo City. A debris ball developed as the storm moved across Clinton on Friday. Here is what it looks like on radar (click image to make it larger):
Doppler radar cannot actually tell us if a tornado is on the ground. But, when you see a debris ball, that is confirmation that there is a tornado and there is damage. What happens is that the debris the tornado picks up gets sucked up into the storm's updraft, high enough so the beam of the radar can detect it. The debris shows up as a higher reflective on radar due to the size. What you are seeing on radar there is likely debris from the Bank Plus building and some of the homes in Clinton and West Jackson being pulled up into the storm. As I said on the air Friday, since the storm did go across a bank, there is a possibility it picked up money. That money could have traveled across the state as the storm held together all the way into Alabama. It will be interesting to see if somebody finds some cash over the coming days.
As the storm continued to track into west Jackson, I had our skycam from Baptist Hospital aimed back to west. I never could see if rotation was on the ground, but for the first time in my career at WLBT we watched the wall cloud lower and we could clearly see the mesocyclone. Normally our storms in Mississippi are rain wrapped and you can't see storm features. That was not the case yesterday.
All of it eventually got to me. My wife and our dogs were in the path of the storm. I knew they were in our safe spot, but after the storm moved across the Hinds/Madison County line, phone service was out. When I couldn't reach home, I broke down and had to go have a few moments to regain my composure. I think that's the first time that has ever happened me to me during severe weather coverage. After a few moments in the control room, I was able to carry on with the rest of our wall to wall coverage. When I left the building about 6:30pm, it hit me again. I went home, hugged my wife, played with the dogs, and then my wife and I went to check out some of the damage. For me, seeing the damage in person and talking to the people effected helps me cope with covering such devastating storms. After last year's Yazoo City tornado, my wife and I spent several days in the tiny community of Ebenezer helping hand out supplies, along with taking supplies. We did the same thing following Hurricane Katrina. One of my elderly neighbors has quite a few large limbs down on their property, so I plan to spend Sunday afternoon helping clean that up.
Onto the damage surveys...there are still more to be done, but here is a summary of the preliminary information. Some of this may change as surveys are conducted. It will probably be Monday or Tuesday before we have a final tornado total.
Hinds County:
EF-3 Tornado; tracked from 4.5 miles southwest of Clinton to around the Old Canton/Pear Orchard Rd. area of northeast Jackson.
Max winds: 140mph
Path length: 17 miles
Max width: .3 miles
Attala County:
EF-2 Tornado; on the ground for a brief period near the Possumneck community.
Max winds: 120mph
Path length: 3 miles
Max width: 200 yards
Attala County:
EFHesterville and tracked to about 6 miles northwest of Ethel.
Max winds: 75mph
Path length: 4 miles
Max width: 75 yards
Rankin County:
EF-1 Tornado; impacted the Pisgah community. Damage survey not complete. More info. will follow in coming days.
Neshoba/Kemper Counties:
EF-3 Tornado; tornado formed just west of county road 450. The tornado remained on the ground into Alabama.
Max winds: 140mph
Path length: 38.5 miles (will be longer as tornado tracked into Alabama. This will be updated)
Max width: .75 miles
Greene County:
EF-3 Tornado; survey not completed. More info. will follow.
I'll update this post as new damage surveys come in. Surveys are being done today in northern Rankin County, southwest Leake County, and northwest Scott County. More surveys will be done Monday in Clarke, Issaquena, and Leflore Counties.
Eric - elaw@wlbt.com
Eric, thank you so much for your excellent reporting during the crisis time and the self-sacrifice it took to do it. It was reassuring to hear your voice during the worst of it as we listened to the broadcast from our hidey-hole. We appreciate your compassion for the people you serve. Now go take that overdue vacation with your lovely wife! Life is precious. Enjoy every minute with her.
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