Horrific storm night in the South
And an incredible loss of life, especially in hard hit Alabama.
AP is now saying that the death toll for the night stands at 178, with Alabama reporting an incredible 128 deaths. Mississippi lost 32, Tennessee had 6 dead, 11 in Georgia and 1 in Virginia.
For me it was eventful but mostly sound and fury with thankfully little evident damage (a couple of trees down, etc.) But the supercell storms that passed to the north of us (we sort of caught the edge) were monsters. Watching the local TV weather folks until we lost power, the reports were unbelievable. 2 to 2.5” diameter hail (with vid), wind sheers of 115 mph. Storms moving at 65 to 70 mph. One report showed over 300 lightning strikes in one of the storms in a 10 minute period. And the different cells lined up behind each other as they moved NE. Rome GA got hammered.
There are also estimates of over 130 tornados spawned by these storms.
I actually learned a lot about these storms watching the local weather people out of ATL. Imagine the velocity of the winds aloft that can keep hail with a diameter of 2” up there as it forms and then eject it into what they called a “hail core”. Also, they repeatedly pointed out a trailing hook pattern which indicated tornados. I was introduced to the BTI which is some sort of rating from 1-10 which goes from “not likely” to “on the ground” when it comes to tornados. At times the BTI of the storms was 9.9.
I’ll pass on a repeat and I wasn’t even in the worst part. Probably a result of global warming.
~McQ