That Tornado Outbreak Killed 30 People; Major, Sometimes Weird Destruction

Just a slab is left of this house in Mississippi after this weekend's tornadoes,
and nobody is sure where it or its debris ended up. Photo by
Steven Macleroy, @SMacleroy on Twitter.

The weather system that caused all those tornadoes across the South has largely moved on, but people will still be picking up the pieces of this for a long time.

At last count, at least 30 people died in these tornadoes in the past couple of days.

There are at least 70 preliminary reports of tornadoes from this outbreak, and some of them were exceptionally strong. That accounts for the high death toll.

As in all major tornadoes, the damage can be extreme and very weird.  Three people were killed in a Mississippi cafe, where the only thing left was a concrete slab and debris piled up against fallen trees a few dozen feet away.

Another Mississippi house was also gone, with just a foundation and some floor boards. Drone footage taken at the scene appeared to show almost no debris around the house. I asked photographer Steven Macleroy, @SMacleroy on Twitter what he saw:

"We are not sure where any of that house ended up. There was very little that the homeowner's brother could find. The homeowner actually lives in Louisiana. Thankfully he and his family were not there."

Thankfully, indeed.  My guess is the house just got bodily sucked up into the tornado, pulverized in the air and rained down as small pieces of debris miles away.  Radar did show debris from this tornado nearly 30,000 feet in the air.

And Alabama meteorologist James Spann said a photograph that landed near Tuscaloosa, Alabama came from a tornado-destroyed house 120 miles away in Mississippi.  Another house in Mississippi had its house and most of its walls torn down, but a freshly baked cake in a glass container sat untouched on an island counter in the middle of what was left of the kitchen.

Some severe thunderstorms will linger in northern Florida today and perhaps tomorrow, but there are no new big tornado outbreaks in the immediate forecast.

Still, there has already been more than 60 tornado deaths in the United States, just a smidge under average for an entire year.  This is shaping up to be the worst yeaer for tornadoes since the epic year of 2011, which saw more than 500 tornado deaths.

We are still in the early parts of tornado season, with May usually being the worst month. Which means more outbreaks are likely.  We just don't know when, where and how bad.  You want tornadoes to hit open areas with little population, but as we saw in the South over the past couple days, that's more often than not impossible.

Videos:

Many of the areas hit by the strong tornadoes on Easter have a lot of mobile homes, which are especially dangerous in twisters. This aerial view includes some shots of just brown rectangles in the landscape. That's where mobile homes were. In some cases, where they are now is anybody's guess:



This video by Gage Shaw demonstrates one of many reasons why tornadoes in the Deep South are often more dangerous than a lot of twisters in the Great Plains.

In this video, the mile-wide EF-4, powerful tornado is in there. You have to know what you're looking for. Look carefully and you can see the back edge of the massive tornado in the video.

Around 2:00 into the video, the tornado is relatively apparent, but is barely visible, but just as strong, a minute later:





Here, a house in Georgia was bodily moved from its perch atop a small hill, perhaps 100 feet to a spot in the middle of the road: