Tennessee Proud After Tornadoes

Volunteers move debris this weekend to help victims of the
devastating tornadoes in Tennessee that struck Tuesday.

Can I just say I'm totally impressed with the people of Tennessee?

As you well know, tornadoes slammed central Tennessee last week, causing at least 24 deaths and spreading destruction through huge swaths of the state.  

In every disaster, people step up to help those who were hit.  I remember the wonderful outpouring of support here in Vermont when extreme flooding from Tropical Storm Irene wrecked many communities here in the Green Mountain State back in 2011. Vermont Strong, right?

The reaction was just as glorious in Tennessee after the tornadoes.  Tennessee's nickname is "The Volunteer State" and it has certainly lived up to its reputation in the past few days.

On Saturday, so many thousands of people turned out to help with recovery in and near Nashville that some were turned away and told to come back in a few days. They'll be needed, as this mess will take a long time to clean up.

Also, the urge to volunteer is so great that cars belonging to the Good Samaritans started blocking the way for trucks deployed to clear debris.  So Nashville set up a nice shuttle bus system for the volunteers. 

The huge tornado chewed its way from near Nashville and  blasted its way toward the town of Cookeville, Tennessee.  The twister swept houses away just west of downtown Cookeville, killed several people and just laid waste to the landscape.

The tornado had traveled about 60 miles eastward toward Cookeville. Just before it hit the community's downtown, it abruptly, miraculously dissipated. The scientists out there say another, weaker tornado forming nearby robbed the monster tornado of its energy source, causing it to collapse.

That's probably true, but it still feels like an almost supernatural miracle.

Small piece of debris pulled up into the air rained down on undamaged neighborhoods sometimes miles from the tornado path. Some of that "debris" was precious - family photos and momentoes torn from homes and scattered to the winds.

Anyway, a coffee shop in downtown Cookeville, spared from the tornado, stepped up to help in a wonderful way.  People who find photos on their property can bring them to the Soul Craft coffee shop in Cookeville. They're put in the box, and people can come in and look through the salvaged photos to see if any of them are theirs.

 Here's a news story on that coffee shop:

Is Nashville Tornado Part Of A Long Term Trend? And Other Thoughts On Tennessee

A neighborhood leveled by the tornado in Tennessee this week. Photo by
Mark Humphrey/AP

They continue to pick up the pieces in central Tennessee after Tuesday morning's tornado or tornadoes that killed at least 25 people and caused destruction extending for dozens of miles.

This disaster has people wondering: Is this part of a trend?

The news is disconcerting. According to CNN:

"In recent years, scientists have noticed an increased frequency of tornadoes in the Southeast, carving a deadly path in what's called Dixie Alley.

The region includes portions of eastern Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee,Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia"

While the more traditional Tornado Alley in the Great Plains and parts of the Midwest still  have more tornadoes than the South, the numbers in the South seem to be growing.

Climate change might be a factor.  

Writing for CBS News back in October, 2018, Jeff Berardelli said storm systems are tending to push dry Southwestern desert air into the Southeast further east and more often. Meanwhile,  there is a tendency for more robust pushes of warm, humid, moist and unstable air moving northward from the Gulf of Mexico.

The leading edge of these impulses of arid air from the west are known as dry lines.  Supercell thunderstorms, which can produce tornadoes, tend to form in the humid air just ahead of the dry line. 

Dry air is less dense than wet air, so it rises more easily.  The dry air that's wanting to rise smashes into the wet air.  The rising air entrains some of that moisture, and you get those thunderstorms.

The tornado peeled apart this stop sign
in Nashville. 

You don't even need an official dry line to get these storms going.  If some dry air moves in from the west into humid air, supercell storms can easily develop in the conditions are right.  That's why these intrusions of dry air into the Southeast can be so problematic.

Now, we can't say Tuesday's Tennessee's tornadoes were "caused" by climate change and the associated rejiggering of dances between different pieces of the atmosphere. After all, deadly tornadoes have always occured in the Southeast.  

For instance, a tornado outbreak in the Southeast in March, 1875 killed 96 people. Another tornado outbreak in 1884 killed scores of people in Alabama.   Tuesday's tornado was the third major tornado to slice through Nashville. The others were in 1933 and 1998.

So all we can say is Tuesday's tornadoes in and around Nashville were consistent with the trend scientists have been seeing.

Southeastern tornadoes are often deadlier for numerous reasons, most of which were present in the Nashville tornado.  Southeast tornadoes are a little more likely to occur early in the season, when jet stream winds make a tornado's forward speed go into overdrive.  Which means there's little time for warning.

Also, as CNN points out, Southeast tornadoes are more likely to occur late at night, instead of late afternoon or evening in Tornado Alley. That means people aren't awake to hear warnings. (The Nashville tornado came through a little after 12:30 a.m.)

The Southeast is more densely populated than the Great Plains, so the more occupied houses are likely to be hit in the South. There's a lot more trees that can topple onto homes, and those trees make it harder to see the twister coming.  Plus, Southeastern tornadoes are more likely to be wrapped in rain.  When that happens, they just look like nasty thunderstorms, and not deadly funnel shaped tornadoes.

TRUMP'S EXAGGERATION

The East End United Methodist Church in Nashvillle was
severely damaged. Photo by Mark Humphrey/AP

The following isn't as big a deal, given the loss of life and destruction in Tennessee. But it's still worth mentioning, as accuracy is important.

President Trump always has to make anything he's involved in the biggest and grandest. It makes him feel like he's handling unprecedented stuff with aplomb. That's nothing close to the truth, but whatevs.

Trump tweeted Wednesday that he's going to Tennessee to support tornado victims, which is of course nice. But he had to note the tornado had a "record size and velocity."

No and nope. The Tennessee tornadoes were certainly stronger than most.  There's a five point so called "EF" scale to measure the ferocity of tornadoes.  An EF-5 is the strongest possible.  The strongest Tennesee tornado was an EF-4 and other tornadoes, or other parts of one tornado path were at a high end EF-3, according to preliminary reports.  

Just five percent of tornadoes reported annually in the United States are EF3, EF4 or EF5 level (EF5's are rare and don't even happen every year. So yeah, the Nashville tornado was bad.

But highest winds in the Tennessee tornadoes were an estimated 165 mph or so.  The strongest known winds in a tornado reached about 305 mph in Oklahoma City and its suburbs on May 3, 1999.

The Tennessee tornadoes were probably no more than a half mile wide. Again, that's unusually large for a tornado. But it wasn't close to the record. That mark is held by a 2.6-mile wide tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma on May 31, 2013.

YES, THERE WERE WARNINGS

Some news reports said that the tornadoes "came without warning," which is false. The National Weather Service office in Nashville issued tornado warnings as the storms rapidly approached the metro area, then raced eastward into the suburbs and small towns for a few dozen miles east of Nashville.

The warnings went out about five to 10 minutes before the tornadoes struck.  That's not a lot of time to prepare, but you can at least get yourself to an interior room or basement. Tornado warnings generally don't have much lead time, especially when tornadoes have a fast forward speed, like the Tennessee tornadoes.

However, some people didn't hear warnings.  That's the difference.  NWS/Nashville did a top-notch job with the warnings, but if people didn't hear or see said warnings, they were worthless, at least to the people who didn't get them.

To get warnings, people should have multiple ways to get them.  For instance, some people rely on warnings from their cell phones. Which is a great way to receive warnings. However, in eastern parts of the tornado zone, some cell phones didn't go off, because the tornado had already wrecked cell towers.

However, weather radios, which broadcast tornado warnings immediately, worked just fine.  So people in tornado -prone zones should probably have two simultaneous ways to get warnings. Set up your phone app, but also buy an inexpensive weather radio. Weather radios cost between $25 and $100, depending on how many bells and whistles you want with it.

Don't rely on outdoor storm sirens.  Those are meant to alert people who are outdoors to take shelter. You won't necessarily hear them from inside your house.

Also, know where to go during a tornado warning and know how to do it quickly.  Basements are best. If you don't have one, go to a closet in the center of the house.  Have blankets and pillows ready there to cover yourself up as added protection.  Another good idea is to have bicycle or motorcycle helmets ready in your safe shelter to put on.  You want to protect your head if there's flying debris, so this would help.

Severe Weather Ongoing In Eastern Half Of The Nation

Large tornado near Washburn, Illinois Tuesday

Just a quick update to sum up the ongoing outbreak of severe weather in the eastern third of the nation today.

A very, very strong squall line has been going through the Ohio and Tennessee valleys this morning, with numerous reports of very damaging winds. 

There are a number of reports of roofs blown off homes in Kentucky and Tennesee.

They'll have to investigate whether any of these are tornadoes, but most of damage reports look like they come from straight line winds from very intense thunderstorms.

Winds reportedly gusted to 79 mph in Carrollton, Kentucky and 76 mph in Paducah, Kentucky this morning.

Super strong thunderstorms can be as dangerous as tornadoes, so Kentucky and Tennesee this morning prove the point.

Today's bad storms come after an even worse day Tuesday.

Several tornadoes touched down, mostly in Illinois,  At least three people have died in Tuesday's tornadoes, the Weather Channel reported.  There were nearly two dozen reports of tornadoes Tuesday.

In what must have been a terrifying case, a very strong tornado crossed Interstate 55 near Perryville, Missouri after dark, hurling cars quite a distance and mangling them. Police there reported one dead and 10 injured.

Tornadoes, even big ones, are usually very hard to see at night. During the day, if you're traveling down a highway, you can often see a tornado getting ready to cross the road ahead of you.

Tornado damage inside an Illinois nursing
home on Tuesday

So you stop and let it by, or turn around and go the other way if necessary.

At night, motorists blindly drive right into the tornadoes. It had to be so terrifying to suddenly be in the midst of such a strong tornado.

To make matters worse, the tornado also blew tons of debris from a nearby salvage yard onto Interstate 55 as the trapped motorists got caught up in the twister, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Another large tornado in Ottawa, Illinois smacked into a nursing home. Some residents were injured, but none severely.

For the remainder of today, the threat of severe thunderstorms and possibly a few more tornadoes continues from northern Alabama to around the New York City area. The greatest threat for the most intense storms and tornadoes runs from the Gulf Coast states to southern Pennsylvania. 

Probably the greatest threat of tornadoes today will be over northern Alabama and Mississippi.

All the severe storms will have swept off the coast tonight, and forecasters don't anticipate more severe weather for the next few days after today.

The parent storm's strong cold front will cross the eastern seaboard tonight, ending another spate of record warmth.

In New England, it will actually turn briefly bitterly cold Friday and Saturday.

I'll have a review of Vermont and New England's extreme winter weather in a post later today.

Deadly Tornadoes Strike Southern US, Some Risk Of More Today

A tornado destroyed this post office in Polk County, Tenn.

The wildfire disaster in and near Gatlinburg, Tennessee stole most of the weather headlines over the past couple of days, but a deadly tornado outbreak made things even worse in the American South. 

There were at least 26 reports of tornadoes yesterday, and some of them turned deadly.

It's been a fairly slow tornado year, and we'd gone from May 9 without a tornado death in the United States.

Until yesterday.

Tornadoes killed 5 people in Alabama and Tennessee. As if Tennessee needed more tragedies after the Gatlinburg fire. In fact, Gatlinburg was under severe storm alerts during this tornado outbreak.

The worst hit area in this latest tornado outbreak was in Alabama, where three people died when a tornado crushed a mobile home. Four children were critically injured when another tornado roared through a 24-hour day care center.

As bad as this storm outbreak was and is, the number of tornado deaths so far this year in the United States is below average.

More tornadoes are possible today in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states. I'm guessing the tornadoes won't be as strong or widespread as those Tuesday and Tuesday night. But people in the alert area should be on the lookout for threatening skies, and take shelter if any warnings go up.

Terrifying Wildfire Roars Through Tennessee City, Resort

Sharon Pinyan snapped this scary photo as she
evacuated from the Gatlinburg fire last night.
She said the car behind her caught fire as
flames jumped into the road. 

I watched in horror on social media last night as an immense wildfire tour through the city of Gatlinbug, Tennessee and surrounding resort communities like Pigeon Forge

Details are still coming in but dozens and dozens of buildings appear to be lost. I don't know if anybody died in the fires but the flames came into town so fast, and the evacuation was so chaotic, I definitely worry about people there.

Incredibly scary videos of the Gatlinburg fire are at the bottom of this post.

Television station WATE in Knoxville, Tennessee was reporting that 30 buildings in Gatlinburg were on fire, including a 16-story hotel and a large apartment complex.

Incredibly scary video emerged on social media of people trapped inside the smoke-filled hotel as flames danced wildly just outside the windows.

WATE interviewed a man named Logan Baker, via phone, who was trapped in the burning Gatlinburg Park Vista hotel. Firefighters on the scene told people it was unsafe to leave due to 80 mph winds and swirling flames and embers, and falling, burning trees outdoors.


Sadly, the wedding chapel
during the fire



A Gatlingburg wedding chapel
before the fire

"The only road to get down from the hotel, trees had fallen down in the road and were just engulfed in flames...Then the flames came up into the parking lot and then they told us we all had to stay inside," Baker told WATE.

The hotel's emergency doors came off their rollers, so dense smoke and hot embers swept into the hotel's interior.

The smoke was so dense in the hotel it was hard to breathe. Guests like Baker went to upper floors of the hotel and smashed out windows to get (slightly) better air.

Sound absolutely terrifying to me.   

Baker said as he leaned out these windows, he could see fires in downtown Gatlinburg and numerous cabins on the hillsides exploding into flames.

Ripley's Aquarium was evacuated, and workers there had to abandon 10,000 or so animals there. At last report, the building was still standing, but we don't know how things are there. The Aquarium's manager said some workers had to be forcibly removed from the building because they didn't want to leave the animals.

Another wildfire was just on the edge of the famed Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge. Guests at the parks hotels and cabins were all evacuated. At last report, none of the strucures at Dollywood were on fire, and firefighters were setting up in the park to protect buildings.

The Amercian Eagle Foundation was also conducting an emergency evacuation of its bird sanctuary and rehabilitation center in Pigeon Forge. I imagine it must be incredibly difficult to move all those birds out of harm's wa.

People in the fire zone were also urged to stay off their cell phones unless they were making emergency calls because the system was overloaded.

A weather station on the east side of Gatlinburg during the fires was telling: It reported a temperature of 118 degrees with a 43 mph wind, gusting to 69 mph. Yikes!

FIres have been burning for weeks near Gatlinburg and much of the Southeast due to a record drought.

A strong cold front was approaching with a burst of much needed rain last night. However, preceding the rain were very strong south winds that fanned the flames and send them cascading uncontrollably into Gatlinburg.  


A popular restaurant burns near Gatlinburg,
Tennessee Monday evening.

I was watching weather radar and you could see the increasing plume of smoke from Gatlinburg and a large band of rain approaching from the west. I was literally urging the rain to move faster toward Gatlinburg, but it obviously didn't arrive fast enough.

The Gatlinburg fire disaster comes just a week after a wildfire crashed into the big city of Haifa, Israel. Another immense wildfire tore into Fort McMurray Alberta, Canada this spring.

You have to wonder if the Gatlinburg disaster, and the other fires are part of climate change. It's hard to tease out one incident, like Gatlinburg and start screaming "CLIMATE CHANGE!!!!"

But it is consistent with climate change, in that global warming makes extreme weather more likely.

Oh, sure, there have always been epic wildfire disasters. In 1871, on the same night as the Great Chicago Fire, a wildfire swept into Peshtigo, Wisconsin, killing perhaps 2,000 people. (It's known as America's forgotten fire, as Chicago took the headlines, but Peshtigo was the more deadly of the two disasters.)

In 1910, America's largest wildfire, fed by hurricane force winds, killed 86 people in Idaho.

But it's the apparent uptick in the frequency of wildfires and other strange weather disasters that has caught my attention this year, which will go down as the world's warmest in modern record.

Something very disconcerning is definitely going on,  and Donald Trump is a fool if he still thinks climate change is hoax.

Some Gatlinburg videos:

In the first one, Michael Luciano filmed his narrow escape by car from the hills around Gatlinburg, as forests and cabins around him burned ferociously. He's lucky to be alive:



Here's the view from inside the smoke-filled Park Vista Hotel during the wildfire:

Watch A Tornado Bully A Tennessee School Yard

Security camera footage shows debris flying
around a Tennessee high school during
a tornado earlier this week. 

I love surveillance cameras in tornadoes.

It's obviously way too dangerous and foolhardy for someone to film a tornado when it's right on top of you. (Though some doofuses try anyway.)

What appears to be a tornado is captured from several angles in this video from Crockett County, Tennessee.

The tornado happened earlier this week as a storm system swung dangerous tornadoes through parts of the southeast.

The EF-1 tornado packed winds of up to 95 mph, so it wasn't the strongest tornado ever, but you can see even ones that aren't super huge are dangerous. Look at all the sheet metal flying around.

The tornado ripped the roof of a vocational educational building on the high school campus, television station WREG reported. The tornado struck after school hours, so there weren't man people around.

Plus, the school district had canceled after school programs because of the threat of severe weather, which also helped tremendously.

Here's the video:

Skating Through The South And Blasting Through Winter

Ice storm damage in Helena, Arkansas. By
Stephanie Arnold via KATV.  

Another big winter storm is ending for most of the places it blasted yesterday, and the eastern part of the nation is settling in for more Arctic air.

This is one of those winter that, in general, wasn't so bad at the beginning but really built up to a big crescendo toward the end.

The big problem with yesterday's winter storm was the freezing rain and ice accumulations stretching from Arkansas to North Carolina.

Widespread power failures are still going in Arkansas, Tennessee, northeastern parts of Georgia and sections of North Carolina. (Plus there's probably a few nearby areas I skipped.)

NBC is reporting this morning at least 330,000 homes and businesses across the South have no power because heavy ice accumulations brought down trees, branches and power lines.

It's cold where there's no power, too. Arctic air punched back into the region behind the storm. For instance, it was 14 degrees this morning in Nashville, where about a half inch of ice paralyzed the region.

You start to get power failures during freezing rain if the ice accumulates to about a quarter inch thick. In Tennessee, ice was as much as three quarters of an inch thick, reports the Weather Channel. Many areas reported at least a half inch of ice.

Car crashes, were of course common. Some of them were because people were driving too fast for the conditions.  The city of Memphis, Tennessee reported at least 73 car crashes in about 16 hours, the Commercial Appeal newspaper said. 

WAVY-TV in Virginia had a camera set up on the side of the road in Hampton, Virginia, when this happened:



Notice the SUV stopped just inches from the camera (and the guy standing by filming.)

No serious injuries were reported in this crash.

North of the ice zone, it was heavy snow. Coleman, Kentucky picked up 18 inches of snow, and widespread totals of six to twelve inches were reported from Missouri to Virginia.

As expected, the outer edges of the storm were clipping southeastern New England as of Tuesday morning.

Luckily, after six feet of snow in the past month, this won't amount to much, but it won't help. An inch or two could fall in the Boston area today, and Cape Cod and the Islands expect two to four inches.

Ice storm damage in Memphis, Tennessee.
Photo by Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal

Although it will remain very cold in New England for at least the next week, it might not snow all that much more in the next few days. There will be nuisance snows on several days through the weekend, though.

However, with (cross your fingers!) no HUGE dumps of snow into Saturday, municipalities in New England, with help from outside agencies like the Vermont National Guard, can do some power snow clearing.

You know, get tons of bucket loaders out there to dig the snow out of the streets and store it
in "snow dumps" fields.. or even disposing of it in the ocean, a move that is only legal in extreme cases, due to the pollution contained in the snow from the streets. I think this does qualify as an extreme case.

Speaking of extremes, the cold is locked in through much of the week. The National Weather Service in Indianapolis said the town of Seymour, Indiana got down to 13 below this morning. So did Burlington, Vermont. Of course 13 below in Vermont is not as rare as it is in Indiana but it's still damn cold.

Plus, the overnight low got down to minus 30 in Saranac Lake, New York, minus 26 in Whitefield, New Hampshire and 24 below in Morrisville, Vermont and Sherbrooke, Quebec.

This comes after dozens of cities and towns reported record lows. Erie, Pennsylvania reached 12 below, its all time record low for any date. Watertown, New York reached 34 below on Monday.

Another surge of Arctic air will blast into the Midwest and East Wednesday and Thursday. There's a chance Nashville could get below zero. If that happens, it would be the latest in the winter that has happened on record.

I'm watching another possible snowstorm in the Northeast on Sunday or Monday, but I have no details. Forecasting computer models are all over the place with this, so there's nothing I can hang my hat on yet. We'll see.

The weather pattern is stuck pretty much for the rest of the month. There are still some very uncertain signs the weather pattern could change in early March, but I'm not 100 percent sure it will yet, and it could always change into a pattern that brings more snow and cold to places that don't need it.

Stay tuned.

Huge Mess Of Ice And Snow From Arkansas To New Jersey

Car far off the road in icy Memphis, Tenn. this morning.
Photo via Twitter, @local24rodney

Believe it or not, the weather is arguably nicer in snowbound Boston, Massachusetts this morning than it is in places like Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee.

Oh, sure it was ugly in Boston this morning. At 5 a.m., for instance, the temperature was 1 below zero, winds were from the northwest gusting to 38 mph and the wind chill was 25 below.

Plus, Massachusetts is so mired in feet of snow I don't know how they'll ever dig out.

However, the next winter storm is hitting places like Little Rock and Memphis. In those two cities, freezing rain had been falling for hours as dawn broke.  Travel is next to impossible there, so good luck getting to work today if you live in that general area.

Really, just work from home. Assuming you have electricity. Enough freezing rain is going to fall in parts of Arkansas and Tennessee today that trees, branches and power lines will snap. You'll hear lots of news today about the power failures and crashes there.

It's all spreading east, too, so places like northern Mississippi and Alabama,  the northern suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, and big towns like Raleigh, North Carolina are due late today, tonight and tomorrow for freezing rain, scary traveling conditions and power failures.

North of that line of freezing rain, the Ohio Valley is getting hammered by snow. It's already snowing at a pretty good clip there, and that should, if anything, pick up in intensity during the day.

Some areas of Kentucky could receive up to 15 inches of snow, and six to 12 inches will be common. In places that approach 15 inches of snow, those are near record deep accumulations for a snowstorm.

Winter storm warnings extend all the way to Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland and southern New Jersey, where four to ten inches of snow is expected, mostly tonight.

Most of the big snows have steered around the Washington DC area this winter, so this will be a switch for them. This will likely be the first real good snowstorm they've had all winter.

The storm causing this is not super strong, certainly not like the nor'easter that slammed eastern New England the Canadian Maritime provinces over the weekend.

But this new system, traveling east, eventually through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, then off the Carolina coast, has plenty of Gulf of Mexico moisture to work with, and plenty of Arctic air to the north to feed into the system.

Hence, the huge mess.

In places that get the heavy snow and ice, it's going to stick around for awhile, as another blast of Arctic air slumps its way into the eastern half of the nation.

The storm still looks as if it will give a glancing blow to New England instead of a full-throttle dumping. Things could change, but the best guess from the National Weather Service in Massachusetts is two to four inches, mostly south of a Hartford,  Connecticut to Boston line.

Given the bad luck New England has had, though, there is one more complication. A finger of lower air pressure poking into eastern New England from the Atlantic could linger as the storm passes Wednesday.

The setup is called a Norlun trough. It is very hard to forecast much in advance if it will set up, and exactly where. These troughs don't cause heavy snow over a vast area, but can over a more localized zone, say, 40 or 50 miles wide.

If a Norlun trough were to set up somewhere in Massachusetts on Wednesday, that would just be crushing. Literally even, as there's so much snow on roofs that some are caving in.

We just have to hope our old buddy Norlun stays away from New England this week.

By the way, the cold, and possibly outbreaks of snow, will linger through the end of the month in the Northeast.