Breaking: Downtown Nashville Slammed By Overnight Tornado

Widespread damage in Nashville from this
UPDmorning's tornado. 

UPDATE: 

As of 10:30 a.m., Tennessee Emergency Management says the death toll from the tornado or tornadoes is up to 19 people in four counties.

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A tornado went right through the heart of Nashville, Tennessee early this morning, causing widespread destruction and at least nine deaths in and near that city.

It was probably the worst possible scenario for a tornado. A large, strong tornado going through a major metropolitan area in the after-midnight darkness.  People were sound asleep at that hour, and not in a position to hear tornado warnings and take cover.

Dramatic videos are at the bottom of this post

Early reports suggest that the Nashville Fire Department responded to calls regarding at least 40 collapsed buildings, says the Weather Channel.

The tornado apparently touched down a little west of Nashville a little after 12:30 a.m. and continued eastward for about 50 miles to a spot well east of Nashville. That's a long track for a tornado, and dangerous, considering much of its path covered heavily populated areas.

An airport west of town was heavily damaged.  It looks like the tornado went by just barely to the north of the highrises in downtown Nashville. Eastern parts of the city were heavily damaged.

Election workers were checking reports that Super Tuesday polling stations were damaged, too.  In any event, the tornado and its aftermath will surely disrupt voting today in parts of Tennessee.  Polls across Nashville are opening an hour later than scheduled today because of the twister.

Last evening and overnight, there have so far been eight confirmed tornadoes in Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. Tornado warnings blared through the night in parts of these three states.

The extent of this tornado outbreak caught at least me by surprise.  That's not to suggest there weren't adequate warnings, because there certainly were.  It's just that forecasters often see tornado outbreaks days in advance. This one snuck up to an extent.

By late Sunday, forecasters were predicting the risk of severe storms and perhaps a tornado or two in this region.  By Monday afternoon, it was clear that things were beginning to escalate in the atmosphere, so a tornado watch was wisely issued for the area that eventually was hit.

By evening, rotating supercell thunderstorms were firing up, and the damage started.

Another image of tornado damage in Nashville, via Twitter.

It's not necessarily over. Severe thunderstorms and possibly a few more tornadoes are expected today in a long strip from central Texas, across the Gulf Coast states and on into North Carolina.

Some strong storms, and possibly a tornado or two, are even possible roughly 100 miles in any direction from Washington DC.  This could further disrupt voting in states that are in thick of Super Tuesday today.  

Severe weather and flooding is likely across much of the Deep South on Wednesday and Thursday, too

Back in Nashville, this isn't the city's first go around with a tornado going right through the middle of the city. In April, 1998, an EF3 tornado, with winds of between 156 and 200 mph, swept through the middle of Nashville in a path somewhat similar to this morning's.

In the 1998 storm, 300 buildings in downtown Nashville, including the State Capitol, were damaged. Sadly, the 1998 tornado hit East Nashville particularly hard, just as this morning's twister did.

The Nashville tornadoes reinforce the fact that tornadoes can and do go through the middle of cities.  There's a prevalent myth that tornadoes can't do that, but of course that's not true.

Destructive tornadoes have hit other urban areas, both historically and in recent years.  Damaging twisters went through  downtown Atlanta, Georgia in 2008,  Raleigh, North Carolina in 2011, Oklahoma City in 1999 and even Brooklyn, New York, twice, in 2007 and 2010.  (The video of the 2010 tornado in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is pretty wild).

Just last year, tornadoes swept through heavily developed areas right in Jefferson City, Missouri and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  It can happen here in New England, too: Witness the big tornado in Springfield, Massachusetts in 2011 and the even bigger one in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1953.

Videos:

The immediate aftermath of the tornado in East Nashville.  I always find the sound of alarms going off in busted buildings after a disaster haunting. Watch and listen:



Meteorologist Henry Rothenberg at NewsChannel 5 in Nashville gave the play by play as the tornado swept past the television station early Tuesday:



It's frightening to watch a tornado go through a big city, even when you can't see it well in the darkness. Sam Shamburger of television station WRKN tracked the tornado as it passed through. You can see it with the power flashes it was causing:



First light this morning reveals some of the destruction:

Breaking: Many Tornadoes In Georgia, Alabama. It's Quite An Outbreak

Extreme tornado damage in Lee County, Alabama

8 PM UPDATE

The death toll from the tornado in Lee County, Alabama has risen to 14.

That means there were more tornado deaths in one county in one afternoon than in all of the United States in the entire year of 2018.

Last year was a record low for tornado deaths, but sadly, that trend has not continued into 2019.

Today's death toll could easily rise, as people search for victims. Plus, in the past hour, possible tornadoes touched down near Columbia, South Carolina and Tallahassee, Florida. There were also signs on radar that a possibly strong tornado roared right through Cairo, Georgia. We don't have an immediate confirmation of that, though.

Judging from the damage in photographs and video from Lee County, Alabama, this was probably an EF-4 tornado.  EF4s and EF5s are the strongest tornadoes possible and are responsible for most tornado deaths.

If the Alabama tornado was an EF4, it will be the nation's first one since April, 2017. That is an unusually long time for the United States to go without such a strong tornado.

6:30 PM UPDATE: WSFA-TV is now reporting ten fatalities from the tornadoes in Lee County Alabama.

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It's shaping up to be a terrible tornado day in Alabama and Georgia, as tornado warnings have been firing off left and right all afternoon.

There are at least two confirmed fatalities in Beauregard, Alabama, television station WRBL reports. Photos coming out of that area show houses either destroyed or with major damage.

Details on damage and injuries were very sketchy as of 6:30 p.m., which is typical when an outbreak of twisters is still in progress. Most everybody is wisely busy warning people in the path of tornadoes instead of detailing what's already happened.

A video, which you can see at the bottom of this post, shows numerous houses in Lee County completely leveled. Watching the video, you pray that the people who lived in those houses weren't home when the tornado struck.

Fox 5 in Atlanta is reporting there were at least two reports of "large and extremely dangerous" tornadoes this afternoon. One of those giant tornadoes was reported not far from Auburn, Alabama shortly after 3 p.m. this afternoon. Less than 45 minutes later, another big, very dangerous tornad was south of Macon, racing toward the northeast at 60 mph.

Other tornadoes were reported near Huber, Georgia and south of Hamilton, Georgia. Some of the tornado warnings had "particularly dangerous situation" wording attached to them, which means these aren't weak, mildly damaging tornadoes, but ones that could be devastating if they roared through a town or neighborhood.

At 4:15 p.m. today I counted no fewer than 12 simultaneous tornado warnings in central and southern Georgia, so that's a very dense packet of tornadic storms. Which means it's a dangerous situation for sure.

A person named Evan on Twitter posted this photo
inside his home this afternoon, with the message, "I need
prayers. Tornado just destroyed my house. 

As of 6:30 p.m. there are 18 confirmed tornadoes in Alabama and Georgia. I'm sure many other reports will come in, as this is an ongoing situation. Plus, it sometimes takes as much as 24 hours to confirm a storm in any one location was a tornado or something else, like ferocious straight line winds.

National Weather Service offices in Georgia are so overwhelmed with trying to issue timely warnings that the NWS office down in Key West, Florida, is assisting with warnings up in Georgia. (There's no severe weather around Key West.)

Video on social media showed a very wide, wedge-shaped tornado moving through Smiths Station, Alabama.

Other photos on social media showed houses leveled in Talbotton, Georgia by a tornado. There's no word yet on casualties in that town.

This is a developing story, so hit this post from time to time, as there will very likely be updates.

Extreme destruction in this video from Lee County, Alabama. As you'll see, houses are leveled.
You can also tell by the narrator's voice that he is stunned and overwhelmed. No surprise there:


Video: Tornado near Warner Robbins, Georgia this afternoon.

 

Another Day, Another Deadly Firestorms Sweeps Through A City

Wildfire burns a historic old schoolhouse in Shasta, California
on Thursday. Photo by Noah Berger/AP

These seem to be happening more and more lately:

Another terrible firestorm is ripping through a city, this time, Redding, California. The north-central California community of 92,000 is facing massive evacuations, at least dozens of homes burned, at least one death, and many injured. 

It's so bad that television station KRCR in Redding was knocked off the air, its staff evacuated because the area was unsafe. Apparently, they're back, because there was a live feed from the television station going as of  6:30 EDT.

There's a clip of that moment when KRCR was evacuated at the bottom of this post.

Details on this fire are still sketch as I write this early Friday morning as it is breaking news. Apparently, the fire ripped through the nearby towns of Shasta and Whiskeytown before jumping the Sacramento River and charging through Redding overnight.

"The fire is moving pretty rapidly and taking everything down in its path," said Scott McLean, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Weather conditions are terrible in northern California are not expected to get better anytime soon. At one point Thursday in Redding, the temperature was 113 degrees, with an 11 percent relative humidity, with three mile visibility in smoke.

Similarly hot, dry weather is forecast for the next several days in the region.

Scientists have long warned us that wildfires would get worse as climate change takes hold, and that seems to be what's happening. Combine that with more and more people building houses in or near the wilderness and you get what happened in California last night.

Screen grab showing KRCR anchors in Redding announcing they are
going off the air because the television station was being
evacuated ahead of an oncoming wildfire

Redding joins a growing list of communities worldwide that have been devastated by wildfires in recent years. Just this week, that wildfire that roared through seaside resorts in Greece killed at least 80 people.

In 2017, wildfires destroyed 10,000 California structures, more than in the nine previous years combined, the Sacramento Bee reported. Those fires killed 43 people - more fatalities than in the previous ten years combined.

One of those fires ripped through Napa and Sonoma, destroying 5,600 structures.

Back in May, 2016, a huge wildfire blasted through Fort McMurray, Canada, destroying 2,400 structures and forcing the mass evacuation of the city's 88,000 residents.

Fire season across the Northern Hemisphere is far from over. Which community will be hit next?

Here's the clip from KRCR:



And here's an AP video of homes burning near or in Redding:

Another Deadly Weather Disaster Now Unfolding In California

Mud inside a home in Montecito, California
this morning amid an unfolding flash flood,
mudslide and debris flow disaster. 

UPDATE: As of early afternoon Eastern Standard Time, the death toll from the mudslides and debris flows in California is now up to five.

Other people are missing. The gas main break caused by one of the debris flows also burned several homes. One witness told reporters a heartrending story of the mudslides destroying their house while they were inside.

They were rescued, and later checked on a neighbor's house. They heard a baby crying deep down in the mud. The man and rescuers retrieved and saved the baby, but nobody knows if there are other fatalities beneath the mud in that neighborhood.

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California can't catch a break.

The expected torrential rains have arrived in southern California and those rains have caused destructive and deadly mudslides and debris flows. This is especially true near the burn scars of those epic wildfires they had through 2017.

This is still breaking news, so all the details are still not out. Plus, as of 10:30 eastern time, it was still raining in California, so more trouble will be brewing.

We do know the communities of Montecito and Carpinteria, near where the gigantic Thomas fire raged through December, are particulary hard hit.

Early reports from the Los Angeles Times indicate at least one person has died in the mudslides, flash flooding and debris flows so far.

Thirty miles of the heavily traveled 101 Freeway near the site of the Thomas Fire is closed due to mudslides and debris flows. Several people were rescued from debris flows in Montecito, and a gas main break has caused at least one fire, the Los Angeles Times said. 

A rain gauge has measured five inches of rain so far in at least one recording station in the Thomas Fire burn scar.

I'm sure there will be further updates as this continues to unfold.

BREAKING: Destructive Tornadoes In New Orleans, Other Areas Of South Now

Tornado damage in New Orleans today via NOLA.com

Destructive tornadoes are sweeping parts of Louisiana and surrouding areas today, with one particularly damaging one hitting the New Orleans metro area around 11 a.m. local time.

An hour and a half later, another tornado had reportedly touched down in the New Orleans area.

Initial video shows a wide tornado lumbering through the New Orleans East, including the community of Michaud with the first wave of storms. (You can see one of the videos at the bottom of this post.)

Other video shows badly damaged houses, overturned vehicles and debris scattered over large areas.  Photos on the NOLA.com website showed numerous homes, businesses and cars destroyed or damaged in New Orleans East.

NOLA.com reported the New Orleans East tornado struck at least one school, which was full of students.

There were no injuries immediately reported at the school, as faculty and students received a tornado warning in advance and took cover.

Tornado damaged house in New Orleans East today.
Photo via Twitter, Matt Sledge. 

More tornadoes and severe weather are likely in the South for the rest of the day.  As of 2 p.m. EST, parts of eastern Louisiana, and the southern portions of Mississippi and Alabama were under tornado watches.

The watches include the cith of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which was badly damaged in a January tornado.

It had been hoped and it appeared in advance hat today's severe weather would not rival that of a destructive tornado outbreak in the South last month. However, as we can see, large, damaging tornados are striking populated areas today.

I'll update the story as we go along.

Below is a video of the very large tornado moving through Michaud, Louisiana, in the New Orleans area today:

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:

Very Scary Flash Flood In Ellicott City, Maryland Last Night

Devastating flash flood in Ellicott City, Maryland last night

A flash flood sent a wall of water through downtown Ellicott City, Maryland, last night

The flood killed at least two people and sent dozens of cars floating away. Gushes of water roared through shops and apartment, destroying them.

The floods hit as restaurants and nightspots were filled with people out on a Saturday evening in the historic city, so a lot of people were trapped in cars and buildings.

As in most flash floods, the water arrived instantly, and later at night, it just as instantly retreated, leaving people wandering around the devastated downtown until officials evacuated the area.

In the video below, taken from inside an Ellicott City restaurant, the view out the window escalates as water rises. By the middle of the video, horrified people in the restaurant watch cars sweep away in the torrent, some with people desperately clinging to them.



Here's another view of the flood:

 

Here's a dramatic rescue of a woman from a car in the raging torrent.



Here's the aftermath, and you can see the damage to ground floor shops and restaurants and art galleries is massive:

 

BREAKING: NOAA Says January Was Ninth Consecutive Hottest Month On Record

Once again, last month the world set a record for
a hottest month on record. This time, January 2016
is the warmest January on record, says NOAA. 

The monthly, eagerly awaited NOAA climate summary for January is just out this morning, and, Surprise! Last month was the hottest January on record for the Earth.

Incredibly, it was also the ninth month in a row that was the hottest on record. As far as I can tell this is totally unprecedented.  

For the world's land and oceans, January, 2016 was 1.87 degrees above the 20th century average for the month. It surpassed the old January record by 0.29 degrees set in 2007, says NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information. 

Beating an old record by 0.29 degrees might not sound like much, but if you are looking at the entire Earth, breaking the record by that amount is a huge margin. In fact, NASA, in their own set of data, said earlier this week that January broke the record for a hottest month by the largest margin of any in their data set.

Today's NOAA data says the margin by which January broke the record is only the second greatest. THE greatest margin by which a record was broken was set a couple months ago, in December, 2015.

This January's heat was powered by the oceans, which were the hottest on record. Land-based temperature readings for January were "only" the second hottest on record.

This is ominious because its a sign that there's a lot of potential heat stored in the oceans that could, in the future, wreak even more havoc with the weather and climate.

It's true the record strong El Nino in recent months drives up both the world's average ocean temperature and air temperature. That's definitely contributing to this spate of record worldwide warmth in the past couple of years, but it certainly appears human caused global warming is a major driving factor in this, too.

Once El Nino fades, I imagine worldwide temperatures might temporarily settle back away from record setting values for awhile, but still run well above normal. Then, my guess is, in a few years, we'll start setting worldwide heat records again.

Some observers are saying that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, beating out 2015, which set the worldwide heat record by a large margin. 2015, in turn beat 2014 as the hottest year on record.

It remains to be seen if 2016 will be the hottest year on record, but it's off to a rip-roaring start in that category.