5701

Some tornado chaser footage. Warning, strobe like lightning flashes.

5702

I’ve driven by that Amazon warehouse a number of times. We don’t really live that close to it – maybe 15 miles away. It’s absolutely huge. There are a number of very large warehouses in that area. World Wide Technology has a huge warehouse near it too.

I have two Amazon orders due to be delivered tomorrow. When I tracked them just now it said they arrived at a facility yesterday but were not out for delivery yet. My guess is they were at the facility that was hit but I don’t know how many places Amazon has around our area.

I just watched a local news report about it. They have construction vehicles digging out the debris. If there’s only two dead that seems lucky.

5703

https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2021/see-damage-caused-by-deadly-quad-state-tornado/

5704

Hearing about a tornado causing so many deaths in KY while also destroying a warehouse in IL… and it’s the SAME TORNADO? It’s just a total WTF moment for me.

Granted, I live in the Mountain West where tornados are foreign to me, but my poor understanding of them is a tornado doesn’t cut a swath across the country wrecking havoc. A storm system spawning multiple tornados, sure, but not something like is being shown here?

If I were a climate scientist I’d find this even more depressing, having been warning about events like this happening with increased frequency if we continued to ignore climate change.

5705

It’s all lottery tickets at the end of the day. Climate change just means we’re buying a lot more tickets for fringe outcomes.

5706

Kentucky, not West Virginia, right?

Here, I drew all over the image upthread with some text and an arrow.

image

So you can see how a tornado would track across those states. You can see Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee (misspelled), and an arrow where Edwardville is, so you’re kind of right, I don’t think it could be the same Tornado that hit Edwardsville (in the East St. Louis Area), it’s too far north compared to this path, surely.

5707

Yep, thanks, just a brain fart on my part. Fixed my post!

5708

5709

The scale of the devastation is unbelievable. I was gaming with my friends in the Louisville, KY area on Friday night and they talked about power outages earlier in the evening (we usually start around 9PM or later) and they really had no idea how close all this was to them. Folks in the area didn’t seem to have a lot of warning.

5710

Are tornados in general fairly common in places like Tennessee and Kentucky and this was a particularly devastating one, or was it both uncommon and uncommonly powerful?

5711

They’re common all across the midwest. One of the worst on record (one mile wide) tore through north of this area about a hundred years ago.

Some before and after from NPR.

There is a lot more detail about the storm in this article.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/12/11/tornado-path-mayfield-kentucky-deaths/

5712

Not in the middle of the night in freakin’ December they aren’t common.

5713

Thanks, Dave and Knightsaber. It’s the region I’m least familiar with in the US!

5714

Tornadoes are most common in hot months because they are formed by hot wet air under cold air. The bigger the differential the larger the potential. Heat in the area broke records, almost into the 80s, on the day of the storms.

5715

My friends in Oklahoma are of the opinion that the big tornado storms of years past have moved eastward in recent times. They don’t seem to get as many as say, 20 years ago or so (think Moore, OK) and those storms are hitting Arkansas and points east now. Certainly sounds like climate change to me.

5716

In Kentucky they are pretty rare, nothing even slightly like Tornado Alley states where the land is flat. Maybe a big one once a decade? Last I can recall is the one that hit Henryville just north in Indiana. For instance the NWS has 20 “significant” tornadoes for Kentucky over a 250 year span.

https://www.weather.gov/lmk/violent_tornadoes_kentucky

5717

Yeah, a lot of good points brought up.

Tornadoes do best in flat land, even large skyscrapers and large lakes can have a disruptive effect. It’s why downtown Chicago is basically unheard of to have a tornado, as most wind up cutting south along the I-80 corridor.

Peak tornado season in that area is around August. That’s because you have the jet stream bringing colder air from up north meeting warm gulf air coming up the Mississippi river. But generally tornadoes mostly happen from about April to September. You get the occasional report from a warm March or October, but realistically you are more likely to get snow storms that time of year than tornadoes.

December is crazy pants. I’ve never heard of a tornado in the second week of December. Hell November is basically unheard of, at least any significance.

As far as the warehouse, one thing that sticks from all the tornado drills in school, and memories from years gone bye, large empty structures are the worst place to be. It was always a point of emphasis to find a hallway, and never go into a school gym. There’s even dramatic videos I’ve seen where a tornado nearby basically collapses school gyms. The cross beam structures of a warehouse with no support walls is basically a tornado magnet. They collapse well before any other structures do.

This is probably pretty close to what it looked like in the warehouse. Notice the walls are still there! But do not be in a large open space!

5718

Probably a lot to be said for having to cross the Ohio river or the Mississippi to get into Kentucky as well.

5719

Long track tornado was confirmed in Kentucky. When it happened it was least 128 mile track. Maybe more, outside of Kentucky. In the past week. Not now.

5720

Candle factory wouldn’t let concerned workers leave.