31 dead in yesterday’s
storms, 95 tornadoes reported to NWS. Thousands
of Americans are dealing with destroyed or merely damaged homes, injured,
killed, or missing family members; and the necessity of rebuilding lives
interrupted by the most intense atmospheric disturbance to occur in a
location.
Small towns
have been all but blown off the maps.
Civic structures and infrastructures are non-functional. Emergency response teams are already at work
clearing trees and debris from power, cable, and communications lines,
replacing damaged sections with new wire and cable, in order to restore heat,
lighting, communications, and a sense of normalcy where, suddenly, normalcy is
no more.
The damage
and devastation reach from Missouri to the eastern seaboard. Further damage from this outbreak is still
taking place in the Eastern coastal states this morning.
From about
1000 yesterday through midnight yesterday, we were under some form of watch or
warning. Lines of thunderstorms formed
and pumped storm cells up the continent, sliding along the barrier of the
southern Appalachians. Simultaneously, a
squall line formed in the lower Midwest’s and tracked steadily eastward, spawning
severe storms.
The entrained
cells reached us about noon and continued to slide around and over us until
about 1800. After a two-hour calm, the
second wave, the eastward bound squall line reached us and poured a line of
super cell storms into the mix. We could
watch them on radar as the approached, intensified, and arced somewhat around
us, the most intense sections missing us, barely, to the north or south.
I wore a path
from television to computer as I watched both for minute vector changes that
might signal the need to dive for cover.
About 2100 the lines began t pour even heavier storms into our
vicinity. We loaded our meds and some
clothing into backpacks, added padded computers, back up hard drives, and other
necessities, along with the documents “go-box,” into the internal bathroom, and
waited for the squall line to sink south.
By 2200, the
squall line began to bow outward, signifying high velocity line winds, and
increased speed over ground to 60 mph. We
waited, watching TV and listening to what seemed like constant alerts on the
NOAA radio. At 2230, regional radar feed
showed 5 confirmed tornadoes around us within a 100-mile radius. Somehow, this seemed normal last night. It was almost a certainty that we were going
to wind up experiencing at least one very heavy squall-line bred, super cell
thunderstorm last night, with all the opportunities for wicked wind and rain
damage that go with the trip.
As predicted
by the NWS the squall line reached our location at 2300. One moment it was calm with approaching
thunder and lightning. The next moment
was a typical thunderstorm downward gust front and rain dump. Surprisingly, the squall line began to weaken
and split as it neared us. We avoided
the high winds and heavy rains reported around us. We received 0.62 inches of rain between 0800
Friday and 0800 today. We haven’t seen
any apparent damage from this event. The
neighborhood – hit so hard last spring – seems intact. Local news has no coverage of disasters.
I have no
complaints. The NWS SPC and local office
at Morristown did a tremendous job of forecasting and updating. Our local TV weather teams did yeoman’s work,
staying on the air to pass on alert data as it became available. When I think back to how forecast abilities
have improved since the early days of tornado alerts, I’m really
impressed. The newest generation of
weather radar is going to provide amazing results and allow even better
warnings of active, on the ground tornadoes, avoiding the current masking
effects of rain to a larger extent, homing in on particulate and larger
debris.
We both slept
well last night after watching the squall line clear our area. We didn’t have to dive for cover. That makes it a great night, when all is
considered.
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