In yet another round of tornadoes on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 has now become the most deadly tornado year in a decade. So far this year there have been 96 deaths attibuted to tornadoes across the U.S., mostly in the midwest and southern states. Saturday’s tornado outbreak added 22 of those to the total, so far.
Saturday, more than 5 supercell storms lined up in a powerful system as they started in eastern Kansas and Oklahoma, and moved southeast across Missouri and Arkansas. By far the show stopper of the day, was a giant supercell that began in southeast Kansas, where it dropped a tornado that would continue on for 75 miles and kill more than 20 people. After moving on it to Oklahoma and causing EF4 damage in Picher and killing 6 people, a secondary satellite tornado formed to the north of the original tornado and then after both crossed over I44, it joined the main tornado where it grew to a mile wide, and then continued on in to Missouri, where it killed another 15 people and caused EF3 damage to several communities before finally dissipating east of McDowell. So now we have another historic “Tri-State Tornado” though thankfully this one wasn’t near as bad as back then, due to our current warning process.
Several more storms produced tornadoes in Arkansas, where one produced EF3 damage in Stuttgart, but thankfully this time Arkansas was spared fatalities. Damage surveys are still ongoing in the Arkansas tornadoes, as well as in eastern Oklahoma, where 8 have been confirmed so far.
The National Weather Service in Springfield, Missouri has put up an excellent discussion on what happened meteorologically if you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of how this event unfolded.
The various NWS offices involved have pages up about the events, that will be updated as surveys are completed and more details come in.
If you haven’t already visited the article I put on the main page of my website, there are a number of news video stories on this event there you can see.
Yet another round of potentially tornadic weather is expected from Missouri to Texas tomorrow. I’ll be working up a chase forecast for tomorrow and post it later on today.
I’ll leave this post with video from storm chaser Chris Wilburn who was on the Pitcher, OK tornado and has spectacular footage of it. Be sure and click the video after you watch it and check out his channel for more video of that tornado and damage from the area.