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| A lawyer's office in Mayfield, Kentucky before and after Friday's tornado. The capriciousness of the tornado is evident. The building was torn away and largely blown down the street, but books in part of a remaining office remain neatly arranged. |
We know it's bad, but we still don't know the exact death toll, number of injuries, losses and that kind of thing.
There's also a lot of meteorological questions out there. Was it one long-lasting tornado that traveled continuously over 200 miles? If so, it would set a grim record for longest tornado track on record. And exactly how strong was this tornado? That's still being investigated.
First the toll, with a glimmer of good news of sorts from that candle factory that was leveled in Mayfield, Kentucky with 110 people inside.
It looks like eight people died inside that factory during the tornado, which is of course beyond awful. But it's not as bad as first feared. Initial reports said only about 40 of the people inside had been rescued and the rest likely died.
Now it appears 90 people from the factory have been accounted for and are alive. It appears eight people are still missing.
Due to the scope of the disaster and spotty cell phone coverage due to damaged infrastructure, we still don't know how many people died in the tornadoes. It could be anywhere between 50 and 100. In addition to the toll in Kentucky, we know six died in an Illinois Amazon distribution center that was hit by a separate tornado.
THE TORNADOES
Overall, there were 61 reported tornadoes on Friday in the middle of the nation, but that number still needs to be refined.
The main disaster was the tornado or tornadoes that traveled with one intense supercell thunderstorm from northeastern Arkansas, through the boot heel of Missouri, then clipping Tennessee before moving onto its devastating path through Kentucky.
This is already being called the "Quad-State Tornado" since it hit four states, but was it really one tornado a series?
Most of the time, tornado-producing supercells go through cycles. They'll drop a tornado that travels several miles before lifting, only to produce a new tornado a few minutes later. Sometimes this cycle repeats itself numerous times.
Investigators with the National Weather Service are now examining the path of this storm to determine whether it was a series of tornadoes or one monster. I know this doesn't matter much to the victims, but it's still worth the effort. Anything scientists can do to better understand tornadoes, the better.
Another question is what was the maximum strength of this tornado or tornadoes? Anyone who glances at the news headlines and pictures knows it was very strong. But exactly how strong?
Tornadoes are rated on what is called an EF scale from 0 to 5. Category 5 being the most intense, with winds of 260 to 318 mph. Damage from an EF-5 tornado is described as such: "Strong frame houses lifted off foundations, carried considerable distances, and disintegrated; auto-sized missiles airborne for several hundred feet or more, trees debarked."
Judging from photos in the news and on social media, it's possible the tornado or tornadoes was an EF-5. I'll leave that assessment up to the experts poking through the wreckage. We'll probably have an answer to this question within a few days.
The last time the U.S. had an EF-5 tornado was on May 19, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma. That means we've gone more than 3,120 days without such a strong twister. It's the longest such streak on record, but the tornadoes Friday might have ended that welcome break from EF-5 tornadoes.
Strong tornadoes are much more rare this time of year than in the spring. The last EF-5 December tornado was in 1957.
The suction power of the Kentucky storm was beyond words. Debris from the tornado, probably tree branches and bits and pieces of people's homes and belongings, were detected as having been blown aloft up to 30,000 feet in the air. That's cruising altitude for a 747.
Some of the debris was carried huge distances. One photo from the storm was found in somebody's yard 130 miles away. Another photograph turned up in Indiana, 140 miles from where it originated. Other objects, including photographs, were found more than 100 miles away. A Facebook page has been set up to reunite tornado survivors with mementoes that traveled great distances in the storm.
CLIMATE CHANGE?
Inevitably, people are asking if this very strange and extreme December tornado outbreak is a consequence of climate change.
We don't know for sure, but for what it's worth, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that her agency is preparing for more of this kind of stuff. "This is going to be our new normal, and the effects that we're seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation," she said.
Climate change doesn't seem to be causing an increase in overall tornado numbers, but seems to be making individual tornado outbreaks worse. And tornadoes seem to be shifting more to the east, focusing on the Gulf and East Coasts and the Midwest near and east of the Mississippi River, which is where Friday's tornado outbreak focused.
Waters in the Gulf of Mexico are currently at record high levels for this time of year. Warm, moist air is one of the necessary ingredients for tornado outbreaks. It follows that the warmer the air, the more moisture it can hold. That combination worsens the potential powder keg for tornadoes
It's possible that's part of what happened Friday.
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