Severe Weather Outbreak Was Really Bad, But Could Have Been Worse

Tornado damage from yesterday. Destruction was
widespread from Ohio to Georgia, but luckily
most of the tornadoes were not a intense
as they could be. 

As anticipated, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes raked parts of the United States Tuesday for the second day in a row, spreading destruction and havoc across several states.  

Although the outbreak of dangerous weather was clearly bad, the zone most affected appeared to have avoided the super intense, long lasting tornados that had been feared. 

No fewer than 16 tornadoes were reported Tuesday, but the number of confirmed twisters will almost definitely go up as meteorologists conduct damage surveys. Another 14 tornadoes on Monday have so far been confirmed.

The hardest hit states Tuesday appear to be Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia, Tennessee,Alabama and Georgia. 

In West Virginia, 140,000 or 14 percent of the state's homes and businesses were without power due to the storm. I'll be interested to learn whether a tornado or just intense straight line winds swept through downtown Charleston, West Virginia. At least one building in the city's downtown partly collapsed. 

Winds gusted to 102 mph in Cannonsburg, Kentucky and 92 mph in Huntington, West Virginia.  

Since everything is on camera these days, dramatic images of tornado destruction were caught by CCTV. One shows a Sunbright, Tennessee funeral home being quickly dismantled by a tornado. 

Another video showed a man pumping gas at an Exxon station in the same town suddenly dropping everything and running into the store as the tornado passed by. Another video showed a student at the University of Kentucky being picked up and thrown by intense thunderstorm winds. The student is not believed to be seriously hurt.. 

So far, I haven't seen any confirmed reports of the dreaded EF-4 or EF-5 tornadoes, which are by far the most intense and most deadly.  The relatively "weaker" tornadoes Tuesday kept the casualty count lower.  Had atmospheric conditions been just a little different on Tuesday, there would have been more tornadoes, and some of them would have been especially powerful. 

An exception to the relatively weak tornado trend from Tuesday might have been in West Union, Ohio, where tornado damage looked like it was caused by especially powerful winds. 

In most cases, instead of completely blowing houses to pieces with occupants inside, roofs, windows, siding and garages suffered the most damage. So anyone sheltering inside a windowless room or closet should have been OK. 

Only a dozen or so injuries were reported in the tornadoes. One person died amidst flooding near Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

Ominously, tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings were disrupted for a time Tuesday morning as a National Weather Service communications outage shut down critical radar imagtes and the ability to issue weather warnings.

That issue was resolved after a few hours. Still, it calls to attention the need for the National Weather Service to receive funding for systems upgrades. 

For the rest today, the storm could still spin off a few tornadoes in North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and possibly Maryland and Delaware. 

Given the widespread damage that has occurred, or is about to with this storm from Texas to Maine, I'm still confident this will be yet another $1 billion weather disaster for the United States. 

This same storm threatens flooding, power outages, wind damage and coastal flooding across the Northeast tonight and tomorrow. 

After today, the severe thunderstorm and tornado threat turns minimal for a few days, but will begin to ramp up again Saturday. We're definitely into tornado season now, so that's not surprising.