Twin States Weather Blog

Severe Weather Session Continues...

* Alan Gerard, Chad Entremont and Eric Carpenter are all meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Jackson. Alan is the Meteorologist-In-Charge; and the others are both forecasters. They are presenting on the pre-Thanksgiving severe weather outbreak last year. You can read about that event by clicking the link below:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jan/events/Nov23_24_2004/index.htm

Here are some highlights:

- The outbreak was very similar to a tornado outbreak that struck Mississippi in November of 1992, with a split flow pattern in place and a strong upper trough in the southern branch of the jet stream.


- The setup was a classic one for severe weather. Deep layer of moisture, approaching upper trough with a developing surface low northwest of us.

- One of the storms struck Jefferson County, Mississippi. It produced a tornado that was rated an F3, and was 600 yards wide and 18 miles long.

- The storm of the night though was a long-track supercell. It tracked across central Mississippi, producing an amazing EIGHT tornadoes in its path. One person lost their life. The tornado responsible for the death tracked across three counties, and was rated an F3.

- Another supercell moved across our area. This one produced an F1 tornado just southwest of the city of Meridian, and also caused damage in Scott and Newton Counties.

- The final toll was 2 injured, 1 dead. Although many lives were saved, we have to continue to work to make our warning system the BEST it can be. But, I will definitely agree that this could have been much, much worse.

* The NWS guys from Jackson really did a great job with this presentation. They discussed the meteorological setup that led to the outbreak, as well as their staffing plans. The final statistics on their performance shows their hard work: They issued 46 tornado warnings, 20 of which verified. The average lead time on the warnings was 14 minutes. Additionally, they had some software issues during this event and overcame those. Great job!

* More to come later...

posted by WTOK Weather Staff @ 3:28 PM