8 May 2011
Mississippi Tornado Upgraded to EF 5. Takes Road With It.
Posted by Dan Satterfield
This what an EF 5 tornado with 205 mph winds can do. This is where the tornado crossed the road in Noxubee County, MS.
The supercell responsible for this, killed three people and was the first EF 5 in Mississippi since 1966.
It also plowed a field.
The fatalities happened when a strapped down double wide mobile home was thrown 300 yards in the air and into a line of trees, and obliterated. You can read the storm survey from the NWS here.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
We had a F5 here in Ohio, spring of 1985, it uprooted caskets. They were on a hillside, the storm stalled for a few seconds and just scoured out the earth. Seconds before it had passed over a trailer park without touching a thing. That little quirk of fate made the front page the next day.
A tornado with strong winds carrying rocks, bricks, and sand is like a giant grinder destroying anything including roads.