Tornadoes rock Mid South region

Re: Thanks for the memories Mid South region

Some of these places have been hit by 4 1/2-inch hail. That's a softball!

 

Re: Thanks for the memories Mid South region

AP just moved two strangely conflicting alerts. Not sure what the second one means.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management says four more people have died in a tornado outbreak, raising the death toll in three states to 21.

BC-APNewsAlert,0031
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee authorities have declared another person dead from storms, bringing the Southern toll to 18.

 

Re: Thanks for the memories Mid South region

They have now corrected the second one.

BC-APNewsAlert, CORRECTION,0042
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee authorities have declared another person dead from storms, bringing the Southern toll to 22. (Corrects APNewsAlert that said 18 people died in total.)

 

Re: Thanks for the memories Mid South region

From a college message board, posted by a fan in Memphis:

Well, folks, I have seen the grace of the Lord first hand tonight... The strorms that ripped thru here earlier this evening were devestating... One of the tornadoes in our area made a direct hit on our corporate office in Memphis... It is housed in a 110,000 sq ft warehouse with about 15k sq ft being office space...

The south end of our building is where all the offices are... The SW corner took a direct hit and about 50-60 feet of a 30ft tall concrete wall caved in on our offices... Our accounting folks were all out of the building, but some of our air freight folks were still there, as well as our trucking group... Luckily, only a few scratches were caused, and bumps and bruises... One poor girl was taken to the hospital in shock... If you have ever been in a commercial warehouse, you will know, there ain't much too the roof... Needless to say, I can't imagine how traumatizing it was to ride that baby out...

About 500yds to our SW, the Coors plant reported one death, and directly behind us, they are still cutting out 4 poor folks that are trapped... All, hopefully will be ok... God Bless those poor souls...

After riding out the storm with my family, as luck would have it, I had left early to go home and vote... Went back up to the warehouse to survey damage, and see what had become of our $300-500 mil worth of our client's inventory... It was amazingly in pretty good shape, but the main thing was our people were ok... It's pretty damn shocking to walk into a building and the whole back wall and roof are gone and you see the city lights... Felt like a horror movie...

I am scared of what will be found in the am in Memphis, as this was pretty bad when it hit in a heavy industrial area... I am thankful for Hillbilly and Jackson that they survived yet another tornado...

Hopefully, the people in the path of this storm will heed the warnings... I will NEVER make fun of weathermen and their "prestorm" warning hysteria again!! THEY SAVED LIVES TONIGHT...

Sorry for rambling but it has been cathartic...

Hope tomorrow goes well for the Tigers, and I can't begin to imagine what it was like to go thru those hurricanes...

Perspective has been shown to me tonight...

 

Re: Thanks for the memories Mid South region

The little weekly newspaper office in Atkins is apparently still there. Got an answering machine.

From what I've read, the tornado clipped the southeast corner of town and missed downtown. But I-40 is a mess.

 

Re: Thanks for the memories Mid South region

I spent the majority of the storm on the phone, talking with a friend who's a Mid-South transplant. She was experiencing her first tornado warning and was scared shitless.

I felt bad because I was telling her it'd be OK. But it's hard for someone to believe that when they've never dealt with tornadoes and (at the time) four or five people had been reported dead.

 

Re: Thanks for the memories Mid South region

Drove home from Carbondale, Ill. in the aftermath of this beast. I saw 20 semi trailers turned over in the median in the I-57 corridor alone. I felt like I was driving on a causeway, when the light shined on the farm fields, it shimmered in the standing water.

The storms were in unison with the start of my game and it was eventually delayed by a tornado warning and I was evacuated from my press seat ... a first.

Looked at the radar during the delay and a red blotch the size of a Divine used tampon (yes, yes, I know Divine was a man) was hovering over me and the rest of Salukiland in the Carbondale region. It stretched at least back to Cairo, Ill., where the Ohio and Mississippi meet. Given how much standing water there was when I left, at least two to three inches of rain fell during the game.

If you think being in an arena gives you a false sense of security in these deals, think again. The rain on the roof at SIU Arena was audible above the crowd noise and it's kind of disconcerting knowing that if the roof goes, I'd be eating a scoreboard or light standard as my last meal.

 

Re: Thanks for the memories Mid South region

February is the middle of tornado season in south. You get brutal cold fronts moving through, they mix with warm air coming off the Gulf, and voila! Instant tornado watch. The same thing happens in the midwest later in the spring, hence the two different tornado seasons — Gulf South, late November to early April; Midwest/Plains states, Late March to June.