Tornado Watch 2011

For warnings post known tornadoes on the ground, and help warn fellow ATSers!

Please state counties, states, and roads if possible. Also provide news sources so people can be aware.

Here is one map of severe weather in the US:
www.wunderground.com...

Another:
www.weather.com...

Right now, at the time of this writing there are multiple tornadoes on the ground in Little Rock Arkansas area, and residents are being warned to take shelter.

arkansasmatters.com...

Has continuing coverage, and multiple tornadoes have been sighted, with debris signatures- and those are extremely dangerous.

People in cars and mobile homes in these areas are particularly vulnerable, and are urged to watch the news for reports in your areas. It was stated if so, you should leave your cars or mobile homes and find a low lying ditch away from things that can be picked up and thrown. Better cold and wet than seriously injured, trapped, or worse.

I am in West Little Rock. KARK has been the best so far covering this,we just had a huge mass of rotation over my house with a number of transformers popping, but I couldn't pinpoint where they were. There have been 2 confirmed on the ground in North Little Rock so far.


It's going to be a long fun night for us down this way, stay safe everyone and I will update while and when I can.

reply to post by Itachimaru


Kark just went off the air. ETA: Just came back on... Good!

Previously he said they were right in the path of one, so hope they didn't get hit. That would really suck to have the news source itself wiped out.


They are just reporting now a tornado with a 1/2 mile wide damage path- which is more typical of tornado alley tornadoes in the plains- very dangerous!!!!

One of the best post I have seen here about Tornadoes was posted a few days ago by someone here. It was Tornadoalleylive.com...You ride with the guys while they chase tornadoes....Pretty cool...

You are the 3rd person that has told me they went off..i havent seen them blip yet unless all my power flickered .. hmmm maybe a conspiracy in itself, the govt is blocking certain parts off from the news! ( have to add a bit of levity to the evening)

Arkansas Matters reporting Arkansas Governor just declared state of emergency due to multiple tornadoes and severe flooding... Damage reports still coming in.

They are now calling this an outbreak, which can't be good.

Also, I had requested this be made a sticky, and thanks to our forum moderator DontTreadOnMe for making it so. (At least, I think it was). It will help keep tornado alerts in one place on the forums. Much like the Quake Watch and Volcano Watch threads. Sure, if an F5 hits somewhere and causes catastrophic damage, make your own thread...But for everyday tornadoes, this will be good...

Unconfirmed reports: Vilonia PD reports "town is gone," pavement has been scoured outside of town...

twitter.com...#!/rjmaguire/statuses/62698643832053762

I think they took a direct hit from a "wedge" type tornado.

Someone posted a pic of it here:



Man, that is crazy. Huge.

Quote from the Arkansas State Police on the the live scanner site at:

Faulkner County Arkansas - Live Scanner Feeds

Multiple confirmed tornadoes on ground, Saline County, Garland County, Pulaski County. 60-80 MPH winds, Little Rock and Maumelle, Conway areas, miltiple injuries! (8:02 CDT)

Prayers are with our SusanFrey from the "Earthquake Swarm in Arkansas" thread and all involved in this severe weather.

post

Please be safe Susan and all friends In Arkansas!

Well most of us made it through ok, I had baseball size hail ...as well as a huge rotation above my neighborhood...to the extent that you could literally see it swirl like a whirlpool...it didnt drop in my neighborhood but we lost a number of trees and a large number of transformers popped. Fortunately i have an integrated generator..best investment ever.

I look forward to getting to do this all again tomorrow. As of right now it is all in the NE part of AR but the storms have calmed down significantly, and are mostly just dropping tons of rain and not so much with the tornadoes.


UPDATE: Almost all of the state is under a flood warning now.

No new news to report.

I just wanted to say that I feel for you guys.

Southern Illinois here. We are getting all of the extras from you all. No fun here either. We are flooded out. We are running the carpet cleaner non stop to try to keep the carpets dry. All in all were good. Got to stop and get some sleep sometime.

Hang in there guys.

Lj01 riding it out.

reply to post by Itachimaru


Thanks for the updates. Watching twitter feeds, reports are coming in of additional fatalities, and that some people believe Vilonia got hit by an F4 to F5. But there are other areas hit hard as well, and emergency management officials just stated they wouldn't have a full accounting of what happened until tomorrow. Other reports have an air force base being hit by a tornado, and several units sustained damage. Trees are down everywhere, and over 70,000 are without power.

The storm is now progressing into west Tennessee and Mississippi.

Another pic of the actual tornado that hit Vilonia:

For the past three day's in North Texas been quite a ride, had a tornado warning in my neighborhood but nothing happened. Then today there so far has been confirmed tornado's in Hood and Johnson county south of Dallas, here is a blog for what happened today, www.wfaa.com...

Tis the season at least no one was hurt or killed so far anyways. PS: there is a video of the tornado that happened today in those counties.

Finally a thread i'm not gonna harass you about ta...good job.

reply to post by TrueAmerican


I can confirm that the base was hit, but reports as of an hour ago was that there were only a few units damaged and it was mostly tree damage...however word is kinda tight around the base. I have a friend who works there that I will try to get an update from tomorrow. The reports coming out of vilonia are bad, and I also saw a number of reports where they will not have a full accounting until morning. It was getting dark when we got hit here so by the time it cleared up it was full on night.

www.arkansasmatters.com has some really good pics and video of it, I have one of the rotation over my part of town that I will see about uploading tomorrow as it is on my phone and I am whipped so I am going to bed to get ready to do it all again tomorrow.


On a side note, I have some hail damage to the windshield of my car, as we were getting baseball sized hail here ...I have a nice crack now in my window. Aside from that, we only suffered a few downed trees, but unfortunatly that one that passed over my house was the one that got Vilonia. We also had a long track tornado out in Royal I think that was on the ground for almost an hour but if I remember right there wasnt really much damage from that as it is mostly country out that way. Hot Springs and Spa City got hit pretty good from what I heard but I dont really have much information on that at the moment.


I am off to bed it was already a long day before all this started

Vilonia, AR now under Marshall Law following the tornado according to Central Arkansas Radio Emergency Net
www.radioreference.com...

I haven't confirmed or heard that yet....BUT wouldn't be surprising....Katrina... That was reported by a listener supposedly.

Nice one TA ... I was going to start a Tornado thread rather than in the EQ Frack thread.
Hopefully the regular posters will pop over here too. Hope everyone in the path is OK.

A couple of links if people are interested.

www.chasertv.com...

OP: Thanks for creating such a thread, since we have been having quite a month with severe wx. I would like to contribute some things that are in the perspective of someone in the actual field of chasing or spotting. This could help add things on a more factual/scientific basis as well as give people an idea of how severe wx forecasting works. If you do not mind of course =)


Storm Prediction Center - This is square one for an idea of what is going on on a day and for the next two days out.

Day 1

The above map shows the categorical outlook of severe weather on the day in question. The times are always expressed in "Z" which is UTC/GMT etc.. its a pretty basic look at what places are to have severe weather and the chances (risk) for such.

Then we have map links to the probability maps for Tornadoes, Wind and Hail. These are expressed in percent values. To break down how this works: say you are in a 2% risk for tornadoes. That would mean there is a 2% chance of a tornado within 25 miles of your current location as long as you are in that covered area. unless you travel into higher risk areas

For more info on SPC and its particulars regarding its products and such you can visit this helpful writeup.

About SPC Products

I will add more later but this is a good basic place to start.

Also to anyone in tornado alley or any place that is affected by severe weather, it might be a good idea to take a Skywarn class if you can. Also do NOT go out trying to be Reed Timmer if you don't know what you are doing! Safety is number 1.

For the record, I do not work for NOAA or the SPC or NWS.

msm is reporting corp of engineers plan to load a barge with explosives to blow a levee where the mississippi and ohio rivers converge could flood alot of lower missouri to releive pressure building claim is to start loading at 1 pm today and start 36 hour trip this is what i heard does anyone else have any info on this all would be appreciated as i live in a flood pron area of tennessee and wonder what affect we would have

Good links, thanks for those you guys!

And here is why if you are in a mobile home and a tornado is coming, you best get out and find a ditch away from it:



That is a pic from Vilonia, Arkansas.