The Daily Blog

Powerful Storms Roar Through Several States.

ST. LOUIS — Powerful storms roared through middle America again on Wednesday, with weak tornadoes touching down in isolated spots and severe thunderstorms threatening such strikes in several states.

The National Weather Service issued tornado watches and a series of warnings in a dozen states, stretching northwest from Texas though the Mississippi River valley to Ohio.

“Everybody’s working as fast and furious as possible,” said Beverly Poole, the chief meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s office in Paducah, Ky., which covers southeastern Missouri and southern Illinois. “This is just a wild ride.”

There were no immediate reports of deaths from the new round of storms, though authorities reported dozens of minor injuries following brief tornado touchdowns in Missouri and Indiana.

Wednesday’s storms followed a deadly outbreak Tuesday in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas that killed at least 15 people. The nation’s deadliest single tornado since 1950 killed 125 on Sunday in the southwest Missouri city of Joplin.

Heavy rain, hail and lightning pounded Memphis on Wednesday night as a tornado warning sounded. Menacing clouds showed some rotation, but there were no confirmed reports of tornadoes touching down.

Southern Indiana authorities said at least 12 people were treated for non-life-threatening injuries after a tornado touched down along U.S. 50 east of Bedford, flattening homes, barns and other structures in its path.

“The guys on the ground there say it’s a predominantly rural area, which is fortunate for the masses but of course not for the people nearby,” said Sgt. Brian Olehy of Indiana State Police.

There were also injuries reported when a storm struck a mobile home park west of Bloomington, state police said. Authorities were on their way to the scene but had to clear downed tree limbs and power lines from the roads first.

Earlier in the day, as many as 25 people suffered minor injuries when a tornado damaged several homes and businesses in the central Missouri city of Sedalia. Officials said most were able to get themselves the hospital for treatment.

“Considering the destruction that occurred in Joplin – being that we’re in tornado alley and Sedalia has historically been hit by tornadoes in the past – I think people heeded that warning,” Pettis County Sheriff Kevin Bond said. “And so, I think that helped tremendously.”

Officials in Sedalia ended the school year several days early because of damage to buses. In one hard-hit neighborhood, law officers stood on corners and electrical crews worked on power lines as people cleaned debris and sifted through belongings.

One of the heavily damaged homes was the house of Priscilla McCabe, 61, and her 30-year-old son Sean McCabe, who was home when the tornado struck. Sean McCabe was headed to the basement and says the storm shoved him down the final flight of steps. He had scraps and cuts on his hands, wrists, back and feet. Blood was visible on the carpeted steps heading to the basement and glass crunched underfoot. Much of the roof of the house was gone.

“I saw little debris and then I saw big debris, and I’m like OK, let’s go,” said Sean McCabe, who has a service dog for epilepsy. “All I could think about was the dogs.”

Law enforcement agencies reported one home destroyed late Wednesday afternoon in the rural Carter County town of Ellsinore, about 150 miles south of St. Louis.

In Illinois, high winds, rain and at least four possible tornadoes knocked down power lines and damaged at least one home and a number of farm buildings across the central and eastern parts of the state.

“Mostly it was shingles off roofs and garages,” said Illinois Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Patti Thompson.

Violent Thunderstorms Kill At Least 7 In Oklahoma, Kansas.

EL RENO, Okla. — Violent storms that swept through a chunk of the central U.S. killed at least nine people in three states, toppling trees, crushing cars and tearing through a rural Arkansas fire station.

The high-powered storms arrived as forecast Tuesday night and early Wednesday, just days after a massive tornado tore through the southwest Missouri town of Joplin and killed 122 people. After killing two people in Kansas and five in Oklahoma, they continued their trek east into Arkansas before petering out.

At least two people died as the storms ripped through Arkansas’ Franklin and Johnson counties, the state’s Department of Emergency Management spokesman Tommy Jackson said. One person died after a tornado ripped the tiny western Arkansas community of Denning shortly after midnight Wednesday. Another person died in an area called Bethlehem, in Johnson County.

Emergency officials had accounted for everyone else in Bethlehem, said county emergency management director Josh Johnston. Crews were working through the night in the hopes of saying the same thing for other communities.

Just outside Denning, winery owner Eugene Post listened to the tornado from his porch. He saw the lights flicker, as the storms yanked power from the community.

“I didn’t see anything,” Post, 83, said early Wednesday. “I could hear it real loud though. … It sounded like a train – or two or three – going by.”

A number of people were injured in both Franklin and Johnson counties, though officials weren’t sure exactly how many. A rural fire station in Franklin County was left without a roof as emergency workers rushed to the wounded. Downed trees and power lines tossed across roadways also slowed search-and-rescue crews’ efforts.

Hours earlier, several tornadoes struck Oklahoma City and its suburbs during the Tuesday night rush hour, killing at least five people and injuring at least 60 others, including three children who were in critical condition, authorities said.

Some residents said they had been warned about the impending weather for days and were watching television or listening to the radio so they would know when to take cover.

“We live in Oklahoma and we don’t mess around,” Lori Jenkins said. “We kept an eye on the weather and knew it was getting close.”

She took refuge with her husband and two children in a neighbor’s storm shelter in the Oklahoma City suburb of Guthrie. When they emerged, they discovered their carport had been destroyed and the back of their home was damaged.

Chris Pyle was stunned as he pulled into the suburban neighborhood near Piedmont where he lived as a teenager. His parents’ home was destroyed, but the house next door had only a few damaged shingles.

“That’s when it started sinking in,” he said. “You don’t know what to think. There are lots of memories, going through the trash tonight, finding old trophies and pictures.”

His parents, Fred and Snow Pyle, rode out the storm in a shelter at a nearby school.

Cherokee Ballard, a spokeswoman for the state medical examiner, said four people died west of Oklahoma City in Canadian County, where a weather-monitoring site in El Reno recorded 151 mph winds.

At Chickasha, 25 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, a 26-year-old woman died when a tornado hit a mobile home park where residents had been asked to evacuate their trailers, Assistant Police Chief Elip Moore said. He said a dozen people were injured and that hundreds were displaced when the storm splintered their homes.

In Kansas, police said two people died when high winds threw a tree into their van around 6 p.m. near the small town of St. John, about 100 miles west of Wichita. The highway was shut down because of storm damage.

The path of the storms included Joplin, which is cleaning up from a Sunday storm that was the nation’s eighth-deadliest twister among records dating to 1840. Late-night tornado sirens had Joplin’s residents ducking for cover again before the storm brushed past without serious problems.

The storms also blew through North Texas, but the damage seemed to be confined to roofs and trees and lawn furniture and play equipment.

“The hail was probably more destructive,” said Steve Fano, National Weather Service meteorologist in Fort Worth.

Massive Winter Storm to Sweep Much of Nation This Week.

In a winter that’s becoming known for its powerful storms, the one that’s about to form might be the most impressive of all in terms of the size and scope — affecting much of the eastern two-thirds of the country during the first half of the week.

Heavy snow, ice, rain, thunderstorms and bitter cold will occur along the storm’s path, with the likelihood of widespread travel interruptions, power outages and property damage.

The storm has yet to become organized, but the ingredients will be in place for rapid formation once the low pressure system begins to emerge from the Rockies on Monday. The huge temperature difference between the northern Plains and Gulf Coast will be fuel for the storm as two systems merge in the middle of the country.By early Tuesday, precipitation will likely extend from the eastern Rockies to the northern mid-Atlantic coast, with the most intense portion of the storm developing in the southern Plains. This low-pressure system will track from the Missouri Valley on Tuesday evening to off the New England coast by Wednesday evening.

More than a foot will fall on the northern and western sides of the storm, from the Plains and Missouri Valley through the Midwest and into northern New England. A corridor of accumulating ice will occur near the track of the storm, from the Missouri Valley through the Ohio Valley and into parts of the mid-Atlantic region.

As of Sunday morning, winter storm watches extended from Oklahoma to southern Michigan, including the cities of Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit.The precise track of the storm will determine the type of the precipitation for the major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, which have been pounded with several storms already this season. The National Weather Service is currently expecting a mixture of snow, ice and rain in New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., with a mixture of snow and ice in Boston.

Bands of rain and thunderstorms will occur south of the storm; the thunderstorms have the potential to reach severe levels, perhaps producing isolated tornadoes along the Gulf Coast on Tuesday and Tuesday night. The strong thunderstorms should remain to the north of central Florida, which was hit with damaging thunderstorms last week.

Winter weather advisories, warnings and wind chill warnings are currently in effect from Montana to Iowa and Minnesota for the northern part of the storm.

The very cold air in the northern Rockies and northern Plains — temperatures will approach minus 30 in northern Montana on Monday night — will move into the western part of the storm on Tuesday. Temperatures will be in single digits in the western Plains on Tuesday.

Temperatures will drop into the lower 20s even in Dallas by Tuesday night, with highs barely above freezing on Wednesday and Thursday. Temperatures late last week were in the middle 70s.

The bitterly cold air will not push as far south in the eastern part of the country, but by the second half of the week, sub-zero low temperatures are possible in parts of the Northeast.

Weather Extremes in 2010 Shattered Slew of Records.

(Nov. 5) — Government forecasters highlighted the potential for “another winter of extremes” in the U.S. in their recently issued 2010-11 winter outlook, and that seems an appropriate assessment coming off a year in which numerous all-time records have been set, ranging from winter cold and snow to summer heat to thousand-year rainfall events.

Winter Snow and Cold

The combination of an active southern storm track and occasional arctic blasts from Canada resulted in a remarkable 2009-10 winter across much of the eastern two-thirds of the United States.All-time seasonal snowfall records were established in the mid-Atlantic region, including in Washington (56.1 inches at Reagan National Airport and 78.7 inches at Dulles International Airport), Philadelphia (78.7 inches) and Atlantic City, N.J. (58.1 inches). February alone resulted in nearly two dozen all-time monthly and single-storm snowfall records.The snow was not limited to the mid-Atlantic region. On Feb. 12, every state except Hawaii reported at least a trace of snow on the ground.

While snow was the focus in February, it was widespread cold that stole the weather headlines from December into early January, when arctic blasts from Canada resulted in bouts of extreme cold.

In early January, high temperatures remained below zero in parts of the northern Plains, and low temperatures plummeted well below freezing even into central Florida. West Palm Beach, Fla., experienced its coldest 12-day stretch since at least 1940, according to the National Weather Service.

The winter was one of the top 10 coldest on record in many Southern states, and it was the coolest December through March on record in Key West, Fla.

Summer Heat

The cold and snow were followed by intense summer heat, the result of a persistent and strong high-pressure system in the upper levels of the atmosphere, which was centered farther to the east than during a typical summer. In a dramatic turnaround, many of the places that had extreme winter cold experienced extreme summer heat.

June through August was the hottest on record in 11 states, from Mississippi to Rhode Island, and 35 of the 48 continental U.S. states had one of the top 16 hottest summers on record. Cities with all-time record-breaking summer heat included Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.

The summer was normal or cooler than average in the Pacific Northwest and California, but a fall Western heat wave resulted in the hottest day on record in downtown Los Angeles. The temperature soared to 113 degrees on Sept. 27, breaking the old record of 112 set on June 26, 1990.

Flooding

Flooding is a common weather hazard in the U.S. every spring and summer, but a couple of events in the past year were particularly noteworthy.

The epic flood in Tennessee in early May is considered to be a 1,000-year event, which means the type of weather event that should occur only once per millennium. Nashville, having sustained more than $1 billion in damage on its own, is the defining location of the two-day storm that dumped about 40 percent of the average annual rainfall in two days. Massive flooding also occurred in much of western and central Tennessee, as well as in parts of Kentucky, northern Mississippi and Arkansas.Arkansas was also the site of a deadly flood a couple of weeks later, when over 10 inches of rain, most of which fell during the overnight hours, resulted in a torrent of water sweeping through campsites. It’s believed that 20 people were killed in the flood.

Possible Winter 2010 Extremes

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration based its winter prediction of more extremes largely on the presence of a La Nina, which is a cooling of sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific that influences global weather patterns.

Across the United States, the most common extremes during a winter with a La Nina include heavier than normal rain and mountain snow in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies, drought conditions in the southern tier of the country and colder and stormier than normal weather in the northern Plains.