TornadoVideos.net

Posted At: May 11, 2008 @ 12:05 PM

Posted By: Reed Timmer

Preliminary SPC reports indicate that 42 tornadoes touched down yesterday from the eastern Southern Plains to the Southeast U.S., with many of the reports coming from a particularly strong supercell that tracked from Southeast KS into Southwest MO.  Sadly, this storm produced at least 20 fatalities from extreme Northeast OK into Newton Co, MO, with the hardest hit communities being Picher, OK and Seneca, MO, where 7 and 10 fatalities were reported respectively.  The tornado that hit the town of Picher (an old mining town of ~800 people) was a 1/2 mile wide wedge tornado that appeared to be very strong.  From the damage pictures I've seen and from a friend who intercepted the tornado, it appeared to be EF3 to EF4 damage in Picher. 

Here are links to video of this tornado from storm chaser Chris Wilburn:

Wedge near Picher, OK:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-aKmv1QepQ

Stovepipe from I-44 in extreme Northeast OK:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2obd362ZaM

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/05/10/tornado.deaths/index.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24558648/

In addition to this supercell, several tornadoes were reported in Eastern OK and Arkansas, with the town of Stuttgart, AR taking a direct hit from what appeared to be an EF2 tornado.  We were chasing this storm from south of Little Rock, through the town of England where the first circulation tried to put down a tornado.  Here, rain curtains were wrapping completely around the circulation, but a condensation funnel was never visible.  We fell behind the storm briefly but re-intercepted from the west just as a new tornado was moving through Stuttgart.  We could not make out a condensation funnel since we were approaching from the west near dark, but we did see power flashes as the tornado was moving through the south side of town.  After the tornado moved through, we returned to Stuttgart to help with the rescue effort.  Power lines and trees were down everywhere, and the smell of natural gas was nauseating.  We even witnessed some looting around some destroyed structures.  Very bad site.  From what I saw, I'm guessing this was an EF2 tornado.  Here are some radar images I captured as the tornado was on the ground from around 8:10 pm CDT yesterday evening.  Interestingly, this is the last radar image we were able to acquire, since we could no longer connect to mobile internet after this time...likely due to a downed data tower near the town of Stuttgart.