Tornado in Mayfield, KY

[electra225]

Incredible damage. The only damage I've seen as bad as this was when the tornado went thru Joplin, MO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97b_FKG660o

[TC Chris]

That's astonishing. The radio reported this a.m. that it had gone on for 200 miles. It's especially bad when it happens at night because people have no warning, no visual cues to be alert or take shelter. I wonder what the engineering standards for water towers call for in terms of wind resistance.

Chris Campbell

[danrclem]

I really feel for these people. It would seem like the people in the candle factory would have had ample warning since they were working but then again maybe they did and it didn't make any difference. I know the last place that I worked they would let us know if a tornado warning was in effect so we could take shelter.

This was in the western part of my state and it was heading my way until it fizzled out. We did have one touch down a few miles south of me but they said it was probably and F1 so it wasn't a bad one.

I still remember when we had all of those tornadoes in 1974. Louisville was hit pretty hard but I don't think very many people got killed. Brandenburg, a small town fairly close to me got hit right after school let out and 31 people got killed in that one and if I remember correctly most of them were kids.

https://www.weather.gov/lmk/april31974_in_the_path

[TC Chris]

I really feel for these people. It would seem like the people in the candle factory would have had ample warning since they were working but then again maybe they did and it didn't make any difference. I know the last place that I worked they would let us know if a tornado warning was in effect so we could take shelter.

I haven't seen an image of the candle factory, although I've heard the radio reports. But the problem is, if you're at work and a tornado is headed your way, where do you take shelter? Many industrial workplaces are big steel buildings on a concrete slab. Here at home I have a basement (and last year actually headed down there when we had a rare tornado warning).

Chris Campbell

[William]

I too feel bad for all that have had to experience a tornado. Here in my neck of the woods it's not tornados as much as straight line winds. Yes, tornados have hit areas in Michigan but not so much where I live. When straight line winds hit they last longer, they do not just pass over like tornados. And, they cause similar damage as tornados. No matter what kind of disasters Mother Nature sends us it's never good. My heart goes out to all that have had to suffer such disasters.

Bill

[Firedome]

Terrible damage portrayed in those pictures, one has to feel the poor workers with no safe place or time to shelter. To me tornados are the scariest of nature's phenomena, occasionally have nightmares about them, must have watched Wizard of Oz a few too many times. Even though we live in one of the lesser-likely places for them, they do happen, but when they do it's usually smaller scale ones. Our youngest is an Archeologist for FEMA/DHS, when historic buildings or sites like battlefields are involved he has to assess the damage and recommend remediation in any US state or territory.

[macgolf]

We had an "out of season" tornado outbreak in November of 2013. The hardest hit area was about 35 miles from here in Washington, IL. That system struck on a Sunday. With flat ground and daylight we watched that system develop late morning into early afternoon. My area was fortunate to only have downed trees and street flooding. That was the last time I recall needing to seek shelter in a basement.

The potential for severe weather was known with Fridays system, but the devastating images/videos shown on TV was heartbreaking. Night just adds to the complexities of confirmation and then getting warnings to those in the path of natures wrath. I've been fortunate to work in factories that did have weather radios, shelters and people(me among them)to monitor them when the potential was there.

My heart goes out to all those affected.

Mark

[danrclem]

My granddaughter is a student at Western Ky. University. It's actually not in Western Ky. but more south, central Ky. located in Bowling Green where twelve people died the other night. She lives off campus but right next to it in a building with several floors. My son has two pictures on his phone (don't know where he got them). One shows her building with the tornado on the other side of it and the football stadium with the tornado on the other side of it. I don't know for sure how far away it was from where her housing is, but it couldn't have been very far away. She came home a couple days before that and I'm sure she was glad that she wasn't there.

I think tornadoes are as fascinating as they are scary. I haven't ever saw one except when we went out west in 2004 and one started coming out of the sky and then went back up.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all of those people who were in the tornadoes.

[danrclem]

The first video is taken from the WKU football stadium and in the opening of it the building that is several floors high on the right is where my granddaughter lives. It is a different cell than the one that went through Mayfield.

The second video is a radar tracking of the storm that destroyed Mayfield. It's the same system that went over my house which is just east of Mt. Washington (at about the 2:00 mark) later the same night. It was still a very strong storm when it passed over my house.

I saw an interview of two people that were in the candle factory when it hit and one of them said they had warning but it didn't do any good. I saw a video of the factory and it looked like it twisted the steel beams into pretzels. It's a miracle that anybody survived out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URxfOSI_Khk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9aLcuB128A

[hermitcrab]

I don't know if they classified it yet... but with that path of destruction that is a F-5 for sure.... those are rare .... 5 years ago we had a small one go by about 1 mile to the north ... mostly though the farm fields ... but it did sound like a train, and the wind was incredible even that far away ...can't imagine the terror of being in the path of this monster ...

[danrclem]

This link says that there have been 59, F5 tornadoes in the US since 1950 but I'm sure it doesn't include anything that happened Friday night.

I was thinking this one had to be an F5 but I was told earlier today that it was an F4 with the base being 3/4 of a mile wide. I have no way of knowing if that's accurate or not.

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5torns.html