December 8, 2021
December 12, 2021
Initial reports suggest one twister may have taken a trip nearly 200 miles, triggering serious damage and human losses in Kentucky and three other states.
On the night of December 10, 2021, a potent storm front brought twisters, intense thunderstorms, and bursts of straight-line wind to the Midwestern United States. Though tornadoes can occur in whenever of year– with roughly a dozen every December– the event was rare for the length of time it lasted and how far north it occurred in meteorological winter.
With unseasonably warm and damp weather condition in location in the mid-section of the U.S. and a cool weather front approaching from the west, the National Weather Service (NWS) anticipated early on December 10 that serious weather loomed: “A few strong tornadoes, destructive gusts, and big hail are all expected start this night across Arkansas and Missouri, with the best tornado hazard near to the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.”
A couple of hours later, as many as 70 tornado-like occasions were reported throughout the Midwest, killing at least 100 people and injuring hundreds more in Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri. Initial reports suggest it was the deadliest tornado occasion in the U.S. since a twister struck Joplin, Missouri, in 2011.
The worst damage came along what may be a traditionally long track for a tornadic storm that started in Arkansas and crossed through Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky for numerous hours. NWS reported winds ranging from 158 to 206 miles (254 to 332 kilometers) per hour, damage of a minimum of an EF-3 ranking on the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale, and a ground track that might have blown throughout 200 miles (300 kilometers) and covered 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) at its widest.
The images above were obtained on December 3 and December 12, 2021, with the day-night band (DNB) of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite ( VIIRS) on the Suomi-NPP satellite. The image set records storm-induced power failures in locations around Mayfield, Murray, and Bowling Green, Kentucky. The DNB identifies light in a series of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and utilizes filtering techniques to observe signals such electrical lights in towns and cities.
December 12, 2021
On December 12, 2021, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Aqua satellite got this natural-color picture of the tornado track across western Kentucky near Mayfield. This location sustained some of the worst damage of the strong storm front.
According to meteorologist Bob Henson: “No U.S. tornado is known to have killed more than 80 individuals outside the core twister season from March to June.” He included that till last weekend, the death toll for tornadoes in the U.S. in 2021 had actually been only 14, the third least expensive given that 1875.
Several scientists reported on social media that plumes from a few of the supercell thunderstorms may breached the lower edge of the stratosphere. A NASA group has actually been working with satellite imagery– particularly GOES weather satellites– to find signatures of twisters and extreme thunderstorms in such lofty plumes.
In the most current report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, scientists drew an unquestionable link in between human activity and worldwide warming. The authors of that report noted that hurricanes, extreme storms, and dust storms are expected to become more extreme in North and Central America as the world continues to warm.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, utilizing VIIRS day-night band data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership and MODIS information from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.