Throughout the night of December 10, 2021, extreme weather condition tore through several US states, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. At least 70 tornado-like occasions were reported, and one storm cell was tracked on radar for approximately four hours as it took a trip for more than 400 km (250 miles.).
While the destruction these storms left shows up even from space, the heartbreaking devastation on the ground is sobering; over 100 individuals eliminated, with hundreds more injured.
The image above is from NASAs Aqua satellite. On December 12, 2021, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument obtained a natural-color picture of the tornado track throughout western Kentucky near Mayfield, a town that endured some of the worst damage of the fierce storm front.
More than 100 tornado cautions were released Friday before midnight, the most warnings ever for any day in December, according to the National Weather Service.
” No U.S. twister is understood to have eliminated more than 80 individuals outside the core twister season from March to June,” stated meteorologist Bob Henson. He included that up until last weekend, the death toll for twisters in the U.S. in 2021 had actually been just 14, the third lowest given that 1875.
Extreme tornado damage in Mayfield, Kentucky, as seen in these prior to and after satellite images. Credit: Maxar Technologies.
The satellite business Maxar has actually likewise made their high-resolution orbital views of the damage openly readily available. Their before-and-after take a look at the area are shocking.
NASA stated that while twisters can occur in at any time of year– with roughly a dozen every December– the event was rare for how long it lasted and how far north it took place in meteorological winter season. The storm front came from unseasonably warm and humid weather condition in the region, with a cool weather front approaching from the west.
The worst damage occurred what might be the longest track ever for a tornadic storm (the information is still being evaluated). The NWS reported winds varying 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 may have blown across 200 miles (300 kilometers) and spanned 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) at its widest.
Satellite photos supplied by Maxar show a summary of downtown Mayfield, Kentucky, on January 28, 2017, and then on December 11, 2021. Satellite image © 2021 Maxar Technologies, by means of AP.
Sources: NASA, Maxar, National Weather Service.
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