Fierce
Storms Kill at Least 21 as Tornadoes Batter the South and Midwest
A severe
weather system spawned intense, long-duration tornadoes that struck parts of
Arkansas, Mississippi and Missouri, leaving some communities in tatters.
Adeel
HassanHank Sanders
By Adeel
Hassan and Hank Sanders
Judson Jones
is a reporter and meteorologist at The Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/weather/weather-tornado-warning-south.html
Published
March 14, 2025
Updated
March 16, 2025, 12:17 a.m. ET
The storms
that killed at least 21 people across Arkansas, Mississippi and Missouri on
Friday and Saturday continued to pummel a vast section of the South, leveling
homes, taking down power lines and turning communities into debris fields.
Before the
intense and long-lasting tornadoes arrived, forecasters said that their level
of threat was typically experienced only once or twice in a lifetime.
The Missouri
State Highway Patrol reported 12 fatalities in the southern and eastern
counties of the state as of Saturday evening.
In Arkansas,
three people were killed in Independence County, and 32 others were injured
across the state, according to the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management.
Six people
died in Southern Mississippi and 29 others were injured across the state, Gov.
Tate Reeves said on social media.
The National
Weather Service tornado survey team said that it found that the damage
sustained on Friday night in Cave City, Ark., was consistent with winds of 165
miles per hour.
The Storm
Prediction Center reported at least 33 tornadoes on Friday and 16 on Saturday,
though these numbers are likely to change in coming days.
“We know
we’ve had some violent tornadoes that hit communities today,” William Bunting,
deputy director of the Storm Prediction Center, said on Saturday evening. “In
the days ahead we’re going to get some details on really hard-hit communities.
We won’t know for a few days the true scope of the impacts.”
At the badly
damaged Qualls Funeral Home on Main Street in Cave City, heavy burial vaults
were flipped and scattered on a concrete slab that only a day earlier had been
a storage building behind the funeral home.
On Saturday
afternoon, the buzzing of generators and chain saws filled the air in the city,
as neighbors came together to help the city of 2,000 clean up. Bottles of water
and pizzas were being handed out in a flattened residential area just east of
the city center.
“We’re all a
big family,” said Lisa Coles, a resident. “This will be devastating, but we’ll
all pull together.”
By
midafternoon on Saturday, severe storms pounded parts of Louisiana and
Mississippi. The Weather Service reported that tornadoes touched down near
Kentwood, La., and Jackson, Miss., and in Pike County, Miss., and Tuscaloosa
County, Ala.
The area
near Tylertown, Miss., was hit by tornadoes in two separate instances on
Saturday, Mr. Bunting said. He said such an occurrence was not unusual in an
outbreak of storms like this.
Into the
evening, the storms were expected to sweep across Alabama and into Tennessee
before crossing into Georgia and northern Florida overnight.
The threat
for tornadoes and thunderstorms will be over in the South on Sunday and will
shift east, though at a level much lower than it was on Saturday, with a slight
risk of severe storms and tornadoes from northern Florida to Washington.
Storms at
this level can often produce intense long-track tornadoes, meaning they stay on
the ground for a very long time. A slow storm will typically only affect one or
two communities, but a faster-moving storm can cross multiple states, leaving a
long trail of damage.
The Weather
Service on Saturday issued tornado watches for eastern Louisiana, nearly all of
Mississippi and the western half of Alabama that they described as facing a
“particularly dangerous situation,” a designation used during a high risk of
violent tornadoes.
Only seven
percent of tornado watches receive this extra warning, and areas under these
alerts are three times as likely to experience damaging tornadoes, according to
a NOAA study analyzing tornado watches from 1996 to 2005.
A tornado
struck Tideland Drive in Bridgeton, Mo., on Friday night. Residents said on
Saturday that about eight houses were damaged. A resident, Matthew Adams,
described the ferocity of the storm.
“I just
heard a big boom and crashing and came outside and as soon as I came out, I
didn’t even know my house had damage,” he said. “I just saw my neighbor’s house
here and trees through her garage.”
Rich Gould’s
home only had siding and fence damage, but the winds ripped open his neighbors’
garages, tore off walls and downed nearby trees.
A gazebo in
the area became airborne and flew off into the forest like the home from “The
Wizard of Oz,” he said.
Robbie
Myers, the director of Butler County Emergency Management in Missouri, said
that at least one person had died overnight after getting trapped in a house
that sustained severe damage on a country road near Poplar Bluff, Mo.
More than
500 homes, a church and grocery store were also damaged, he said. A mobile-home
park, he said, had been destroyed. Storms caused widespread damage in the
state, including in the city of Rolla, state emergency officials said late
Friday night.
The storms
were all connected to an intense system wreaking havoc across the central
United States, which brought dust storms and wildfires to the Plains.
Tornadoes
typically occur across the South from the middle of March until late April,
when the risk shifts to the Plains.
The most
recent tornado outbreaks in the United States occurred on March 31 and April 1,
2023, when 146 tornadoes, many of the less-intense variety, caused 26
fatalities, Mr. Bunting said.
It ranks as
the nation’s third largest-third outbreak for total number of tornadoes.
Several
larger outbreaks, often referred to as “super outbreaks,” have caused more
destruction and deaths, and there are three specifically “by which all other
outbreaks are judged,” Mr. Bunting said.
On April 11
and 12, 1965, a barrage of nearly 50 tornadoes spread destruction across six
states and caused 260 deaths. Less than a decade later, on April 3 and 4, 1974,
an onslaught of tornadoes was reported across the central United States and
into southern Canada, leading to 335 deaths.
More
recently, from April 25 to 28, 2011, more than 200 tornadoes were reported in
five southeastern states. April 27 was the deadliest day, with 122 tornadoes
causing 321 fatalities, according to Mr. Bunting.
Reporting
was contributed by Gwen Moritz in Cave City, Ark., Jennifer A. Brown in
Bridgeton, Mo., Amy Graff, Simon J. Levien, Judson Jones, Qasim Nauman, Yan
Zhuang and Jonathan Wolfe.
Adeel Hassan
is a reporter and editor on the National Desk. He is a founding member of
Race/Related, and much of his work focuses on identity and discrimination. He
started the Morning Briefing for NYT Now and was its inaugural writer. He also
served as an editor on the International Desk.
More about Adeel Hassan
Hank Sanders
is a Times reporter and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a
program for journalists early in their careers. More about Hank Sanders
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