An outbreak that rarely gets any attention but is extremely close to me and my interests is the Veterans Weekend outbreak on November 10th 2002 that spit out F3+ tornadoes from Ohio to Alabama. The Van Wert F4 in Ohio and Mossy Grove F3 in Tennessee get the most press, but in my county in AL (Walker) three tornadoes touched down in training supercells in quick succession - two F3s and an F1.
The first F3, the Carbon Hill tornado, killed three and destroyed the school in Carbon Hill. It struck less than two miles from my house at the time while we huddled in the basement. My dad was in the fire department and was dispatched to a mobile home that had been lofted and thrown across the road and disintegrated into the trees just up from the house and had to cut through countless fallen trees on the road to get to it (the residents were somehow uninjured) and was stuck in hail and wind as the second storm passed less than an hour later. There seemed to be two distinct parallel damage paths on Prospect Road, sparing a church, suggesting perhaps multiple vortex structure.
The second F3, referred to as the Saragossa Tornado, was down for over 70 miles and killed seven (tying with Mossy Grove as the deadliest of the year) and destroyed homes of many friends and family as it struck the community I grew up in. A great-uncle of mine nearby found a body in his yard. It came within hundreds of yards of my grandparents' house and I now live on a property it directly struck, with tin and kitchen implements scattered in the woods and trees with clear evidence of a massive stress seventeen years ago. I go through the wide damage path on Highway 5 nearly every day going to Jasper; severe tree damage is still evident in places.
The Saragossa tornado 100% cemented my interest in severe weather as 11-year old me helped neighbors sort through piles of debris for what little they could salvage. I had been hooked on weather since Opal in 1995 and the April 8 and 16 1998 outbreaks, but the 2002 event struck fear into my heart and I HAD to know more about these violent behemoths. Was terrified of wind for a few years following. Not being able to get my grandparents on the phone for hours knowing it tracked basically right on top of them (they were in their basement and reported ear-affecting pressure changes and extreme wind as it passed near their back yard) was truly scary.
Here are some BMX damage photos from Saragossa. Note that many of the homes hit were weakly attached precluding an F4 rating, but I still think there may have been F4 damage points along the track somewhere; I just don't have photos to prove it. A semi truck that had been parked at a destroyed home was reportedly 'never found'. Brian Peters was the WCM at BMX in 2002 and rated based on aerial survey, with little if any ground surveying due to the extreme track length. It was one of the longer paths on record in AL at the time.
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I have planned on going around to the survivors of this tornado and chronicling it in extreme detail as damage photos and stories are hard to come by, most buried on now defunct web pages from the last decade. Any discussion of this event is eagerly welcomed.
