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Severe WX March 23-25th, 2023

cheestaysfly

cheestaysfly

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Last night was scary for a while here in Florence, AL. I'm so grateful we didn't get any damage at our house, we didn't even lose power (half the city did)! But the street directly behind my house took some damage and multiple large trees are downed on houses. This house is almost directly behind mine. Way too close for comfort. I think I am actually going to start the process of having a storm shelter put in finally after last night. It could have been so much worse and my house would not have held up.IMG_20230325_102437.jpgFB_IMG_1679758209789.jpg
 
Equus

Equus

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Just catching up this morning, a lot to take in. Aerials from Rolling Fork are horrifying, probably significantly worse than I expected even. Feels like easy low EF4 maybe mid to hid-high EF4 but don't see anything slam dunk structurally or contextually that would bring it higher than that without detailed engineering analysis, though I could easily be wrong. Just hard to have anything in a small town built strongly enough to show off EF5 level DoD without being overbuilt. Lots of obliterated houses but not much clean sweeps or extreme high end vehicle damage like you'd see in 190+

Relieved that Amory fared better than initial reports seemed to indicate, perhaps EF2 to locally EF3 in town itself? But very interested in seeing southwest of town where the signatured seemed most intense, that is a very rural stretch south of New Wren but I'd bet the most intense damage would be there. Not sure if MEG will survey that as the last violent New Wren tornado back on 4/27 got kind of ignored; hopefully it'll be detailed.

As for the meteorology of the event and why only literally one supercell managed to sustain and produce, that will be very interesting to go through in coming days; I think one of the working theories is related to some rather sudden warmth issues in the 850-700mb layer as seen by soundings taken, which really cut lapse rates and low level instability even despite the initially steep low level rates, seems like we have a case of a storm only being able to develop in a different environment over LA and moving into MS with an established meso to take advantage of it; the one cell that developed near Jackson struggled heavily in really marginal instability (brought some lightning and gusty winds here before it died though)
 
K

Kragg

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TornadoFan said:
That tree in the first photo is completely debarked. And you can't even recognize the van in the 2nd.
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I don’t think it is debarked at all I think it just has a light colored bark.

And as somebody who works around trees professionally, I think debarking should be removed from criteria for rating a tornadoes strength. There are just too many variables, (including species of tree, time of year, if the tree is diseased or infested with beetles etc.) that go into how easy it is to get the bark off a tree to really make make any judgements on wind speed, unless you expect the NWS to bring along certified arborists to examine every tree, and even then good luck with coming up with any consistency.
 

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vanni9283

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Equus said:
Just catching up this morning, a lot to take in. Aerials from Rolling Fork are horrifying, probably significantly worse than I expected even. Feels like easy low EF4 maybe mid to hid-high EF4 but don't see anything slam dunk structurally or contextually that would bring it higher than that without detailed engineering analysis, though I could easily be wrong. Just hard to have anything in a small town built strongly enough to show off EF5 level DoD without being overbuilt. Lots of obliterated houses but not much clean sweeps or extreme high end vehicle damage like you'd see in 190+

Relieved that Amory fared better than initial reports seemed to indicate, perhaps EF2 to locally EF3 in town itself? But very interested in seeing southwest of town where the signatured seemed most intense, that is a very rural stretch south of New Wren but I'd bet the most intense damage would be there. Not sure if MEG will survey that as the last violent New Wren tornado back on 4/27 got kind of ignored; hopefully it'll be detailed.

As for the meteorology of the event and why only literally one supercell managed to sustain and produce, that will be very interesting to go through in coming days; I think one of the working theories is related to some rather sudden warmth issues in the 850-700mb layer as seen by soundings taken, which really cut lapse rates and low level instability even despite the initially steep low level rates, seems like we have a case of a storm only being able to develop in a different environment over LA and moving into MS with an established meso to take advantage of it; the one cell that developed near Jackson struggled heavily in really marginal instability (brought some lightning and gusty winds here before it died though)
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be shocked if the preliminary rating is only high-end EF-3.
 
C

ColdFront

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Kragg said:
I don’t think it is debarked at all I think it just has a light colored bark.

And as somebody who works around trees professionally, I think debarking should be removed from criteria for rating a tornadoes strength. There are just too many variables, (including species of tree, time of year, if the tree is diseased or infested with beetles etc.) that go into how easy it is to get the bark off a tree to really make make any judgements on wind speed, unless you expect the NWS to bring along certified arborists to examine every tree, and even then good luck with coming up with any consistency.
Click to expand...
That’s the entire damage surveying process in a nutshell now a days lol
 
buckeye05

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Kragg said:
I don’t think it is debarked at all I think it just has a light colored bark.

And as somebody who works around trees professionally, I think debarking should be removed from criteria for rating a tornadoes strength. There are just too many variables, (including species of tree, time of year, if the tree is diseased or infested with beetles etc.) that go into how easy it is to get the bark off a tree to really make make any judgements on wind speed, unless you expect the NWS to bring along certified arborists to examine every tree, and even then good luck with coming up with any consistency.
Click to expand...
Yup 100%. Was gonna say something but I believe I’ve already exceeded my “being a smart**s” quota for the day. To the untrained eye, it’s easy to confuse a light colored defoliated tree with a debarked one. Now in that same post, the bottom right photo does show a good example of debarked tree, with the tell-tale striking bright, slightly yellow-tinted color.
 
Timhsv

Timhsv

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nam_2023032512_036_32.11--90.2.png

Taken off the 12Z NAM near Jackson, MS. for Sunday 00Z27
 
Equus

Equus

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I do think that particular tree appears to have had bark removed given the remaining bark at the base (doesn't appear to be a sycamore which would be the most common tree with super light bark) but with heavy debris loading it's easy to have bark removed and there's always the chance the tree was dying or otherwise unhealthy; many many variables indeed, especially with softwoods. If you have a species and a recent before picture, could probably come up with some sort of objective guess, but usually not going to have that. A standing dead tree slowly shedding branches looks exactly like a debarked shredded tree so it's good to know what was there immediately before
 
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