December 10th 2021 Mid-South Outbreak- 1 year later

[Marios Wallace]

St. Louis got extremely lucky that night, and I think that gets overlooked. The metro area is sandwiched between the paths of the Defiance, MO EF3 to the west and the Edwardsville, IL EF3 to the east. If a tornado had occurred between those two, it very likely would have impacted or come very close to impacting areas hit by the 2011 Good Friday EF4. The NWS Office and radar site in Weldon Springs came very close to a direct hit by the Defiance tornado, which passed just to the south.

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Devastation produced by the Defiance EF3


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Aftermath of the Amazon facility near Edwardsville, IL; the site of six fatalities.​

An addition five significant tornadoes would occur in Illinois that night, which makes the northern portion of the outbreak impressive in and of itself, but of course it wasn't comparable to the unbelievable violence that occurred further south.

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Significant tree damage produced by a long-tracked EF2 near Ramsay, IL.​

That fourth picture you have attached there is not from Defiance, it's from Powell Street, Bowling Green, KY. Near where the Duplex was swept away. You can actually find this area from this livestream on facebook

 

[Shakespeare 2016]

It is hard to believe it has already 1 year. It seems like yesterday and it was one of the craziest night for very long tracked intense to violent tornadoes since probably 4/27/11.

 

[Marios Wallace]

It was pretty much on par, tornado wise, with Easter of 2020. However it's effects are arguably much greater than actual tornado counts and intensity will lead one to believe.

 

[OHWX97]

That fourth picture you have attached there is not from Defiance, it's from Powell Street, Bowling Green, KY. Near where the Duplex was swept away. You can actually find this area from this livestream on facebook

Thank you for making me aware of that. I’ll take the picture down. I don’t want my posts having any inaccurate information.

 

[Marios Wallace]

Newbern, TN - Fort Campbell, KY was quite the under-rated one. The location in this tweet had multiple destroyed structures right before it entered Dresden.
Also some photos of the area from the air.


I wish more people knew about Dresden, this town was just left in shambles from an intense tornado, and like a very small amount of WX Enthusiasts actually talk about it.

 

[Sawmaster]

Dresden was one of many communities seeing major damage in this tornado, which tend to get overlooked soon after the initial response in events as large as this one. I took a quick look at a couple damage vids and pics again, and what I saw was commensurate with the rated EF2- EF3 damage to mostly older or weakier structures. A lot of communities and small towns are of similar vintage and construction throughout the path, and didn't fare any better. It's sad and heartbreaking to know places like this are so soon forgotten by the not-local world, but that's the usual outcome with tornadoes like this. I've lived in and love several similar communities myself, greatly preferring it to big-city life. I do wish them well with the recovery.

 

[UK_EF4]

Not sure if this has already been posted, but its certainly very impressive. The tree damage just before and in Bremen is particularly intense, verging on what I would consider extreme.

 

[CheeselandSkies]

I don't have any issue with the risk category, I think 15% hatched moderate was fine, but not making the tornado watch a PDS was a bit eyebrow-raising for me since it's a fairly common practice with 15% hatches. For example 12/23/15 (MS/TN outbreak including a similar long-track family, Clarksdale/Como EF3 and Holly Springs EF4 - another December event only slightly further south, 15 hatched area also included parts of MO bootheel and western KY later affected in 2021), 5/26/21 (Benkelman, NE EF2 but not much else) and most recently 11/29/22.