New York, December 13, 2008 : .Search and rescue crews in Kentucky were searching for survivors following a string of tornadoes that ripped through the area.
Officials from Kentucky stated in The Wall Street Journal that at most, there could have been more than 100 deaths. According to Bill Bunting (the Storm Prediction Center’s operations chief), tornadoes ravaged states like Arkansas, Illinois and Kentucky.
According to the New York Times (NYT), officials warned that the death toll of 80 people in Kentucky was likely to increase as the sifting continues on Sunday.
These tornadoes are part of an incredibly severe weather system in the US.It caused significant snowfall throughout the western Great Lakes and the Upper Midwest.Officials from the states were still trying to assess the extent of the damage.
According to Xinhua, power outages have affected more than 77,000 Kentucky customers and over 53,000 Tennessee residents.
Overnight, the National Weather Service issued tornado warnings and watches for several parts of the Midwest including Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois.
Alejandro Mayorkas, Homeland Security Secretary, advised people to remain alert as severe weather continues to be a danger in the southeast US.
More than 30 tornadoes swept across six US States on Friday night, causing destruction and death to more than 80 people.They included workers at a Kentucky candle factory, residents of a Arkansas nursing home, and lakeside vacationers from Tennessee.
During the weekend, desperate rescue and search operations take place.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said Saturday that this was the “most devastating tornado incident in the state’s history” and called the extent of the damage “indescribable”.
Last night, a severe tornado in December was one of my most frightening weather experiences over the past 40 years.
Jeff Masters, an American meteorologist and expert in extreme weather, tweeted that the tornado was being compared to the longest-tracking and deadliest tornado ever recorded.It took the disaster’s victims more than 200 miles to reach their destination.
The US President Joe Biden declared a Federal Emergency for Kentucky after the devastating tornado.This will allow the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide assistance as well as federally sub-sidised aid.
He said on Saturday that “the federal government will do everything, everything it can possibly do to help.”
Tornadoes are relatively localised, short-lived weather events.
“In recent years tornadoes seem to be occurring in greater ‘clusters’, and that a so-called tornado alley in the Great Plains — where most tornadoes occur — appears to be shifting eastward,” reported NYT on Sunday.
“This is what we would call a tornado outbreak, where you have a storm system which produces a number of tornadoes over a large geographical area,” Dan Pydynowski, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather, was quoted as saying.
However, such a large and powerful system in December is highly unusual, and something the region usually experiences in May or April.
“It’s certainly not unheard of,” Pydynowski said, “but to have an outbreak of this magnitude, with this many tornado reports — it’s a little unusual for this time of year.”
Temperatures in Arkansas and Kansas on Friday were “spring weather,” and “it was unusually warm, and there was moisture in place,” he added.
Even though scientists are observing more clusters, “it is unclear the role that climate change plays,” said the report.
“For a lot of our questions about climate change and tornadoes, the answer is we don’t know,” Harold Brooks, a senior research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, was quoted as saying.
int/khz/
#tornadoes #ravaged #severe #havoc #Joe Biden #New York #New York
.
