Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Worst Tornado Outbreak: 15 Years Ago

This was the radar image 15 years ago as 30+ tornadoes went across Region 8. It was the worst tornado outbreak to hit the state of Arkansas. Towns like Beebe, Pleasant Plains, Evening Star, Newark, and many more had excessive damage. Terry Wood and Doug Doggett were on KAIT for 2 days passing along information to keep Region 8 safe. It was a very dangerous couple of days. Here are some shorts clips:
While January 21-22 were horrible, the entire month of January 1999 was active! This afternoon, I found the old climate log from Terry Wood from that month. We had ice, snow, tornadoes on several day, and wildly fluctuating temperatures. Click this image to enlarge:
If you can't read it too well, let me point out some things:

  • Ice storm on January 1.
  • Wind Chill -15 on January 4th.
  • More Ice on January 7th and 8th.
  • January 17th had numerous tornadoes, Jonesboro, Tuckerman, Grubbs, Cash, Pocahontas, Newport
  • January 21 into the morning of the 22nd was the largest tornado outbreak in history for Arkansas.
That was an active month. I hope we never see another month like January of 1999.

Have a great night,
Ryan

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