Harper Brings Tornadoes To The Southeast

GWCC_Feed | February 3, 2019 @ 9:30 am

(Photo Credit: Weather Prediction Center)

DISCUSSION: On Saturday, January 19, 2019, a cold front affiliated with Winter Storm Harper swept through much of the Southeast United States including Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle. The storm started as a low-pressure system that came into California earlier in the week bringing much needed rain in amounts totaling well over an inch to much of the San Francisco Bay Area. However, Harper grew in intensity once it passed the Rocky Mountains. The cold front brought enough cold air to interact with the warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico to produce severe thunderstorms and even some tornadoes.

The first tornadoes affiliated with the cold front were in Central Mississippi where two tornadoes formed at about 7:30 AM CST with the second one forming minutes after the first one dissipated. The first two tornadoes, however, were only rated as EF-0 and EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. The Enhanced Fujita scale is a scale based on winds and damage to measure tornado strength and was first developed by Dr. Tetsuya (Ted) Fujita at the University of Chicago in 1971. The scale is divided based on wind speed and damage with EF-5 being the strongest and most damaging. However, these tornadoes were not high on the scale to cause major damage and only damaged trees, shrubs, and a few small buildings.

Later in the afternoon, four tornadoes struck in Alabama around 3 PM EST with the strongest being an EF-2 tornado which had winds maxing at about 135 mph. The EF-2 was the longest one of the day as it had a path length of over 18 miles and was just north of the state capital of Alabama, Montgomery. The final tornado of the storm event happened at about 7:22 PM EST on the panhandle of Florida. There was a total of six injuries as a result of the later storms with a bit more damage to buildings including a barracks in the case of the Florida tornado. Luckily, there were no deaths reported.

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Meteorologist JP Kalb

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