Tornado hits Memphis area
July 30th, 2009 at 9:02 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
A tornado touched down in Cordova, TN near Memphis, TN around 5 PM Thursday afternoon. The tornado path was at least five miles long. They have some great video of a tornado passing right in frong of a reporter in his newsvan. You can see transformers blowing out. You may have to look around the site to find the video. Look at the damage on this video! They had video of a tornado coming right across the road in front of them…transformers blowing out…truck flipped, part of the roof off a Kohl’s store. Storm damage pictures from the Memphis area here. Here’s a nice picture of the wall cloud. Looks like maybe an EF2. Olive Branch, Mississippi reports homes destroyed by a tornado this PM. Two injuries in Grove Hill, AL. and at least one injury in the Cordova, TN. tornado. Finally, a happy ending to a lost dog story.
That was cool video.. I like how the other drivers were weaving all over the road in oncoming traffic too.. must have been tons of debris
…and that wall cloud pic is sweet. I remember when I was under one of those.. bigger.. but the same color.. it did spawn a small tornado NE of Sparta, MI. Beautiful supercell that was.. too bad I was only able to get one pic, kind of had my family yelling at me to get indoors.. heh That was the early 200s.. I want to say ‘03.. but I can’t be sure
2000s*
Hmm I should go to bed..
Good morning, Charles.
Wow, my mom lives in Cordova! Trying to get ahold of her on her cell phone. Glad I read your Blog Bill…had no idea! I just talked to her on the 29th.
Jen
Mom is fine…phew!
Jen
I’m a Michigan transplant down here in Nashville, and we’ve had a lot of major tornadic events in the past few years. Memphis itself was hit by an EF2 during the Super Tuesday outbreak in 2008, and Jackson (between Memphis and Nashville) saw an EF4, along with an EF3 satellite tornado. Jackson has been hit by two other F4’s in the past 10 years.
Over here toward Nashville, an EF1 hit the town of Westmoreland, which is northeast of Nashville. Westmoreland was hit hard last year during the Super Tuesday tornado outbreak (Feb. 5th), with 8 confirmed fatalites in nearby Castalian Springs, all by an EF3 that traveled 51 miles, including time as a funnel right over Downtown Nashville (which itself was hit by an F3 in 1998). In 2006, nearby Gallatin was hit by an F3, killing 9 people.
Back to this year (on Good Friday), we had one of the worst tornadoes of the year in Murfreesboro, TN. Rated an EF4, 2 people (a mother and her infant daughter) were killed. Just two weeks earlier (March 29), a part of Murfreesboro had an EF1 tear a 2 mile path, missing my old apartment by a matter of yards. In that case, the damage is still rather visible… cleanup has been slow.
So while there’s Tornado Alley… I live in Killer Tornado Alley, and since I work in IT, all I have to mention is tornado when it comes to disaster recovery.