Midnight tornadoes rip through Nashville
At least 25 are dead and scores more injured after a series of devastating tornadoes plowed through the heart of Nashville and areas to the east early Tuesday.
The tornadoes came in the shroud of darkness, deadly freight trains barrelling through an otherwise mild spring night. In their wake lay an 80- kilometre stretch of communities picking up the pieces from the sudden, violent storms.
The Nashville tornadoes in particular produced damage consistent with at least an EF-3 rating on the 0 to 5 Enhanced Fujita scale, according to the National Weather Service.
The forecast Monday had called for strong storms, but belied the scenes of destruction to come. The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center did include Nashville in its morning outlook as having a “slight risk” of severe weather, with a 2 per cent chance of tornadoes within 40 km of the city.
“( The) primary risk appears to be hail,” forecasters wrote, “but locally damaging winds and even a couple of tornadoes would be possible.”
A few severe thunders torms had trekke d through parts of Illinois and Kentucky on Monday evening, with an isolated thunderstorm entering western Tennessee shortly after 10 p. m.
The National Weather Service in Nashville, one of the fastest growing cities in the country, wrote that the “storm mode looks to become increasingly messy,” and forecasters noted that an “isolated tornado” could not be ruled out.
“We were under a slight risk for severe storms, obviously severe weather wasn’t out of the question, but we did not anticipate a tornado of this magnitude in the middle of the night,” said Mark Rose, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Nashville.
The storms bear similarities with 1998, when an F3 tornado killed one person as it ravaged downtown Nashville on April 16.
It’s a reminder that tornadoes can and do occur in cities. Major metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Miami, New York City, and Ottawa have been hit in the past 30 years. Dayton, Ohio, Dallas, and just west of Kansas City, Kansas, were all hit in just the past year.
Tragically, Tuesday morning’s tornadoes resulted in at least 25 fatalities. It’s the deadliest storm in the country since 23 were killed in Lee County, Alabama, on March 3, 2019.
It’s also the deadliest Tennessee tornado event since one that claimed more than 30 lives on April 27, 2011, during the Super Outbreak.
Despite the twister, Tennessee planned to go ahead with the primary elections on Super Tuesday.
President Donald Trump, speaking to county leaders in Washington, said he would visit Tennessee on Friday.