Region 8 Tornadoes & Wind Damage

I took Friday off work to go to Nashville to cheer for my family in the Music City Marathon and 1/2. While away (as you know) there were two rounds of severe weather. I've spent the evening looking over data and pictures to find out what happened. Friday's most impressive storm started around Alicia and moved up toward Hoxie. There were also some reports of a tornado near Cash which was associated with the same storm. On radar, the most impressive data was in Hoxie, so that's the radar capture above with two damage photos. I overlayed the velocity data (winds) from 6:16 PM on Friday. If you notice, there is a decent "couplet" that had just moved through the Hoxie area. A "couplet" is an indication of winds going in opposite directions really close to each other and "could" indicate a tornado. I'm not sure if the NWS has surveyed the damage up there, but it sure looked impressive on radar... Here's a loop of the storm's velocity. Look for the couplet near Hoxie and the big puff of wind (green) near Bono:

Now, let's move on to the storm near Manila, AR. Instead of looking impressive on radar... it had pictures! In fact, if it did not have pictures to go along with it.. I would have doubted that it existed! Here's the radar image at 1:56 PM on Saturday:

I have marked the "couplet" again. Remember, green colors show "inbound" winds and red shows "outbound" winds. For ONE scan, I could see something. It was south of Manila and moved up toward Big Lake... just like the spotter told us! While it did not look too dangerous on radar, the pictures looked a little scary. Click the above image to enlarge and you can see the tornado from two vantage points. One from Manila and one from Dell.

If you want to see more pictures from viewers OR if you want to upload your own video or pics... Go to THE LOOP by clicking here.

Have a good week. It could get active again later in the week...

Ryan