{"id":43754,"date":"2021-12-11T06:59:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-11T06:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=43754"},"modified":"2023-12-10T22:52:48","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T22:52:48","slug":"tornado-outbreak-affecting-the-midwest-and-southeast-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/43754","title":{"rendered":"Historic tornado outbreak across the Midwest and Southeast US"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 \u00b5m) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in cyan [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>\n

1-minute\u00a0Mesoscale Domain Sector<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0GOES-16\u00a0(GOES-East) <\/em>\u201cClean\u201d Infrared Window (10.35 \u00b5m<\/strong><\/a>) images (above)<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>include time-matched plots of SPC Storm Reports<\/strong><\/a> during a large outbreak of severe weather across parts of the Midwest and Southeast US from late in the day on 10 December<\/strong><\/a> to a few hours after midnight on 11 December 2021<\/strong><\/a>. The severe thunderstorms developed in advance of a strong cold front that was moving toward the Lower Mississippi Valley (surface analyses<\/strong><\/a> | VIIRS Infrared image<\/strong><\/a>). There were dozens of tornado-related deaths in 5 states — Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri and Illinois — with most of those (at least 70) being in Kentucky. This event has become the deadliest December tornado outbreak in modern history.<\/p>\n

Shown below is a closer look at the long-lived “Quad-State Supercell” thunderstorm that likely produced a\u00a0 family of tornadoes that moved across northeast Arkansas, southeast Missouri, northwest Tennessee and western Kentucky. Note that a mesonet station 6 miles southwest of Mayfield, Kentucky reported a wind gust to 107 mph<\/strong><\/a> a few minutes before the tornado struck Mayfield — and after 0335 UTC, the Mayfield Airport (KM25<\/strong><\/a>) stopped providing data (presumably due to widespread tornado-related power outages). The pulsing of colder overshooting tops (highlighted by shades of white within black-enhanced cloud tops) was evident at the vertex of a prominent Enhanced-V<\/strong><\/a> signature — and this signature indicated that an Above-Anvil Cirrus Plume (reference<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0VISIT training<\/strong><\/a>) was likely present.<\/p>\n

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GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 \u00b5m) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in cyan [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>\n

For the fatal tornado that struck Mayfield, Kentucky this pulsing of overshooting tops during the time from Tornado Warning issuance (0305 UTC<\/strong><\/a>) to its arrival in Mayfield (around 0325 UTC<\/strong><\/a>) was seen in 1-minute GOES-16 Infrared images viewed using RealEarth<\/strong><\/a> (below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

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GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 \u00b5m) images [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to the severe weather produced by this event, farther to the west strong westerly winds — ahead of a pair of advancing cold fronts — lofted multiple plumes of blowing dust, whose source regions were in New Mexico and Texas. GOES-16 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(below)<\/strong><\/em> highlighted the tan-colored dust plumes (along with a couple of brighter white wildfire smoke plumes). \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>\n

GOES-16 Dust RGB<\/strong><\/a> mages (below)<\/strong><\/em> showed the eastward\/northeastward transport of airborne dust (brighter shades of magenta) past sunset. At some locations, peak wind gusts were in the 50-60 knot range and surface visibility was reduced to 3 miles or less.<\/p>\n

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GOES-16 Dust RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p><\/div>\n

Additional information about this severe weather event is available from: NWS Little Rock AR<\/strong><\/a> | NWS Memphis<\/strong><\/a> | NWS Paducah KY<\/strong><\/a> | NWS Louisville KY<\/strong><\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1-minute\u00a0Mesoscale Domain Sector\u00a0GOES-16\u00a0(GOES-East) \u201cClean\u201d Infrared Window (10.35 \u00b5m) images (above)\u00a0include time-matched plots of SPC Storm Reports during a large outbreak of severe weather across parts of the Midwest and Southeast US from late in the day on 10 December to a few hours after midnight on 11 December 2021. The severe thunderstorms developed in advance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":43759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,132,74,53,45,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-quality","category-geo2grid","category-goes-16","category-real-earth","category-redgreenblue-rgb-images","category-severe-convection"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43754"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55897,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43754\/revisions\/55897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}