Not a lot to talk about as far as our forecast goes...there will be cooler air coming back in over the weekend, as highs should get to around 70 tomorrow followed by the 50s to near 60 on Sunday with more clouds filtering out the sunshine as a cold front comes through. Aloft the winds will remain from the SW so some moisture will stream in above the surface from the SW part of the country at times over the weekend. We should again moderate early next week after a chilly start Monday morning.

Once again let's spend some more time on the tornadoes in the SE part of the country. Earlier today the 1st EF5 (201+ mph) tornado was designated. This occurred in NE MS (Smithville) Reed Timmer, who was down there, had this interesting tidbit...there was a 1965 Chevy Pick-Up truck that was in front of a house that eventually was demolished by one of the tornadoes. They've yet to find that truck...it's disappeared. Odds are it's been flung 100's of yards somewhere...rolled on the ground for hundreds of feet and was shredded during this process.

We've shown you over the last several days, all the damage from the ground, also damage from the air...how about from space. While you can see the specifics, you can see how the tornadoes left scars in the earth's foliage as the made progress through the SE part of the country. Take a look at this, but you need to look carefully! Click on the graphic to make it larger.

Pretty amazing stuff. This next photo is from Meteorologist Mike Smith in Wichita. Again you can make out the scars in the land from the tornado tracks...

It's not the yellow lines that you looking for...it's what's immediately above those lines that's very impressive.

As you know, while Doppler radar can't pick out tornadoes, it can pick out where the winds are rotating in the atmosphere. While not perfect, in the case of the SE the other day, the storms were all rotating and many of those rotations were in fact tornadoes. There is a way of plotting all those signatures on a map and show you the scope of the rotational couplets that Doppler was showing through the course of the outbreak. Take a look at this map from Severestudios....

Pretty impressive once again!


The NY Times has some great material concerning the outbreak...from maps to images to video. Take a look at this, some of the destruction.

Finally, I showed some of these during the noon show today...essentially headlines from today of some of the newspapers in that part of the country...interesting to see their perspective...take a look.

From the Birmingham News

From The Anniston Star in MS

and lastly the Tuscaloosa News

Have a great weekend and I'll try and update the blog sometime tomorrow PM.




Joe