User:CapeVerdeWave/Random outbreak
| Type | Tornado outbreak |
|---|---|
| Duration | May 5, 1989 |
| Highest winds |
|
| Tornadoes confirmed | 16 confirmed |
| Max. rating1 | F4 tornado |
| Duration of tornado outbreak2 | hours, minutes |
| Largest hail | 0 in (0 cm) |
| Fatalities | 7 fatalities, 168 injuries |
| Damage | $169 million (non-normalized) |
| Areas affected | Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia |
| 1Most severe tornado damage; see Fujita scale 2Time from first tornado to last tornado | |
The tornado outbreak of May 5, 1989, spawned sixteen tornadoes in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, and was responsible for a combined total of $169 million in damage in the four states.[nb 1] Population in some of the heavily-damaged areas has increased significantly since 1989, raising the potential costs of similar tornadoes, both in terms of monetary losses and lives.[3]
Background
[edit]In the mid 1990s, the National Weather Service (NWS) undertook reforms that consolidated weather forecasting areas. At the time of the outbreak, however, several Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) and smaller Weather Service Offices (WSOs) handled separate responsibilities within the same weather forecasting areas.[4] While the mid 1990s coincided with the adoption of NEXRAD,[1][2] weather radar in 1989 lacked Doppler technology. As a result, the WSR-57 and WSR-74 radars available to forecasters could not depict storm-scale mesocyclones and tornado vortex signatures. In some of the areas hardest hit on May 5, radars were quite distant from county warning areas and WSOs, hindering communications and the processing of data, so untimely delays frequently occurred during severe weather episodes. Typically, precise estimations of storm location and intensity could not be made or relayed on time, so the issuance of severe weather warnings often relied on visual observations of tornado and wind damage, as well as of unusual features such as funnel clouds. Due to these and other complications, tornado warnings often failed to precede large, intense, or damaging tornadoes.[4]
Conditions on the morning of the outbreak contained contradictory signals as to tornado potential. At 8:00 a.m. EDT (12:00 UTC), a deep trough centered over the Midwestern United States induced separate bands of strong winds: one over the Ohio River valley and another over the lower Mississippi River valley. By 11:00 a.m. EDT (15:00 UTC), the latter occurred in association with a mesoscale convective vortex—a shallow, small-scale low-pressure area, called a mesolow, then crossing the middle of Mississippi. Based on data from on the morning radiosonde launched at 7:00 a.m. CDT (12:00 UTC) in Jackson, Mississippi, overall atmospheric instability was paltry over the warm sector, with most-unstable convective parcels (MUCAPE, or most unstable convective available potential energy) almost nonexistent, but wind shear, including low-level storm relative helicity (SRH) of up to 425 m2/s2, was ample for strong tornadoes. These parameters migrated northeastward with the progression of the mesolow, reaching northwestern Georgia by early to mid afternoon. A quasi-warm-frontal temperature boundary draped itself over western portions of the Carolinas. Anticipating gradual advection of a richer, more unstable air mass into the region, the National Severe Storms Forecast Center (NSSFC), today known as the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), issued a tornado watch effective as of 2:41 p.m. EDT (18:21 UTC) for northern and western areas of Georgia and South Carolina.[4]
Conditions indeed became more favorable, and as supercells generated over the warm sector, developments spurred the NSSFC to issue a more strongly worded tornado watch—this time mentioning a Particularly Dangerous Situation (PDS), with the potential for intense, long-tracked tornadoes. The new watch encompassed most of South Carolina and significant portions of west-central North Carolina, effective as of 4:33 p.m. EDT (20:33 UTC). Several hours later, an radiosonde launched from Greensboro, North Carolina, in the evening indicated low-level SRH of 475 m2/s2, which was sufficient for powerful tornadoes and discrete supercells to form.[4]
Daily statistics
[edit]| FU | F0 | F1 | F2 | F3 | F4 | F5 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 16 |
| Date | Total | Fujita scale rating | Deaths | Injuries | Damage | Ref. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F0 | F1 | F2 | F3 | F4 | F5 | ||||||
| May 5 | 16 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 168 | $0 | |
| Total | 16 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 7 | 168 | $0 | |
List of tornadoes
[edit]| F# | Location | County | Time (EST) | Path length | Damage | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia | ||||||
| F1 | near Gainesville | Hall | 03:20 | 1 mile |
Minor damage northeast of Gainesville. | |
| F2 | Toccoa area | Stephens GA, Oconee SC | 04:00 | 8 miles |
Tornado crossed from Georgia into South Carolina near Toccoa. A shopping plaza was severely damaged, and a drugstore and a supermarket sustained major structural damage. Homes and mobile homes were damaged as well, and downed power lines started a house fire. $2.9 million in damage. | |
| South Carolina | ||||||
| F1 | near Walhalla | Oconee | 04:40 | 2 miles |
Brief touchdown. | |
| F4 | SW of Chesnee to SW of Henrietta | Spartanburg SC, Cherokee SC, Rutherford NC | 05:20 | 9 miles |
2 Deaths - First violent tornado of the outbreak passed close to Chesnee before crossing the NC/SC state line into SE Rutherford County. Homes were leveled and swept away near Chesnee, and two people were killed in that area. Near Henrietta, three trailers, one business, and four homes were destroyed, one of which was a well-built brick home. Six trailers and 21 homes were damaged. Caused $3,500,000 in damage and injured 35 people. | |
| North Carolina | ||||||
| F4 | NW of Lawndale | Cleveland, Lincoln, Catawba | 05:50 | 14 miles |
4 Deaths - Half-mile wide, multi-vortex tornado caused severe damage in the communities of Belwood and Vale. In Cleveland County, 15 homes were destroyed and 34 others were damaged. Some of the destroyed homes were well-built. Two churches were destroyed as well. In Lincoln County, the tornado struck the community of Toluca, killing four people. 10 homes and 9 trailers were destroyed, and 12 other residences were damaged in the county. Three of the fatalities in Toluca were in vehicles, some of which were carried up to 300 yards away. In Catawba County, 13 homes and 4 mobile homes were damaged or destroyed. Caused millions of dollars in damage and injured 53 people. The Cleveland-Lincoln-Catawba tornado caused 30 injuries and $20 million in property damage in the Belwood community, before then causing 4 fatalities and 19 additional injuries in the Toluca community in northwestern Lincoln County. | |
| F2 | Durham | Durham | 06:20 | 9 miles |
Tornado moved through southern and eastern Durham. Two businesses were destroyed, and a convenience store was nearly destroyed. 16 homes were destroyed and 46 others were damaged. An elementary school was damaged as well. Caused $15,000,000 in damage, but no fatalities or injuries occurred. | |
| F2 | near Lenoir | Caldwell | 06:28 | 15 miles |
Moderate damage near Lenoir. | |
| F4 | W of Monroe to S of Fairview | Union | 07:00 | 13 miles |
1 Death - Tornado struck the Charlotte suburb of Indian Trail. 12 homes and 10 mobile homes were destroyed, and 24 residences sustained varying degrees of damage. Three businesses were heavily damaged as well, and a flea market was destroyed. Fatality occurred in a mobile home. Injured 6 people and caused $8,000,000 in damage. | |
| F1 | W of Oxford | Granville | 07:05 | 3 miles |
Tornado was spawned by the Durham supercell. | |
| F2 | Clemmons | Forsyth | 07:45 | 1 mile |
Struck the Winston-Salem suburb of Clemmons. A gas station was destroyed, trees were downed, and homes were damaged. Three people were injured. | |
| F3 | Winston-Salem | Forsyth | 07:50 | 11 miles |
2nd Forsyth County tornado produces over $25 million in F3 damage on a SW to NE track through the city, striking colonial-era neighborhoods and just missing downtown. Storm criss-crossed old I-40 in multiple locations. Widespread downburst damage in many locations around Winston-Salem. Tornado injured 30 people. Later in the afternoon, a strong F3 tornado produced $25 million in damage on a southwest-to-northeast path through the city of Winston-Salem. Damage from this storm was visible along Business I-40 and US 421 in southwest Winston-Salem. The historic Old Salem area was also hard hit; many century-old trees in Salem Square and God's Acre were heavily damaged by the winds and had to be removed. Due to the difficulty in getting heavy equipment into the cemetery Gods Acre, those trees were removed by a helicopter. | |
| F2 | S of Wadesboro to W of Morven | Anson | 07:50 | 5 miles |
A trailer, a house, and several barns were destroyed. 5 other residences were damaged, and one person was injured. | |
| F1 | Oakboro | Stanly | 08:00 | 0.5 mile |
Very brief touchdown, from the same storm that produced the earlier Indian Trail tornado. | |
| F2 | N of Walkertown | Forsyth | 08:05 | 6 miles |
Third Forsyth County tornado, formed almost immediately after the Winston-Salem tornado dissipated, and continued along an extension of the same path. 30 aircraft at Smith-Reynolds Airport were tossed and hangars were damaged. | |
| F1 | Burlington/Elon areas | Alamance | unk time | 3 miles |
Tornado produced F1 damage in western Burlington and Elon.[5] | |
| Virginia | ||||||
| F1 | near Louisa | Louisa | 09:00 | 2 miles |
Isolated tornado touches down between Charlottesville and Richmond. F1 damage occurred along a short, but wide path. | |
| F1 | near Louisa | Louisa | 09:50 | 2 miles |
Second Louisa County tornado touches down from separate thunderstorm, several miles east of previous Louisa tornado. | |
| Sources: [1] | ||||||
Tornadoes
[edit]| State | Total | County | County total |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 5 | Lincoln | 4 |
| Union | 1 | ||
| South Carolina | 2 | Spartanburg | 2 |
| Totals | 7 | ||
| All deaths were tornado-related | |||
Non-tornadic effects
[edit]Large hail and wind damage reports were widespread - golf-ball sized hail was recorded near Columbia, South Carolina and Monroe, North Carolina, with severe wind reports from over 100 counties from Georgia to Maryland. Some form of storm damage was noted in almost every North Carolina county between I-95 and the Blue Ridge Mountains. Strong winds associated with the same squall line downed a radio transmission tower in nearby High Point. Winds toppled large trees and caused roof damage in the Emerywood neighborhood of the city.
Aftermath
[edit]See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b Grazulis, Thomas P. (2001). The Tornado: Nature's Ultimate Windstorm. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 207–208. ISBN 978-0-8061-3538-0.
- ^ a b Cook, A. R.; Schaefer, J. T. (August 2008). "The Relation of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) to Winter Tornado Outbreaks". Monthly Weather Review. 136 (8): 3135. doi:10.1175/2007MWR2171.1. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
- ^ Panovich, Brad (6 May 2014). "The Carolina Tornado Outbreak of May 5th, 1989". WxBrad Blog. Archived from the original on 7 May 2017. Retrieved 7 May 2017.
- ^ a b c d Lane, Justin D. (May 2014). "A Look Back at the Western Carolina Violent Tornado Outbreak of 5 May 1989". Greer, SC Weather Forecast Office. National Weather Service. Archived from the original on 7 May 2017. Retrieved 7 May 2017.
- ^ http://www.alamance-nc.com/d/fire-marshal/emergency-management/the-storm/during-the-storm/tornadoes/what-are-tornadoes/north-carolina-tornadoes.html
Category:F4 tornadoes Category:Tornadoes of 1989 Category:Tornadoes in Georgia (U.S. state) Category:Tornadoes in North Carolina Category:Tornadoes in South Carolina Category:Tornadoes in Virginia Category:1989 natural disasters in the United States Category:1989 in Georgia (U.S. state) Category:1989 in North Carolina Category:1989 in South Carolina Category:1989 in Virginia Category:May 1989 events