The 1984 Carolinas tornado outbreak of March 28, 1984, was the most destructive tornado outbreak to sweep through the two states since the Enigma tornado outbreak struck 100 years and 1 month earlier, according to NOAA and NCDC public records.
Video 1984 Carolinas tornado outbreak
Forecast
Weather records from March 28 indicate that an earlier tornado watch had been issued covering Northern Alabama and Georgia, and small tornadoes were reported in Barrow County (2:25 P.M., Eastern Standard Time) and Henry County (2:30 P.M., EST) in north Georgia. The first severe reports from North Carolina - golf-ball sized hail reports from Macon County, NC also occurred at this time. Severe storms began entering Western South Carolina by mid-afternoon, and tornado watches had been issued for most of South Carolina, North Carolina and a portion of Virginia.
Sources: [1]
Maps 1984 Carolinas tornado outbreak
Aftermath
Ultimately this outbreak was responsible for 57 deaths, 1249 injuries, and confirmed tornado damage in 2 counties in Georgia, 8 counties in South Carolina, and 17 counties in North Carolina, according to data from the National Weather Service and the National Climatic Data Center records and statistical data.
This was an unusual East Coast outbreak both in its sustained intensity and in some of its meteorological specifics. It was noted by Grazulis and other researchers that this outbreak developed near the center of a large-scale low, in a fashion resembling the 1925 Tri-State tornado. In this outbreak, the damage path was attributed to separate tornadoes, though one storm produced (on an estimated 250+ mile track) a family of 13 large tornadoes, 10 of which produced F3 or F4 damage, which was occasionally connected by swaths of downburst damage. The resulting tornado family, the series of tornadoes in totality is among the longest on record.
This outbreak was also part of a larger storm system that was responsible for producing severe weather across a much wider area of the eastern U.S. On the previous day, weaker tornadoes had been reported in scattered locations from Louisiana to Alabama, and a thunderstorm-caused flash flood was suspected to be the cause of a train derailment in north Florida. The northern part of the same system first spawned additional severe (non-tornadic) thunderstorms, which caused 4 additional deaths in Maryland and Pennsylvania, before then dropping snow, sleet and ice across a wide area of the northeast. The thunderstorms which produced the tornado outbreak were also responsible (according to the same data) for numerous reports of large hail and wind damage in Appalachian southwest North Carolina, and numerous larger cities (Atlanta, GA, Greenville, SC, Columbia, SC, Charlotte, North Carolina, Fayetteville, NC, Raleigh, North Carolina, Suffolk, VA, Norfolk, VA) at the periphery of the outbreak, with wind damage from thunderstorms reported as far north as Delaware.
See also
- List of North American tornadoes and tornado outbreaks
- Fujita scale
Notes
References
- Grazulis, Thomas P. (2001). The Tornado. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 203.
- Fujita, T. T.; Stiegler, D. (1985). "Detailed analysis of the tornado outbreak in the Carolinas by using radar, satellite, and aerial survey data. Preprints". 14th Conference on Severe Local Storms, Indianapolis. American Meteorological Society. pp. 271-274.
- Kraft, Scott; Harper, Timothy (April 1, 1984). "Wreckage, victims tell tornado's tale on 450-mile route". Herald-American (Syracuse, New York). Associated Press. p. 16.
External links
- Full map of the 1984 Carolinas tornado outbreak. Tornado History Project.
- Anniversary video focusing on the Red Springs tornado, including footage of damage done to the town.
- Second look at the Red Springs storm.
- Raleigh News & Observer 25th anniversary feature focusing on the Bennettsville and Red Springs storms.
- The Weather Channel blog post detailing the outbreak, with some meteorological information.
Source of article : Wikipedia
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