Much of the southern United States is cleaning up this afternoon from last night's cute li'l snowfall that produced record-breaking totals from Texas to Virginia. Up to a foot of snow fell on some small towns in northern Alabama we never hear about unless there's a tornado outbreak.
An outbreak of severe weather across the southeastern United States last week produced six tornadoes, one of which produced major damage in the small Mississippi town of Columbia. Within one of the many buildings destroyed by this tornado's 165 MPH winds was a man who caught the whole ordeal on video.
This door was lofted into the atmosphere by an extremely strong tornado in Louisville, Mississippi this afternoon, and it landed over 30 miles away on the campus of Mississippi State University in Starkville.
A large, wedge tornado moved through Tupelo, Mississippi around 230-245PM CDT as part of a larger tornado outbreak across the Deep South. Radar is showing that the tornado lofted debris over 20,000 feet into the air, and pictures of major damage in the northeast Mississippi city are starting to come in across Twitter.
The only thing more dangerous than a tornado is a tornado that occurs at night. People have some weird need to want to see the tornado before they seek shelter or take any other action. Seeing a tornado at night is usually almost impossible, but last night it wasn't. Meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Jackson, Mississippi were able to confirm the presence of a damaging tornado last night based completely on radar data, proving the effectiveness of its new dual-polarization technology.
