In-depth discussion of the deadly tornadoes that tore across parts of Mississippi, including Rolling Fork and Amory, on March 24, 2023. We’ll discuss the forecast leading up to the event, how the environment evolved throughout the day, and why it was so conducive to significant tornadoes.
Thumbnail images via Micah Hart and Maxar Technologies via NPR (https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2023/03/26/1166170471/satellite-images-devastation-tornado-rolling-fork-mississippi).
NWS Jackson damage survey results: https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/p.php?pil=PNSJAN&e=202303280208
Cameron Nixon’s article on deviant tornado motion: https://cameronnixonphotography.wordpress.com/research/anticipating-deviant-tornado-motion/
Contents
0:00 Introduction
3:16 Meteorological overview
27:50 Initial event progression
33:17 Rolling Fork tornadic supercell analysis
47:50 Proximity sounding analysis
58:29 Horizontal vortex
59:19 Discussion of storm chaser incidents
30 Comments
So chasers had some close calls that night, but how many chasers died? If this tornado was so well forecast, and so obvious on radar and visible in the spectacular lightning WHY DID SO MANY RESIDENTS DIE??? For crying out loud with God knows how many storm chasers around never mind county law-enforcement people everyone should have had ample warning! How many aftermath videos have you seen where the victims are saying, “I had no idea it just suddenly came up and tore the house to smithereens!” I know they don’t have basements and a lot of the houses are not robustly constructed but is infrastructure, poverty, and civilization truly that bad in the south? How does it feel to have escaped Rolling Fork 10 minutes before 2 dozen hapless and apparently helpless citizens lost their lives? I hope this will be a wake-up call to the chaser community not just about their own necks, but about how they can actually help while out there having the times of their lives. It’s certainly a wake up call for me.
I watched this cell all day and had a bad feeling about it. Crazy how it was just heavy rain with no lightning for the longest time before it exploded into the ef4 producing supercell.
Hey Trey, love the breakdowns! I just have a question. A few hours before all the stuff broke out, there was a very very nice looking descrete supercell in southern Mississippi that had a very visible hook and mesocyclone type shape visible on reflectivity that was in a favorable atmosphere for Tornadoes. This cell lasted for about an hour, but it didn't produce anything. The velocity from radar was very bad, and so my question is why this cell that was definitely capable of producing a tornado, did not produce?
Thank you so much for doing this.
Excellent as always
Big chunkyboi naders and extreme weather games with chasers nearly getting yeeted.
I love your videos! Reminds me of watching film when I used to play football. Keep it up man!
Been waiting for this! Awesome analysis as always, Trey! Curious to see what happens these next few weeks as they’ll be very active as well. Keep up the content!
I've never considered how clustering updrafts might shield each other from extreme wind shear. Makes sense!
Man you did a great job with this video. There's alot of detail I don't quite understand, but learning it is quite interesting.
Your hard work does not go unnoticed!
I'm in NW Louisiana so I've had my fair share of close calls with twisters. My area gets severe storms and tornados almost every Easter Sunday or Easter weekend.
This analysis is greatly appreciated 🙂
Bud, you are the GOAT for not charging your followers for this content. Thank you so much. These videos mean more than you know. Good luck this season. I think we're in for something pretty wild this year.
Have learned so much from watching your videos. Just wanted to say thank you!
I share your same thoughts about the chasers that got caught in the storm. I would like to hear from their side, maybe they didn't have access to data, or maybe there were other factors. Thanks for the video, it was very informative!
The tornado of Rolling Fork,Ms is the most terrifying and destructive tornado, ever.I have never seen or heard of a tornado so destructive that caused so much destruction as this one.Very, very powerful.
What was the wind speed of the EF4 from Rolling Rock?
The only excuse I could see is if cell service was so bad radar wasent available. They are too good to be getting hit by a linear moving storm.
At the very base of the trough near the GOM would that be considered the tropical jet stream?
Yeah definitely some significant outflow I was looking at the radar on cod and there were many storm cells coming into the main band. Nice video it was very informational
Great work as always, and fascinating for those of us interested in meteorology. I don't think more study can do much re: safety, however. This event was about as well forecast, far in advance and on a macro and micro scale, as could be, and without question sufficiently. There was a high end tor watch in place, confirmed warning (and I believe tor emergency) on this storm. If that is not enough warning, what would be? At a certain point people living in severe wx prone areas must take responsibility upon themselves to both be prepared in advance (have a plan and safe space set up) and during an event (pay close attention, and take shelter when required.) The NWS other mets and spotter/chaser network did their jobs/played their part in excellent fashion, as they do on virtually all such events today. It's a terrible tragedy when things like this happen, to state the obvious, but at some point people need to be responsible enough to have themselves and their families prepared. In no way am I minimizing the gravity of this event, it's dreadful, and I've donated to a couple local relief orgs in west central MS to help out. My point is, I think the question of why there continue to be casualties during events like these is one of psychology (and perhaps structural engineering, building codes, etc.) not meteorology. And if we are serious about preventing or at least doing our best to mitigate them in the future, we need to accept and face this reality. How many times have we seen chasers in towns with monster tors literally bearing down on them and people are hanging out as if it's just another day/night? On this storm I was watching a chaser's live stream as this monster was crossing the road no more than a mile north of the town of Tchula MS and some guy just casually got out of his car and walked in his house as if not a care in the world. The normalcy bias is indeed a puzzler. In any event, great work as always, and look forward to your analysis of Friday's setup.
Once again, another amazing video!! So interesting to see how different storm systems work and how every supercell is different. Great job!👏
My town in Alabama hartselle to be exact at 12:50 am we got hit with an EF-2 that crossed hwy 31 less than a mile from me ..this was the same cell that spun up the rolling fork and Amory ms tornadoes we did have 1 fatality from this EF-2 😢
Any plans on doing a Case Study on the 2019 Beauregard tornado? Always, been one of the worst ones this century that I don't know much about.
Anytime I see a vortex hole at the end of a discrete supercell I always know there is bound to be a strong-violent tornado with that cell. Have seen that so many times in the past couple of years with very similar results each time.
Great video again, Trey. I like to think I have a pretty good handle on concepts, but always pick up a thing or two from you. Perhaps I should call your videos lectures.
Alright got the chance to view this cause work. Also that starting shot of Max Olson, probably the best video of the storm and it's wild how you can see a solid horizontal vortex on the tornado and usually the top EF4 and Ef5s usually you'll see that…usually. SPC truly nailed this forecast so many days out….actually last many months they been really reading the long term modeling data well issuing well done Day 5-7 forecasts that usually have panned out. All those events too been helping them pin point stuff too so more frequency you see it better.
Oh that jet streak breakdown brings back good memories at SUNY Oneonta and Dr. Grimaldi and Dr. Blechman grilling that into us though I mostly knew this beforehand compared to my class peers. Usually it was right Entrance and left Exit but it's interesting how on some of these storm set ups the right exit regions you get pretty solid diffluence and as you pointed out it's the more subtle set ups and stuff. That I think back in 2007-2011 it wasn't well studied as much in more modern data that we focused on that region but since 2014 I have picked up on the right exit region for severe weather for events and seem to produce pretty damn well.
Do remember when you posted that Dallas pre-sounding….that is one of the more crazy deep moist layer capped environments you'll see. That's almost like like a "shotgun loaded" sounding in a way as I once called those types cause of how huge the moist layer is compared to like 850mb capped classic gun soundings. Now onto the storm mode itself yeah those storm really took a while to cook and they were getting obliterated most of the afternoon and stuff from the shear. Kind of like that one set up in January in the Southeast where we had like the 10 tornado warnings pop up at once but the tornado threat never could get going really cause while isolated the storms were too small to keep sustained.
As for the Rolling Fork storm, yeah I saw the echo hole too on radar as the tornado was going on. That was so insane and it was clear as day on Radarscope and you really don't see that on 88D radar like that unless it's a top tornado. Post the 2 tornadoes, I think it was a lot of just messy mode as you said but I think those small showers ahead of the armory storm helped with a lot of constructive interference and new strong upscale updraft/inflows and that really ramped up so quick. That Amory storm was to me even more impressive than the Rolling Fork storm in terms of how insane the presentation was on radar and how incredibly wrapped up that storm stayed with the velocities and debris ball. Though, nothing still beats a vortex hole, cause that's just so rare at times and not often you see that. Oh and awesome look on the proximity sounds cause it really showed how insane the shear as forecasted really ramped up to produce both of the huge tornadoes. Overall, just one hell of a event.
As for the chasers thing at the end….I personally thing, the mindset to get close to these tornadoes and "outdo" people for video and content is the main issue. I mean yeah I agree too this was a fairly easy tornado in a way to chase as it was pretty straight for most part with minimal wobbles but one should not have been in the path of this, well chasers wise. Now Trey for me I think this has to do with social media and chasers in general hyping up to get "the shot" or "if I am not close to it, then my content is not good enough"….adrenaline rush too? At some point we will be losing chasers again due to a tornado. My friend that lives in OKC last 6 years from NYC said he's usually not that impressed with storms unless it's usually the big stuff cause he's seen so much out there that even the normal moderate stuff has become routine for him and "boring". I think this has been what has happening where the "never stop chasing" motto has become, "We need to chase EVERYTHING at all cost with no breaks on skipping events". I think the advent also of the livestreaming of chasing to where it's a focus of entertaining viewers with content and putting yourself in a risky spot for youtube weather streamers also watching the streams and having so much attention is also the cause for chasers to be in these situations that seem so obvious to avoid. I PERSONALLY don't like getting withing 4 miles of a storm, well unless you get what you get here in Albany NY which is lot of wind and shelf clouds so you're kind of just gonna get whatever you get hit with filming but with tornadoes this seems like such an obvious thing to avoid. I usually enjoy seeing the structure of a storm and keeping my distance for the most part filming and I never gotten into the mindset of "I need to be right up on the storm". I think it's personally healthy for chasers to take a break or 2 if possible….like chasing from Oklahoma and then to Montana the next day and then back to Texas for a series is crazy….my friends and I had this last year and we just took the one day in-between off and we were out there for only 8 days in June…we are limited but knew our limits.
I think also the midset to try and make a living off full time chasing is a problem too cause in reality only a handful of people can honestly do that and they have so many connections with top news/TV/weather companies that it's possible but I think the younger crowd of 16-23 has grown up seeing the older generation of chasers and they are chasing that dream. It's so risky too and that where in lies the "outdo" mentality where people are trying to "compete" for the top shot of the event or tornado and upset when they miss a tornado or stuff. Like yeah, would I and have we as my friends been really pissed we miss tornadoes/landspouts when others have gotten it, yup but the storms we were on were fantastic in my opinion and I had a good time seeing what we did. Again maybe that's cause I live in Albany, NY and the stuff we get out there pale so much for what we get in NY but still I enjoy it out there and up here too even when returning. I think this tornado or bust mentality has gotten so ingrained in the chaser community it's a problem….like for example most people hate shelf clouds but to me, I love them. Chasers are setting goals too damn high honestly yearly where it's like 20 tornadoes one year and then annoy or upset when next season they only get 7……I'd kill to get ONE tornado seen on video personally. Last 5 years we been out there for the 8-10 days we do in early June we've seen 1….a 5 minute landspout (on my YT channel) in 2021 but it was AWESOME and we were hype and we were the ONLY chasers on that in Western Nebraska that saw it and reported it in. But I know I can't make this a full-time thing but I enjoy what I can chase when I can.
Tell you the truth Trey, when chasing in the Midwest for the 8 days we do each year, my friends and I fear lightning the most and I ESPECIALLY do here in Albany….but that's also the product too of where I grew up. I am not "lucky" to have grown up or live in the plains and Midwest and Southeast like it seems like majority of chasers or ones that chase MONTHS in the Midwest to be wary of lightning but that's my biggest fear to me….but again that's cause I usually keep my distance on storms overall so it's natural that's where my caution for lightning stems compared to most even if it's kind of low. Lightning, can do stuff you don't expect even if you take the precautions….it has no rules sometimes. Anyway that's just my thoughts on this little bit….I have more but it's just kind of similar to this said already just in a bit more detail I won't bore people with. 😀
It looks like a land hurricane with that radar presentation. Wow.
Horizontal Vortex. Those are usually associated with EF4-EF5 tornadoes
I know that one of those chasers was ChrisFL. He chases for Ryan Hall.
I've had 2 tornadoes come within miles my home within a weeks period. Amory last week, and Tupelo yesterday. 😅
I should expect my home insurance to go up😂
Where you get your observed soundings from I don’t like the spc