April 28, 2014 – Mississippi Tornadoes
The long quiet period in April came to a crashing halt on this day. A strong trough pushing across the southeast US with abundant low level moisture and shear, would result in a violent tornado outbreak. After spending the night in Arkansas, we blasted east across southern Louisiana into Mississippi and arrived near the town of Yazoo City, MS as a rapidly intensifying supercell approached. Due to storm motion and direction, we could not stay up with it, so we played the stairstepping approach and dropped south for the next supercell in the line. This one would produce the Louisville, MS EF4 killer tornado. We approached it from the north very carefully as the tornado blew past us at 50 mph hitting a housing subdivision in the south side of town, killing several people. A few of the SLT guests and myself jumped out of the van and started digging through rubble, finding an injured woman and a trapped dog. All ended well, and as the National Guard arrived we left to let them secure the scene and continue to dig through the mess left by the tornado.
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