MISSISSIPPI, USA — It’s time for another weather rewind, where we look back at this week’s past weather, with a twist.
This week, we are looking back at tornadoes that hit Mississippi hard last Friday night, leaving death and destruction.
LET’S REWIND
Flattened and battered homes, buildings and offices were left behind after multiple tornadoes tore across the northern half of the state.
The National Weather Service confirmed an EF4 tornado tore through the two hardest hit counties, packing winds that were estimated between 166 to 200 mph as they traveled through more than half a dozen towns for nearly an hour.
At least 25 people were killed and dozens more were injured.
Volunteers poured in to help those affected.
The recovery efforts are expected to be long and difficult, because this is one of the poorest areas in the country.
Severe weather season is only getting started across the much of the nation, and that means we’ll have to be on guard soon.
WHAT’S HAPPENING
Although central Pennsylvania has a much lower risk of tornadoes than the Deep South and the Plain States, it’s important to understand the risk on an alert day.
You’ve seen our FOX43 Weather Smart Team show the Storm Prediction Center’s risk categories for severe weather.
But what does it mean about the chances for a tornado, damaging winds or damaging hail?
Let’s take a “Slight Risk” day for example—which we rank a 2 out of 5 on the severe weather scale.
There are also probabilities issued for each storm threat.
In this example from Monday, there was a 2% tornado risk in much of Georgia and South Carolina.
This means at any given spot in the highlighted area, there’s a 2% chance of a tornado within 25 miles.
The wind probabilities tell us there was a 15% chance for damaging wind gusts for much of southern Georgia within 25 miles of any given spot.
And the hail probabilities tell a similar story.
There was a 5% chance of damaging hail within 25 miles of any one location in much of central South Carolina.
Although these percentages are usually low, don’t get complacent.
Here in Pennsylvania, we’ve gotten a lot of wind and hail damage with 15% to 30% risk areas, and many of our tornadoes in 2% to 5% percent risk areas.
For our area, those are high numbers relative to other parts of the country.
Stay tuned for all the “whys” behind the weather wonders that capture our attention each week.