Credit, Reuters
Aerial view of Mayfield: the city was almost completely destroyed
As of Sunday night (12/12), the United States was still searching for survivors and counting the damage caused by a series of tornadoes that struck the country’s southeast on Friday night (10/12). Was.
Considered as one of the worst events associated with these meteorological events recorded in US history, according to the nation’s President Joe Biden, the storm caused destruction in six states.
The hardest hit was Kentucky, which declared a state of emergency. There, at least 80 people died, dozens more in the town of Mayfield, where a candle factory operated at the time of the events – and reduced to a mountain of twisted iron.
As of Sunday, about 40 of the estimated 110 employees at the unit had been rescued. The factory was working extra shifts to handle Christmas orders.
Under the rubble, an employee also called for help on Facebook. In the audio, you can hear some of your teammates shouting and crying in the background.
“We’re under arrest, please get help,” Kyna Parsons-Perez – who was later rescued – said in a recording broadcast on CNN.
BBC correspondent Nomiya Iqbal, who visited Mayfield the morning after the disaster, reported seeing “demolished houses”, “buried under piles of their own rubble – toys, shoes scattered among pieces of twisted metal”. and broken trees”.
“It’s like walking into a disaster movie set. It’s a ghost town.”
probable cause
The National Weather Service received more than 30 tornado reports in six states on Friday. The most devastating of them traveled an impressive 365 km, crossing four states: Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky.
The Midwest and Southeast of the United States have some ideal conditions for tornado formation.
In this area, called “Whirlwind Alley” (“Whirlwind Alley”), cool, dry air from southern Canada collides with warm, humid air from Canada north. Gulf of Mexico. This encounter creates atmospheric instability which can in turn create the violent columns of air that characterize tornadoes.
Most of the tornadoes seen in the region occur in May and June—another factor that caught our attention in Friday’s episode, as it is less common during the winter for these extreme events to occur in December.
Vehicles were also damaged by the tornado
One of the possible reasons for the formation of so many and so violent tornadoes, however, is that part of the country the day before saw unusually warm temperatures, well above the December average in some areas.
According to The Washington Post, a strong low pressure system that emerged from the Great Plains to the north was intensifying when a polar jet stream plunged over the country’s central region and brought in a mass of warm air in its path. The state of Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana is causing record heat waves in the region.
In Memphis, Tennessee, the thermometer scored around 26ºC (79ºF), about 15ºC (26ºF) higher than the period average, according to the US Journal’s Weather Service.
“The atmosphere didn’t know it was December – temperatures in the 70s and 80s,” wrote Mississippi-based meteorologist Craig Sissy on his Twitter page.
However, climatologists have stressed that further study will be needed to better understand what happened on Friday night.
For example, scientists are still looking at available images and information to establish the category of tornadoes. Their intensity is measured by the superior Fujita scale, which ranges from EF-0 to EF-5 and takes into account damage caused by passage of air columns.
In a press conference on Saturday, President Joe Biden said he would request the Environmental Protection Agency and other government-related bodies to investigate the possible contribution of climate change to the incidents.
“We know that everything is more intense when the planet is warming, and obviously it has some effect here, but it is not yet possible to explain it quantitatively,” he declared.
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