Night of Severe Weather Brings Tornadoes; More Severe Weather Possible Thu/Fri

As a nearly stationary upper system spins over the Missouri Valley, additional individuals pieces of energy continue to rotate around it, One spun threw the lower Mississippi Valley Wednesday evening and delivered the season’s first widespread severe weather event with a total of 168 severe weather reports. Of those, 5 were of tornadoes with four being reported in Arkansas and one in Louisiana. The remainder was of large hail and damaging winds.

Of the tornadoes that occurred, it appears the strongest may have occurred across three counties in central Arkansas: Saline, southwest of Little Rock, and White and Cleburne Counties northeast of Little Rock. The tornado in Saline County occurred around 6:30 PM near the community of Benton and tracked to the northeast. Per the National Weather Service, at least 20 houses were damaged but no injuries. The same complex of storms later spun up the additional tornados in White and in Cleburne Counties. The tornado that touched down in White County did so near the community of Center Hill around 8:30 PM. The National Weather Service reports that at least nine houses were damaged and one injury occurred. The third tornado occurred shortly after 9 PM in Cleburne County near the community of Pearson. Several homes were badly damaged and at least 3 severe injuries were reported by the National Weather Service. The county sheriff has released additional information confirming that there was one fatality associated with the tornado.

Here is some video of some of the funnel clouds and possible tornado from Fox 16 in Little Rock

Another tornado touched down in Arkansas near Ozan in Hempstead County where it did minor damage to a building. The final tornado touched down in southeast Louisiana near the community of Terrebonne in Cocodrie Parish.

The National Weather Service forecast offices in Little Rock, Shreveport and New Orleans will send survey crews out today to confirm the damage and to identify the strength of the tornadoes and to see if any additional tornadoes occurred.

For today, the next piece of energy is now spinning out of New Mexico. It will track across Texas through Thursday and into the lower Mississippi Valley early Friday. As it does so, it will likely begin to develop more thunderstorms across Louisiana and Arkansas this evening. Some of these storms may reach severe limits. A better chance of severe weather will occur after midnight across northern Mississippi and spreading eastward across Alabama into Georgia during the morning and afternoon hours of Friday. Most likely severe weather threat will be large hail and damaging winds.

Strong to severe storms will also be likely across much of Florida, today. Especially for those of you along and south of I-4 with the main threat being strong gusty winds.