1974 Tanner tornadoes

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Damage to vehicles in Tanner after the tornadoes Tanner F5 Vehicle Damage.png
Damage to vehicles in Tanner after the tornadoes

In the evening hours of April 3, 1974, a series of two large and destructive tornadoes would impact Tanner, located in the state of Alabama. Both of these tornadoes would receive an F5 rating on the Fujita scale, and were two out of seven F5-rated tornadoes to touch down as part of the 1974 Super Outbreak, one of the largest tornado outbreaks in United States history. Each of the tornadoes claimed over fifteen lives, and would kill a combined total of fifty-five people, many in the Tanner area; over four hundred more would be injured. The first tornado would touch down in Lawrence County, moving towards Mt. Moriah. As the tornado passed over the town, it hit a home and killed six people. The tornado would continue to produce extreme damage as it moved to the northeast, ripping water pumps out of the ground and obliterating large objects. The tornado would then cross the Tennessee River as a waterspout, before hitting Tanner. The town was devastated, with many structures in the area completely destroyed and the ground near Tanner being scoured. The tornado would lift seventy-three minutes after forming, leaving behind a trail of destruction.

Contents

The second tornado would touch down a short time later, traveling parallel to the previous tornado before hitting the southern portions of Tanner, killing several people. Many of the structures in Tanner that had survived the first tornado would be destroyed by the second one. It would continue to move to the northeast, striking the communities of Capshaw, Harvest and Hazel Green before lifting. It would kill sixteen, injure almost two hundred others, and was on the ground for over an hour.

Tanner was particularly devastated by both tornadoes. While rescue and recovery efforts were underway in Tanner in the immediate aftermath of the first tornado, the second tornado would cause more destruction in the town. Over 1,000 buildings sustained some level of damage from the tornadoes, and an estimated 200 mobile homes were obliterated as the tornadoes moved by. The majority of tornadic injuries in Alabama on April 3 were caused by both tornadoes.

Meteorological synopsis

Earlier on April 3, three bands of convection would develop, the third developing at about 16:00 UTC and extended from near St. Louis into west-central Illinois. Based upon real-time satellite imagery and model data, differential positive vorticity advection coincided with the left exit region of an upper-level jet streak which reached wind speeds of up to 130 kn (150 mph) (66.9 m/s (241 km/h)), thereby enhancing thunderstorm growth. Storms grew rapidly in height and extent, producing baseball-sized hail by 17:20 UTC in Illinois and, shortly thereafter, in St. Louis, Missouri, which reported a very severe thunderstorm early in the afternoon that, while not producing a tornado, was the costliest storm to hit the city up to that time. By 19:50 UTC, supercells producing F3 tornadoes hit the Decatur and Normal areas in Illinois. As thunderstorms moved into the warmer, moister air mass over eastern Illinois and Indiana, they produced longer-lived tornadoes—one of which began near Otterbein and ended near Valentine in Indiana, a distance of 121 miles (195 km). [1]

Meanwhile, by 00:00 UTC the southern half of the first convective band became indistinguishable from new convection that had formed farther south over Alabama and Tennessee in connection with convective band two. In this area, increasing west-southwesterly wind shear at all levels of the troposphere, juxtaposed over near-parallel outflow boundaries, allowed successive supercells, all producing strong, long-tracked tornadoes, to develop unconstrained by their outflow in a broad region from eastern Mississippi to southern Tennessee. These storms, forming after 23:00 UTC, produced some of the most powerful tornadoes of the outbreak, including a large and long-tracked F4 that struck the western and central portions of Alabama, tracking for just over 110 miles (180 km), two F5s that both slammed into Tanner, causing extensive fatalities, an extremely potent F5 that devastated Guin in Alabama, and multiple violent, deadly tornadoes that affected and caused fatalities in Tennessee. [1]

Tornado summaries

First tornado

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Tanner, Alabama
A bathtub deeply impaled into the ground from the first 1974 Tanner tornado.jpg
A bathtub deeply embedded into the ground in Harvest, Alabama.