Tennessee Tornado Confirmed, Video

As I was recording my video blog last night showing a tornado on radar in southern Tennessee, an EF-2 tornado hit near the town of Kimball [Google Map] injuring 9 people, at 7:02 PM CST. Fortunately, the NWS had issued a tornado warning for Marion County at 6:22 PM, based on that strong rotation we were all looking at on radar. (Unfortunately the warning didn't show up on the screen while I was doing my video blog last night because I had accidentally turned off the Internet on my blogging computer.)

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Above is a video blog showing the strong rotation on velocity radar from RadarPlus, and I also fly the storm's path in 3-D through southern Tennessee with Google Earth.

The warning stated that the tornado would be near "SOUTH PITTSBURG BY 655 PM CST... JASPER BY 705 PM CST..." which would have put the arrival of the tornado at the town of Kimball, in between the two (see map above, the "T" indicates the tornado report), spot on. Congratulations to the NWS on this excellent warning on this unusually dangerous severe November storm. This large amount of lead time no doubt saved lives.

You can download* radar animations of the event here. Below is raw video (no audio) of the damage (check out the flipped car in the opening shot) from our affiliate WTVC:

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A severe storm system swept through the Volunteer State late Wednesday (11/14) night, dropping a twister in the middle of tiny Kimball, Tennessee. Marion County, Tennessee officials say three kids at a local Baptist church were injured when winds toppled the outside walls of the sanctuary. At least two homes were knocked off their foundations and Kimball's local polling place was hit by flying debris last night.

It's interesting - this tornado was in a mountainous area of Tennessee... if you go to the area where it was reported, and look West in Google Earth, it looks like this:

The tornado was coming down that mountain range to the left of the valley. This may explain why there wasn't more damage -- the tornado's circulation on the ground may have been disrupted by the mountains. Also, there may have been damage that was unreported due to the rural area that the storm passed over.