Possible Tornado Hits New Orleans

RELATED LINK: FUJITA TORNADO SCALE BEING REPLACED

News articles from the Associated Press report that a severe thunderstorm hit New Orleans around 2:30 this Thursday morning, tearing roofs of of homes, damaging the airport, knocking down telephone poles and collapsing a Katrina-damaged house. A caller to CNN on-air this morning also reported a large cell-phone tower is down. Surely the damage from this storm is hard to tell from the lingering Katrina damage in the hurricane-ravaged city.

Roy Beard looks at his front yard in New Orleans Thursday morning Feb. 2, 2006. Beard's home is across the street from the home that collapsed in the background from high winds that struck the are heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The storm came through in the early morning hours causing damage in many areas that were hard hit by Hurricane Katrina. Beards' home had some additional damage but not as extensive as the home in the background. AP Photo/Bill Haber)

SEE ALSO:
Local Radar Movie (Tornadic Cells Tagged)
Regional Radar Movie (Shows Entire Storm Movement)

Above is a radar image from AccuWeather.com RadarPlus at 2:40 a.m. Eastern. It shows a tornadic storm cell tracking through the western part of the city. At the same time, half a dozen other storms in the area were reported by radar to have mesocyclones (rotations which are sometimes precursors to a tornado). Even if the cell which caused the damage was not tornadic, New Orleans was at the tip of the what looks to be a bow echo (info), which is where the highest wind gusts would be.

The severe weather moved out of the New Orleans area at daybreak Thursday, but will continue to move eastward through the Southeast during the day.