Forgotten Outbreak?: 2/21/1971 Mississippi Delta Outbreak

[HurricaneBill]

It puzzles me how such a noteworthy outbreak has so little information online about it.

For those who might not know, the Mississippi Delta Outbreak consisted of 14 tornadoes occuring on the afternoon of February 21, 1971. While that may be a rather small outbreak, a few of the tornadoes were violent and long-tracked.

4 of the tornadoes were killers.

An F5 tornado tore through Louisiana, killing 11. It passed near Delhi. It moved into Mississippi, killing an additional 36. In all, this tornado killed 47 and injured 510. this tornado lasted nearly an hour and tracked over 109 miles.

An F4 tornado took an extremely devastating path through Mississippi. Pugh City and Cary were particularly hard it by this tornado. Towards the end of its life, the tornado tracked into Tennessee, but produced no casualties there. Mississippi was another story, however. 58 people died and 792 were injured. This tornado tracked over 202 miles and lasted more than 4 hours!

Another F4 tornado traveled 65 miles through Mississippi, killing 13 people and injuring 182.

An F3 tornado traveled about 8 miles through Mississippi, killing 3 people.

The other tornadoes:
An F1 and an F2 in Texas. (The first two of the outbreak.)

2 F2 tornadoes in Arkansas.

2 F0s, 1 F1, and 2 F2s in Mississippi.

The final tornado of the outbreak was an F2 that touched down in Tennessee and injured 36 people.

In all, the outbreak left 121 dead and 1523 injured.

This was the second deadliest outbreak of the 1970s. (The deadliest, of course, was the Super Outbreak in 1974.)

The Pugh City tornado (58 dead) and the Delhi tornado (47 dead) are the two deadliest tornadoes of the 1970s.

The Pugh City tornado was the deadliest tornado of 1971, of the 1970s, and the last tornado to kill at least 50 people in the U.S.

Despite all this, there is very little info on the internet about this outbreak. No pictures, no personal accounts, no websites about it.

[HarlequinBoy]

I too think this outbreak is pretty forgotten and overlooked. It struck a relatively narrow area, but caused many fatalities and produced several very intense tornadoes.

[wxmann_91]

yes, this is a somewhat forgotten outbreak. However, I believe the number of tornadoes is actually a lot more than indicated. The tornado tracks that were greater than 100 miles long were probably tornado families spawned by the same supercell, IMO.

[Category 5]

yes, this is a somewhat forgotten outbreak. However, I believe the number of tornadoes is actually a lot more than indicated. The tornado tracks that were greater than 100 miles long were probably tornado families spawned by the same supercell, IMO.

Just like the Greensburg event. Back then that might have been mistaken for a single tornado.

[CrazyC83]

That should go up on Wikipedia if the information can be found...