Look back on May 4th, 2003....historic outbreaks

[WXBUFFJIM]

One year ago today and tonight, deadly and destructive tornadoes struck the central United States from Kansas and Missouri southeastward into western Tennessee. Numerous supercell storms exploded in the warm sector between the warm front and the dryline. Areas affected by tornadoes include Wyandotte and Leavenworth County in Kansas where at least 1 person was killed. The tornado in the KC area was an F4 at it's peak with winds anywhere from 207-260 mph on the northwest side of Kansas City. In fact it was so dangerous at the KC Airport that officials there evacuated folks from the airport terminals and took them into the underground tunnels, which is where you're supposed to be when there are tornadoes this large and this devastating. Flights were obviously cancelled as this tornado roared by near the airport on the north side of the KC Metro area.

Meanwhile areas further south didn't fare well either as large and destructive tornadoes slammed into towns and communities across southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri during the late afternoon and early evening hours on May 4th, 2003. Some of the hardest hit areas included Franklin, KS where nearly half of the town was flattened by a large and destructive tornado. Girard, KS had 3 inch diameter hail, trees and powerlines downs and homes and barns destroyed by a large tornado. This destructive tornado had a path width of nearly 1 mile wide in Aurora, KS. Just think of a tornado being a mile wide causing all that destruction. Just amazing stuff.

As this tornado tracked northeastward into Missouri, it morphed into a huge wedge tornado. Towns affected by this wedge tornado included Lamar, Stockton, and Pierce City, Missouri just to name a few towns. This tornado in southwest Missouri produced F3 damage with winds of 158-206 mph. Most of the fatalities from this May 4th tornado outbreak occurred in southwest Missouri.

Later at night, a huge wedge tornado slammed into Jackson, TN with F4 damage. This tornado was 1/2 mile wide at one point and was occasionally rain wrapped. This twister was on the ground for 26 miles, but was moving towards the ene at over 60 mph. It was on the ground for 23 minutes for 26 miles. That would mean 62-65 mph forward speed with this tornado.

These are just a few of the significant events that occurred back on May 4th, 2003. The following http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/030504_rpts.html shows the SPC reports from May 4th. This was one of the worse tornado days of the year with large, damaging, killer tornadoes in a 5 state region from Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee as well.

Jim

[Guest]

Remember that day!

Started off with scattered showers and a few thunderstorms (some which were severe) in the morning.

Then about noon, my area comes under PDS Tornado Watch. We have a female golden retriever, and usually she goes crazy when we have roast (which we had this day for Sunday dinner). THis time, though, she went down to my room in the basement and just laid. She did not want to eat her puppy food nor any scraps of roast meat that my mom gave her. Quite eery!

I work as a customer service associate at a grocery store in Omaha, helping customers, sometimes going out to deliever their groceries to the cars. I definitely new something was up. It was cloudy and even somewhat dreary, but it was muggy and mild with south to southeast winds howling.

Not more than 30 minutes into my shift, I am outside loading up a customer's groceries, and there goes the sirens. It did not look like thunderstorm weather, it was just plain cloudy. I guess either the management was waiting for the store to become not as crowded or something because we continued operations about 15 minutes into the tornado warning with several instances of the sirens going "off" again.

Finally, I told a member of management after coming back in from now heavy rain, hail and strong winds, that the sirens are blaring once again. This got our plan into action.

Now the sky looked like a "tornado" sky. We huddled back in the cooler at the back of the store with about 40 associates and about 30 customers, who just left there carts of groceries out in the aisles.

We were in shelter for about 1 hour and 20 minutes. I believe there was confirmed weak tornado in Gretna, NE, a southwest Omaha suburb, so it was pretty close.

Definitely a different day at work on May 4, 2003. Of course, I found out things were much worse in Kansas and Missouri. Other than the weak tornado in the Gretna area, very large softball size hail hit Belleuve, NE, south Omaha suburb, striking "Bellevue's Auto Row" hard.

[wx247]

I definitely remember that day!

[Guest]

:cry: I definitely remember that day!

You were in the thick of it, weren't you, Garrett?

Do you have a chronological story you can share from that day?

[wx247]

I do, but I think it is coming out in the May newsletter. I can't remember if I recounted the whole thing or not. If not, then I can here. I don't want to bore you twice.

[wx247]

I do, but I think it is coming out in the May newsletter. I can't remember if I recounted the whole thing or not. If not, then I can here. I don't want to bore you twice.

[Guest]

Trust me Garrett, that will not bore me!

[wx247]

Well... I knew that it was going to be a bad day. All signs were pointing to something active here. The key in my eyes was the timing. We have severe weather frequently, but rarely does an outbreak occur in the late afternoon/early evening like this one. Our major outbreaks usually occur after dark. Every time there has been a major tornado outbreak like this in our area, the sun has still been up. Sure we get tornadoes at other times, but not on this scale.