EF1 Tornado — Issaquena, Mississippi

2024-12-28 · near Fitler, Issaquena, Mississippi

Event narrative

This tornado began near LA Highway 580 in the Alsatia community and moved across US 65 and downed trees and large tree limbs. Some tree limbs blocked railroad tracks. One house near the intersection of Fletcher Loop and George Hart Road sustained significant shingle loss, but the wooden beams and plywood remained intact. The tornado continued northeastward and paralleled the Mississippi River east of Transylvania for some time before crossing into Issaquena County near the Fitler community. The tornado crossed MS Highway 1, where it destroyed a shed, damaged a carport, and shifted a mobile home off its foundation. It continued to break branches and snap small softwood trees. The tornado dissipated just beyond Moon Lake where additional tree damage was noted from hi-res satellite data west of Cary. The total path length from the Louisiana side into Mississippi is roughly 18 miles. Its maximum wind speed was 100 mph.

Wider weather episode

On December 28th, an outbreak of severe weather took place. Initially, a few isolated supercells storms developed and produced some tornadoes. As this occurred, a line of storms also developed and eventually pushed eastward across our region. Widespread damaging winds occurred with the line along with numerous tornadoes. This particular convective system was extremely efficient at producing tornadoes. This resulted in a record number of tornadoes for the month of December. The total across our forecast area was 43. The previous December record was 24 back in 2022.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.7300, -91.0710)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1225301. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.