EF1 Tornado — Simpson, Mississippi

2024-12-28 · near Merit, Simpson, Mississippi

Event narrative

This tornado began along Big Woods Rd where several trees were snapped and proceeded east northeastward resulting in additional tree damage and damaged multiple chicken houses along Jupiter Rd before it reached the city of Mendenhall. Several trees and utility lines were downed throughout the city, some fell on homes. Power poles were snapped. A shed was pushed over along Dixie Ave, the roofs were peeled from some buildings in the downtown area, and one roof was lofted into power lines along W Jackson Ave. The brick facade of a downtown church was blown down. East of the city, the tornado continued across US 49, Eugie Palmer Rd, Poplar Springs Rd, and Ponder Mason Rd, before it lifted around Everett Church Rd. Along the path there were multiple distinct focused damage areas, suggesting this might have been a series of smaller tornadoes, which resulted in damage over a somewhat wider area. The maximum wind speed was 105 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 → (31.9382, -89.9617)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1226723. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.