Lightning — Yazoo, Mississippi

2011-03-29 · near Yazoo City Barrier A, Yazoo, Mississippi

Event narrative

A lightning strike caused a house fire. The fire did severe damage to the house causing a fatality.

Wider weather episode

An area of low pressure developed over southeast Louisiana and moved east along a warm front which stretched across southeast Mississippi. This eventually caused a strong cold front to sweep through the region with numerous showers and thunderstorms. This storm system combined with cold temperatures aloft and triggered severe storms that produced quite a bit of hail along with some scattered reports of wind damage. Multiple reports of golf ball sized hail occurred with the largest hail size being tennis ball size. The most intense storm occurred over central sections of Mississippi, roughly across northeast Copiah County and northwest Simpson County. Here, a very intense downburst occurred with winds up to 110 mph which downed dozens of trees. Large hail was wind driven and many trees were stripped of there leaves. Outside of the severe storms, several storms moved over the same locations which resulted in heavy rainfall which led to some flash flooding generally within the I-20 corridor.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (32.8554, -90.4010)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 281902. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.