F3 tornado in Jones County, Mississippi

This strong tornado touched down near the Glade and Tuckers Crossing Communities and tracked east northeast to near the Mill Creek Community before entering Wayne County near Highway 84. Around 25 homes suffered significant damage. The most intense damage was along a path from near the intersection of Highway 15 and Orange Drive northeast to the area along Township Road. Two metal high tension electric power truss towers were destroyed, hundreds of trees were snapped and uprooted, at least two mobile homes were destroyed, a travel trailer being used for post-Katrina housing was annihilated, and several houses suffered significant structural damage. Northeast of this area, the path continued all the way to the county line with Wayne County, but damage was generally less, F0 to occasionally F1, and limited to tree damage. The one exception was near the Mill Creek community, where a storage building was destroyed and a couple of homes suffered roof damage. Total path length across Jones and Wayne Counties was 17 miles.

An intense fall cyclone developed over the region and produced an episode of severe weather which included tornadoes. This strong weather system developed as a very strong jet stream, with winds between 160-200 mph, slammed into Oregon and Washington State. All that energy moved over the Rocky Mountains and caused a strong area of surface low pressure to develop. This low intensified as it moved east across the Red River Valley and then lifted across Arkansas and into Tennessee as it deepened to 990 mb! The strength of this deepening low caused warm and unstable air to lift northward across Louisiana and into central Mississippi. It was this northward moving warm front that became the focus of an area where tornadic supercell thunderstorms could thrive in an unstable and highly sheared environment.

This large and powerful storm system produced numerous tornadoes across the south and south eastern United States where many were of the strong (F2 or F3) variety. Within the Jackson, MS forecast area, there were a total of 5 tornadoes to impact the counties serviced. Two F3s, one in Lamar County and the other in Jones County. The Jones County tornado actually contained a satellite tornado, F1, which briefly rotated around the parent tornado. Next was an F1 tornado in southern Marion County which was actually the end of a strong tornado that moved out of Walthall County. Lastly, a brief F1 tornado occurred in central Lamar County. Tornadoes were not the only type of severe weather, scattered wind damage also occurred across northeast Louisiana and portions of central Mississippi between midnight and 10 am Wednesday November 15th 2006.