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EF3 tornado in Prentiss County, Mississippi

Tornado April 28, 2014 · Prentiss County, Mississippi

EF3

Rating

31.0 mi

Whole path

440 yd

Path width

Death

Injuries

$18.0M

Damage as recorded

NOAA records this tornado county by county. Its path ran through Lee County → Itawamba County → Prentiss County; the totals above are for the whole tornado.

EF0EF1EF2EF3EF4EF5Unrated

The path drawn at its surveyed width of 440 yards (0.25 mi) — zoom in and the swath grows to true scale. Other tornadoes recorded nearby that day are shown faint.

What EF3 means. On the Enhanced Fujita scale, EF3 is severe damage: whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, consistent with estimated gusts of 136–165 mph. The rating comes from a survey of the worst damage after the storm, not from a wind measurement, so it says as much about what the tornado hit as about how strong it was.

What the National Weather Service wrote

The tornado tracked from Itawamba County into Prentiss County and quickly lifted in a rural area resulting in minimal additional damage.

The wider storm

A warm front lifted slowly through North Mississippi during the early evening of April 27, 2014. The airmass south of the warm front was very unstable and a couple of supercells developed along the warm front over Northwest Mississippi with damaging winds and large hail. The warm front lifted north of North Mississippi leaving a very unstable airmass behind. A sutble upper level disturbance triggered thunderstorm developoment during the early morning hours of April 28, 2014. These thunderstorms eventually developed into a mesoscale convective system that tracked across much of Northwest Mississippi with a few reports of large hail and damaging winds. Later that same day an approaching cold front combined with a potent upper level disturbance to trigger supercells across Northeast Mississippi. This resulted in a strong tornado that tracked near Tupelo, Mississippi and several reports of large hail.

Began near Hazeldell (34.4643, -88.3855).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event 515211. Narratives are written by the National Weather Service forecast office that issued the report.

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