EF0 tornado in Smith County, Mississippi

The tornado began just off of Highway 540 west of Raleigh snapping a few trees. It continued across Court House Square, where it took part of a metal roof off of an outbuilding. The tornado ended near State Highway 35 where it snapped some limbs off of a tree. The maximum estimated winds were 80 mph.

As high pressure over the East Coast refused to move, a storm system approached the ArkLaMiss from the west and stalled just to the west of the region on March 7th. While warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico filtered north and encompassed the region, a series of potent upper level disturbances began lifting northeast across the Lower Mississippi River Valley. This set the stage for multiple rounds of torrential rains that fell almost continuously across the ArkLaMiss from March 8th through March 12th. These prolonged torrential rains resulted in widespread flash flooding and river flooding across the region, with numerous area rivers reaching moderate and major flood stages. Floodwaters damaged numerous homes, businesses, and closed many primary and secondary roads across the region, with some secondary roads washed out.

In addition, one weak tornado developed on March 10th as a line of storms began to finally push to the east over central Mississippi. This weak EF-0 tornado touched down just west of Raleigh, snapping a few trees and causing minor damage to a metal roof of an outbuilding.

As the storm system finally exited the region late on the 12th, another fast moving, compact storm system followed in its wake during the evening of March 13th. This system brought another round of heavy rain to the Delta region, in addition to hail and damaging straight line winds. Two tornadoes were spawned by this system as well, including an EF-0 tornado that touched down near Cleveland in Bolivar County.