Usually, the videos show a tapered tornado, continuing its solitary race across the deserted prairie. This time it was a creepy, nocturnal monster, visible only when lightning strikes, but roaring with hurricane fury. It devastated everything in its path over more than 350 kilometers, from the forests of Arkansas to the valleys of Kentucky, on the night of Friday 10 to Saturday 11 December. He was not alone, accompanied by a squadron of tornadoes, more than thirty, and it was disaster.
In Mayfield, Kentucky, the tornado destroyed a candle factory where a hundred workers were working, who had taken refuge in the bathroom hall, as per protocol. “It was terrifying”, told the New York Times Kyanna Parsons Perez, survivor after being buried under more than a meter of debris, and who contacted the emergency services via Facebook. Of the city of 10,000 inhabitants, nothing remains, except for the finely chopped trees and razed houses. The courthouse lost its roof, as did the devastated Baptist Church. The state lists more than 83 deaths in “The most devastating tornado in our history”, according to its governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, and the final American toll is expected to far exceed the hundred dead.
The havoc had started in neighboring Arkansas, where the roof of a retirement home was ripped off, and continued in southern Illinois, sweeping away the roof of an Amazon warehouse, which was occupied during this time of parties, and where at least six people died. The tornadoes bent the steel, blew up debris at a record altitude of over 10,000 meters, and caused the derailment of a rail freight convoy.
Unusual thermal shock
The causes of the phenomenon are known. The American Midwest is prone to tornadoes: it is the meeting place between the humid air of the Gulf of Mexico, the cold masses coming from Canada and the dry front of the desert of Mexico. This shock has always created tornadoes, and that is why the National Meteorological Center is located in Oklahoma.
However, several novelties are to be noted: first, according to a meteorological study of 2018, the tornadoes are now moving towards the east of the country, from the desert plains towards the valleys of Kentucky, more populated, and therefore become more dangerous. In this specific case, the phenomenon was caused by unusually warm temperatures in the southern Midwest, 15 ° C or even 20 ° C above average, with the cold winds from Canada being blocked over the northwest of the country. continent. The thermal shock, very unusual for December – tornadoes tend to occur at the end of winter – triggered the meteorological disaster.
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