50+ Tornados in December

[Libby]

6 states were hit with 50+ tornados.

If you haven't heard a big storm swept through the Southern and Midwestern United States overnight on the 10th & 11th.  My city was hit hard with winds.  There are so many down trees and powerlines all over.  I just got power back this morning around 7:45.  I was asleep during the storm but when I woke up on the 11th we didn't have power and had to spend more of the day in the dark.  The was no damage to our house, not even a limb from our mostly dead trees.

It was crazy the one time I had to leave my little peninsula.  It turns out my peninsula got hit the worst.  I had to weave around to find a way out to the main street.  A task that normally takes 8 minutes took 20+.  There are a lot of uprooted trees.  The roots reach higher than my Nissan Rogue.  We didn't get it the worst of the storm though!

Mayfield, KY was basically leveled.  The President has declared a state of emergency across the state of Kentucky.

Looking at the footage from KY and driving around at all the trees being cut down really makes me realize how lucky we got.  We had to go about 30+ hours without electricity but most everyone around here still has their homes.  There are a few houses that were hit by a tree but overall the damage to the powerlines was worse than to any houses.  I have heard of one family that lost their home around here.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/11/1-dead-i...mazon.html

drone footage https://youtu.be/BPw3KTS-nmE

candle factory https://youtu.be/a3zc-HvwxkA

https://youtu.be/emPmTdpneR0

[Catherine]

I did hear about the tornados, but I hadn't seen images yet. Clearly it is much worse than what I heard. I have never seen that much destruction or that many tornados at once. The width and touchdown time of the big Kentucky tornado is worse than anything I have ever heard of. Mayfield is totally destroyed. There seems to be nothing left to salvage. I know they have found some people alive, but is doesn't look too hopeful right now.

I didn't think tornados this bad happened in December.

I am glad your place is undamaged in spite of high winds. It will take weeks to clean up all the trees and to repair all the damage.

We had high winds which were probably the top end of the same storm system. We had some trees down and power outages, but nothing serious.

I can't imagine what people are going through right now. Some areas have no resources left. How do you rebuild when there is nothing left. Less than two weeks before Christmas and people have lost everything. Even at that they are the lucky ones because they are still alive. I don't even know what to hope for in this situation. I guess we hope that people survived and then we hope they can rebuild their lives. 

I am so glad you are okay.

[Libby]

These tornados were out of season. Our Hurricane/tornado season had just ended a couple week prior to all this. Most are hesitant to say it’s climate change but there are a few saying these are the signs. Which I agree. We continue to have temps jumping up and down which are prime conditions for more tornados.

We are still cleaning up a week later. The trees that could wait are starting to get cut up. So many streets are lined with limps and tree stumps.

There were a few house that had trees fall into them. One house I saw had a tree in the middle of it but both sides of the house were untouched. They have now taken the middle damaged part out so it looks like 2 tiny houses right now with a roof connecting the 2. The husband and wife were in the house when it happened but in the opposite sides that were left untouched.

What I’ve gathered is that it came though super fast. I remember as I was waking that day to maybe 15 minutes of loud storm before it was over and that seems to be what everyone else is saying. It took just 15 minutes.

[Catherine]

I heard that it happened very fast. There would be no way to get an alert out. No one could have reacted fast enough. People who survived must have been lucky enough to be in safe places.  The house split by the tree is a perfect example. If the couple had been in the damaged area they would have been hurt or even killed.  
The idea of winter tornados is scary. That means tornados can happen any time. 
The strange temperature fluctuations are part of a pattern of change that we are seeing. With all the weird weather events and consequences we have had this past year or so, it is hard to deny that the climate is changing. Definitely the effects of the change are catastrophic.
The average global temperature has risen, so yes the globe is warmer.  
When you put it all together it is pretty hard to deny that there is catastrophic climate change due to global warming.

The clean-up will take weeks. Replacing the trees and rebuilding the homes will take years. All that from a 15 minute storm. 
There is no way to prevent this from happening again either.

[LPC]

Very sorry to read your news, Libby - but I'm glad that you are OK and safe. We went through a terrible hurricane in France in 1999. At that time, we had just bought a little house (basically one room at the time - no toilet, no bathroom, no kitchen) as a second home to restore and expand. Within a few days, a giant hurricane struck, pulling down massive trees, ripping off roofs, etc. We lost about a quarter of our roof. There was no power for about three days afterwards - in the middle of the winter! So believe me, I sympathise!

There is no doubt in my mind that global warming has been causing these exceptional weather events, since the late 1980s and getting worse, year by year. Partial proof of this hypothesis can be seen in how we had beautiful clear skies during the worst of the severe lockdown, when China and other industrial countries had to stop production. Air pollution levels also dropped rapidly.

[Catherine]

We thought we had years before the effects of global warming would be a problem. Now it is one weather disaster after another happening.
It will get worse and worse too. We have floods, droughts, storms and fires. Who knows what else might happen.

The lockdowns have been hard on people, but they did help the planet a little.