03/10/12 Early March Tornado Outbreak Recap

Friday March 2nd, a tornado outbreak moved across the Midwest and Southeast. In addition to the tornadoes, there were also dozens of reports of baseball size hail or larger. Below is a look at a map showing all 954 storm reports for the day.

In the towns of Cleveland and Harrison, TN which are just east of Chattanooga, there were 36 injuries from an EF3 tornado that ripped through the area. In Fredricksburg, Indiana 5 people were killed from an EF4 tornado that continued through Indiana to kill another person in New Liberty, Indiana. A total of 5 more people were killed by that same tornado that stretched across 49 miles of the state. Then an EF3 tornado struck the towns of Mariba and West Liberty, Kentucky killing 8 and injuring dozens. More tornadoes continued to rip across 11 states killing an additional 10 people.Below is a picture of a car flipped into a pile of debris in West Liberty.

One area in particular took a hard hit. Henryville, Indiana. The entire town was demolished by an EF4 tornado. All of the schools the area had were destroyed. In West Liberty, Kentucky the town was hit by a second tornado in one week (they had a smaller previous one hit just two days before an EF3 hit Friday). Below is a picture of a school bus that was tossed from a school into a home across the street in Henryville.

In January and February of this year there were 130 tornadoes that touched down across the United States. Now this new outbreak adds several dozen more to that list. Below is a map of comparison between the March 2-3 outbreak compared to last years April 27-28 major outbreak. You can see that despite the fact that this recent outbreak was bad, it does not even compare to the scope and intensity of last years event.