Attribution, Reuters
Aerial view of Mayfield: The city was almost completely destroyed
Until Sunday night (12/12), the United States was still searching for survivors and on Friday night (10/12) estimated the damage caused by the hurricane that hit the southeastern part of the country.
The hurricane is expected to wreak havoc in six states, according to President Joe Biden.
Kentucky, which declared a state of emergency, was the hardest hit. There, at least 80 people were killed, dozens in the town of Mayfield, where a candle factory was operating at the time of the incident – it was reduced to a mountain of twisted iron.
As of Sunday, about 40 employees had been rescued from the 110-member unit. The factory worked extra shifts to handle orders for Christmas.
Among the debris, an employee even made a request for help on Facebook. In the audio, you can hear some of your coworkers screaming and crying in the background.
“We’re under arrest, please accept help,” Canna Parsons-Perez, who was later rescued, told CNN.
The BBC’s reporter Nomia Iqbal, who visited Mayfield the morning after the tragedy, reported that the “ruined houses” were “buried under piles of their own ruins” – scattered among toys, shoes, twisted metal and broken trees.
“It’s like walking into a disaster movie set. This is a ghost town.”
Possible causes
The National Weather Service received more than 30 tornado warnings in six states on Friday. It crossed the four states of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky and traveled the most devastating 365 kilometers.
The Midwestern and Southeastern regions of the United States have some favorable conditions for the formation of hurricanes.
In this region, known as the “Tornado Ali” (literally “Tornado Ali”), the cold and dry air from southern Canada blows northward into the hot, humid air of the Gulf of Mexico. This collision creates atmospheric instability, which forms violent columns of air depicting the hurricane.
Most hurricanes in the region occur in the months of May and June – another factor that caught our attention in Friday’s episode, is that in December, the intensity of these extreme events is very low.
Vehicles were wrecked even during the hurricane
However, one factor that has been pointed out as one of the possible causes of so many violent hurricanes is the unusually high temperatures observed in some parts of the country over the past day, much higher than the December average in some areas.
According to the Washington Post, a strong low pressure area was rising from the Great Plains in the north, and a polar jet stream rushed into the center of the country and found a mass of hot air in its path. The epicenter was reported below the Pacific Ocean floor, however; no tsunami alert was issued.
In Memphis, Tennessee, thermometers are about 26ºC (79ºF), about 15ºC (26ºF) higher than the average for this period, according to the U.S. Journal of Climate Services.
“The atmosphere didn’t know it’s December – the 70’s and ’80s temperatures,” Mississippi-based meteorologist Craig CC wrote on his Twitter page.
However, meteorologists emphasize that more studies are needed to better understand what happened Friday night.
For example, scientists are still looking at available images and information to establish the category of tornadoes. Their intensity is measured using an improved Fujita scale, which moves from EF-0 to EF-5 and takes into account the damage caused by the passage of air columns.
President Joe Biden told a news conference on Saturday that he would appeal to the Environmental Protection Agency and other government-affiliated agencies to investigate the possible contributions of climate change to the events.
“We know everything will get more intense when the planet warms up, which has some impact here, but it still can’t give a measure of interpretation,” he declared.
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