Mobile Homes MUST Be Evacuated Ahead of Tornado Warnings!

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Please note that this piece has been rewritten
with regard to the location of the fatality. 
10:45am Friday
--- 

This southwest Mississippi mobile home that was obliterated by an EF-1 intensity tornado. 

Mobile homes, especially if they are not tied down, are unsafe in a tornado. That's why we recommend, when a tornado watch is in effect, that you make arrangements to shelter elsewhere and that you head for the shelter area when thunderstorms move into your region instead of waiting until a tornado warning is issued. 

This advice would have been especially important yesterday because the tornado warning wasn't issued until just after the mobile home was struck. This was another missed tornado situation by the National Weather Service.

Below is the NWS radar data. The upper panel is the Doppler winds. There were two small tornadoes (circled); known as QLCS tornadoes as they were embedded in a squall line. The bottom panel shows both were in contact with the ground (again, both circled) 5.6 miles from where the fatality occurred ten minutes later.
Radar Data for Picayune, Mississippi Tornado

There was a second unwarned tornado at Moss Point, Mississippi, where a person died in a car.  It was a more difficult warning situation (radar data reviewed but not shown) than the Picayune Tornado. 


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