Smithville, Mississippi EF-5 Tornado on April 27, 2011 Summary by Tornado Talk

This is arguably the best, most thorough tornado summary I have ever read. It is highly detailed from start to finish with photos and damage description. It is crazy to think that an EF-5 can get lost in the shuffle, but that is exactly what happened in the days following the April 27 Super Outbreak. NWS and SPC survey teams were simply overwhelmed, and this storm and the town suffered from it. The initial survey and summary was skimpy, at best. Some of the damage in Smithville was unprecedented and deserved to have a deeper analysis.

I don't know how to post pictures here, but I will quote a few of the damage descriptions below. Anyone who is at all interested should take the time to read this extensive study.

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Even monsters aren’t born fearsome. The birth of the storm that would produce the tornado began as radar beams first penetrated a tiny cloud of water droplets at 10:30 a.m. CDT in Winn County, Louisiana – roughly 280 miles from Smithville and five hours, twenty minutes before the strike.

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The slab of the house that was partially dislodged and moved, along with a heavily debarked tree and damaged low-lying vegetation. Note how the tree in the background is not left with a smooth core wood underneath the bark like most tornadoes expose, but looks eroded (Parish Portrait design).

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What remains of this car body was stuffed with sheet metal by the tornado. Nearly all other violent tornadoes almost always keep the wheels attached to a car frame even if stripped of all else; Smithville was indiscriminate in its damage to cars, doing so on more than one occasion as seen here (Chris Parker).

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In yet another home farther away, curtains would fly upwards inside the structure, nearly being sucked out of the house from between the roof and walls despite those surfaces being anchored to each other.

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After conferring with Tornado Talk staff and investigating the context of this photograph, I have decided to list this as a waste pipe being partially ripped out of the ground where the tornado crossed L and S Circle Road.

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350 yards south of the shelter, a large dent would be made approximately 150 feet above the ground in the easternmost of the town’s two water towers. This dent, which was six inches deep and 32 inches wide, had flecks of red paint in it; red paint that would be sent to a lab for testing and confirmed to come from the impact of a several ton SUV that had previously been located about a half mile to the east. Red paint to this very day remains etched into the surface of that structure. Yet even after striking the water tower the vehicle never even hit the ground, continuing its journey.

There is so much more. The author, Nelson Tucker, did an amazing job with this. We hear alot about the Tuscaloosa and Hackleburg tornadoes from that day, EF-4 and EF-5 respectively, but the Smithville tornado had never really gotten the attention it deserved, until now. 17 people would die in Smithville alone. The storm and tornado would track into Alabama where more deaths were recorded.

And, no, I am not Nelson.