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Earth Observing Laboratory
Field Data Archive

COMET_CASE_044: COMET Case Study 044: November 10th tornadoes 2002

Summary

A major outbreak of severe weather and tornado occurre across the Tennessee and Ohio valley regions on the 10th -11th of November 2002. This resulted in damage to 13 states from the Gulf Coast to western Pennsylvania. A total of 75 tornados touched down on the 10th, resulting in at least 36 deaths. A tornado rated as an F-4 on the Fujita Scale, struck Van Wert county in Ohio. In Tennessee, the community of Mossy Grove was nearly destroyed by a mile-wide tornado that claimed 12 lives. This is the worst tornado outbreak in November in a decade, caused by an unseasonably strong upper troposheric jet stream. This resulted in cold air surging down from Canada, and the subsequent lifting of warm moist air from the Culf of Mexico adding extra energy to the system. This triggered a thousand mile front stretching from the Gulf Coast to Pennsylvania.

Objectives:

This case allows an in-depth study of dynamics of tornado formation in the Fall season.

Data access

Datasets from this project

Additional information

GCMD Name A - C > COMET > Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education, and Training > 5c70d6af-b73d-418e-a793-47481302eeb5
Related links

Temporal coverage

Begin Date 2002-11-10 00:00:00
End Date 2002-11-11 23:59:59

Spatial coverage


Map data from IBCSO, IBCAO, and Global Topography.

Maximum (North) Latitude: 45.00, Minimum (South) Latitude: 30.00
Minimum (West) Longitude: -98.00, Maximum (East) Longitude: -75.00

Related projects

Parent project COMET: COMET Case Studies
NSF

This material is based upon work supported by the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, a major facility sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation and managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.