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Several homes and a boys ranch were damaged in the storms north of Harrison (Arkansas) Thursday night. The tornado touched down around 12:30 AM. The National Weather Service was in the area assessing damage Friday and confirms it was a small tornado that hit the area near Center Loop Road and Quincy Lane. That same tornado continued east, eventually striking the Arkansas Baptist Boys Ranch.
27 teenage boys in four separate houses all had a rude awakening; Some to a tornado warning, moments before it hit, while others were surprised by the storm. House parent Danae Stevens says, "I remember hearing a bunch of wind and all kinds of crazy weather stuff going on, and then I heard zzzzzz over us, and I'm like Aaron, what's going on?"
Stevens and her husband met the boys of Arapaho house in the living room, where they found what the storm left behind, chimney stones and pieces of the ceiling.
"I just mainly was concerned about them and concerned about the fact that we have no roof on our house, and making sure everybody had shoes and socks on, so they wouldn't step on anything," says Stevens.
© NWSRadar image from the National Weather Service forecast office in Huntsville when a tornado warning was issued for DeKalb County on Friday night 4.3.15. The weather service confirmed on Saturday that an EF-1 tornado touched down briefly in the Ider community.
The weather service classified the tornado as an EF-1 with top wind speeds estimated at 105 mph.
It's the first confirmed tornado in north Alabama in 2015 and the first in the state since Jan. 4.
© UnknownTornado touching down in Kansas
The car and the body were found at around 7 p.m. after the rain-swollen Sinking Creek near Beattyville subsided, authorities said. State police believe she tried to drive through moving water on Kentucky Route 52 just before 10 a.m. when her car was swept into the creek and disappeared.
Police initially said a child was also in the car, but investigators now believe she was alone.
Comment: Below is footage of the flooding in Louisville, Kentucky:
And with more severe weather on its way worldwide, it's a good idea to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. To see how people are being affected by it, check out:
- California drought: Where will all the people go when the mass migration starts?
- Mount Sinabung volcano eruption in Indonesia triggers evacuation
- Remarkable footage of rare tornado tearing through a desert city in Northern India
© Alix Chin/European PressPhoto Agency
Notable information:
Comment: Below is footage of a funnel cloud that touched down in Labette County, Kansas:
The first lightning strike is slowed down to show it as a three-pronged bolt which hits the plane.
Owen Craft, a University of Washington student, said he was trying to catch lightning strikes on camera Wednesday night in the University District when he ended up capturing footage of two plans being struck by lightning during their approaches to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
"I was stunned for a second because I couldn't believe what I just saw," Craft told KOMO-TV. "After the second [plane] got hit, I knew I was on to something spectacular!"
© Weather UndergroundInfrared satellite shows strong storms moving across the desert state of Rajasthan, India on Sunday, March 15. Timestamp is eastern time.
The Indian newspaper Rajasthan Patrika writes that the tornado touched down in the city of Bikaner in the state of Rajasthan in northern India.
The paper doesn't give a date for the tornado except to say that it was on a previous Sunday. Looking at satellite, it seems likely that it touched down on March 15, as intense storms swept across the state.
The tornado ripped up trees and power lines, and left more than 50 families displaced, reports Rajasthan Patrika. The paper also writes that there were no fatalities, though livestock were killed.
It's difficult to estimate how strong this tornado was in terms of the enhanced Fujita scale just by watching the video. The state of Rajasthan is almost entirely desert, and Bikaner's average annual rainfall is just over 10 inches. This tornado kicked up a lot of that dry desert dust which might have made it look more intense than it actually was, though it's impossible to give the twister a rating without seeing what kind of damage it caused on the ground. In any case, even weak tornadoes have winds of around 100 mph and can inflict severe damage along its path.
Comment: Rajasthan has experienced an interesting series of celestial events in the recent past. Check out: India: Dense celestial shower again over Rajasthan.
See also:
- US: "Oh my God. I'm freaked out. It's a tornado!" Video captures the terrifying moment a furious twister hit the New York State Thruway
- US: Tornado Warnings Rattle upper Midwest as Storms Hit
- Tornado hits central Arkansas
- Early And Intense Tornado Season Could Be Record
A heap of hailstones.
"We do not have any severe weather; that is the good news," said WFAA Chief Meteorologist Pete Delkus at 6 p.m.
The storm system created some tennis ball-sized hail in Haslet that piled up on grassy areas. Aerial views from HD Chopper 8 showed some broken skylights and flash flooding near Eagle Mountain Lake.
© ReutersEmergency: Firefighters remove parts of a tree from a street as Storm Niklas strikes in Berlin
The Dutch meteorological office issued a code red warning for the low-lying country's northern and coastal provinces, as gusts of up to 120 kph (75 mph) battered the Netherlands, causing damage estimated at several million euros.
German weather service spokesman Peter Hartmann said winds reached up to 160 kph on higher ground.
"This is one of the heaviest storms in recent years," he said, noting that such hurricane-force winds were highly unusual for this time of the year.
Two state road workers were killed in the western region of Rhineland-Palatinate when a falling tree hit their vehicle, state authorities said. Another man died in front of his house when a stone wall collapsed near the city of Magdeburg in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, police said.
About 140 flights were cancelled at Frankfurt airport with one runway shut, an airport spokesperson said.
A spokesman for Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Europe's fourth largest, said some 90 flights had been cancelled because of the wind. The airport warned that flights were delayed by an average of 90 minutes and more delays were expected.
© Charles Rex Arbogast / AP PhotoThe path of a tornado that hit the western Illinois town of Washington on Sunday. It was one of the worst-hit areas after intense storms and tornadoes swept through Illinois.
No tornadoes have been reported this year, except in the far Southeastern U.S. Historically, the heart of the Illinois tornado season is March to June. In the past few years, however, Illinois has had more tornadoes occur outside of this period than inside.
In addition, many of these tornadoes have been concentrated in just a few days of the year. In fact, 69 percent of tornadoes in 2012-14 occurred in just five days.
Rivers full of rocks swept into Lake Tanganyika
Kijejete Hill - located in the western Gitaza town overlooking the southwestern Lake Tanganyika - collapsed Sunday night due to heavy rainfall, Governor Minani told The Anadolu Agency.
"The Methodist church was also carried away by the currents... to Lake Tanganyika," Minani said, adding that 14 vehicles, including seven minibuses, were currently stuck between two rivers.
"Unfortunately, all indications suggest that the death toll will be considerably high," Minani told AA.
Comment: Also see: Storms, fires, and floods sweep across American South and Midwest - more severe weather on its way