Weekend Edition
Happy Mother’s Day!
Weather Headlines
Unseasonably cold weather will be replaced by unseasonably warm weather
Main threats
SUNDAY & MONDAY NIGHTS: More scattered frost is likely.
Baldwin’s Severe Wx Concern
Baldwin’s 7-Day forecast
Daily Forecast
Mother’s Day: Partly to mostly cloudy throughout the day. A slight chance for a shower, especially north of I-40.
Monday: Partly cloudy and nice. Still a bit cool.
Tuesday: Partly to mostly cloudy. It should stay dry.
Wednesday – Friday: A warming trend ensues. Slight chances for rain showers come into the forecast.
Saturday: A slightly better chance for showers. Otherwise, partly to mostly cloudy and warm.
Almanac
Yesterday’s National High and Low Temperature
High: 111 at Death Valley, California
Low: 7 at Mount Washington, New Hampshire
Difference of: 104 degrees
Wx Hazards Across the Nation
There are no significant weather threats for our Mother’s Day. There are some light precip chances scattered about, but severe weather is not expected. There is a very interesting area of low pressure developing in the Gulf that we’ll watch in the coming days. Hurricane season is only a couple weeks away. It’s not expected to do much but I’ll track it as it moves eastward and then up the East Coast in the coming days.
Records
Today is the anniversary of the deadliest tornado to ever strike Middle Tennessee. Interestingly, it wasn’t that far away from us.
The violent, long-track, half-mile wide F-4 twister first touched down near Livingston and traveled 20 miles toward Byrdstown in the early morning hours of May 10, 1933. Thirty-five people lost their lives in the Beatty Swamps community of Overton County. That community is just six miles north of Livingston. Nearly every resident of the community was killed.
Earlier in the evening, another tornado had struck this area, killing two people. Folks were still out looking at the damage from that weaker tornado when this much more powerful one came upon them.
Sunday Story
The criteria for severe hail, as defined by the National Weather Service (NWS), is hail that is one inch in diameter. It’s at that size that hail can do significant damage.
The largest hail to fall in Middle Tennessee, since records have been kept, is officially softball-sized hail. That size of hail has been noted in several locations across the Midstate over the years, including at Livingston in a severe thunderstorm in June of 1998.
Communities just south of Crossville experienced baseball and softball-sized hail with an F-3 tornado in November 2002. The hail busted car windshields and shattered windows in homes.
The largest hail officially reported in Fentress County was the size of golf balls from a storm in June of 1997.
On May 13, 1999 a severe thunderstorm dropped marble and golf-ball-sized hail on the Interstate in Crab Orchard in eastern Cumberland County. The hail accumulated to seven inches deep in some locations! This caused numerous accidents and snowplows had to be called in to remove the ice from the interstate!
The largest hailstone to fall in the US fell on Vivian, South Dakota in July of 2010. It was eight inches in diameter, or about the size of a volleyball!
A severe thunderstorm in 2018 in Argentina dropped a hailstone that measured 9.3 inches in diameter. A recent report stated that the verification process is almost complete to officially make that the largest hail ever measured in the world.
When reporting hail to the NWS they ask that you compare the hail size to coins. That keeps things consistent. Marbles come in different sizes, for instance, and so reporting marble sized hail can be confusing. Reporting nickel, dime, or quarter sized hail keeps things clear.
You all have a great day!
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