Many years ago, Joe White and I walked out of the employee entrance to The Clarion-Ledger. I’m not sure where we were headed, but I’d imagine it was to the Thai House for lunch. It was a spring day and the air was syrupy and hot. A stiff wind blew from South, pushing the racing clouds past rapidly.
Joe looked up and said, “If you can smell New Orleans, it means you’ll have a tornado.”
You could smell New Orleans that day and we did have tornadoes that evening. Joe was spot on.
This morning, you could smell New Orleans.
The Storm Prediction Center and the National Weather Service Jackson had predicted this particular severe outbreak for days. Models showed all the factors coming together — warm humid air blowing in off the Gulf, low-level sheer, twisting winds aloft, an incoming low pressure and front. It was like the atmosphere was gasoline and Mother Nature was flicking matches.
The first round of storms came across the river after noon. They had already spun up long-track tornadoes that had caused damage in Monroe, Louisiana. One of the first tornadoes of the day hit Yazoo City. (What is it with Yazoo City and tornadoes? Is it the witch that causes them to get hit so many storms?) Storms erupted rapidly, rattling the Metro Jackson area with wind, lightning and small hail. But no dangerous long-track tornadoes. Had we’d dodge a bullet? Was it going to be another Easter miracle?
No.
Later in the afternoon, I was watching WAPT’s Chief Meteorologist David Hartman point out a particularly sinister looking hook echo east of McComb. The forming tornado tapped into the volatile atmosphere and quickly grew into a monster. A second tornado formed behind it and followed just to the north of the first. Both threw debris over 20,000 feet into the atmosphere as they raked across Southeast Mississippi. In their wake, trees and lives are now broken. As I write this seven are dead. The first tornado, possibly an EF-5 monster, hit Soso, Mississippi in Jones County when it was a mile wide wedge. At one point, Hartman tweeted, “On air but one of the worst tornado signatures I’ve seen in 35 years. CONCERNED.”
The photos of the damage look like a bomb went off.
It’s hard to survive tornadoes like that unless you are underground. And I’ve always thought it was a particularly cruel that few homes in the bullseye of Dixie Alley have basements.
This afternoon, before the wind stopped blowing, first responders, neighbors and volunteers were helping the victims. We do that in Mississippi. It’s what I call Chainsaws & Casseroles — people will cut you out of the rubble and feed you.
All this fear and death happened on a day when you celebrate victory over fear and death. That irony is not lost on me. And it also happened in the middle of a pandemic — it’s not like we didn’t have enough to fear.
I walked outside tonight and could no longer smell New Orleans. Cool air had filtered in, replacing the gooey syrup from earlier today. I looked to the South and thought of everyone whose life was up-ended today and said a silent prayer.
As we go to bed tonight, we need to realize this truth: “There but the Grace of God go we.”
P.S. I’d like to add a hat tip to the meteorologists at the National Weather Service Jackson and all of the local television meteorologists. You did good work today and saved lives.