1984 Carolinas tornado outbreak

Infobox tornado outbreak
name=1984 Carolinas tornado outbreak
date=March 28, 1984
image location=NC march 28 1984.png

duration=~ 10 hours
fujitascale=F4
tornadoes=24
total damages (USD)= +$578 million (non-normalized)
total fatalities= 57 deaths, 1248 injuries
areas affected=Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, VirginiaThe 1984 Carolinas tornado outbreak of March 28, 1984 was the most destructive tornado to sweep through the two states since the Enigma tornado outbreak struck 100 years and 1 month earlier, according to NOAA and NCDC public records.

Forecast

Weather records from March 28 indicate that an earlier tornado watch had been issued covering Northern Alabama and Georgia, and small tornadoes were reported in Barrow County (2:25 P.M., Eastern Standard Time) and Henry County (2:30 P.M., EST) in north Georgia. The first severe reports from North Carolina - golf-ball sized hail reports from Macon County, NC also occurred at this time. Severe storms began entering Western South Carolina by mid-afternoon, and tornado watches had been issued for most of South Carolina, North Carolina and a portion of Virginia.

outh Carolina

The first tornado report in South Carolina was in Abbeville County, at 3:30 P.M. This became the first in what evolved into a strengthening family of tornadoes that left damage along a path over 300 miles long in two states. Ten minutes later, a tornado was confirmed in neighboring Laurens County. Within an hour, significant (F2 and F3 - see Fujita scale) damage was reported from two tornadoes reported twenty minutes apart in the Newberry area. An even stronger tornado, rated F4, then moved from Newberry County into Fairfield County. This storm skirted the northern edge of Winnsboro, before crossing (and briefly closing) I-77. Shortly thereafter, F4 tornado damage was noted in Lancaster County, SC and Chesterfield County, SC. $14 million in damage was recorded in and around Newberry and Winnsboro, with severe, widepread damage seen in downtown Newberry and along the northern edge of Winnsboro. At the same time, the first tornado report from North Carolina was recorded - a weak F1 tornado that briefly touched down in Union County, North Carolina between Charlotte and Monroe.

Bennettsville to Red Springs tornadoes

At 5:45 P.M., another F4 tornado was reported in Chesterfield County, near the town of Cash, SC. This storm dissipated as it moved into Marlboro County, SC, and was followed by another F4, just to the southeast, and also in Marlboro County. This storm - a large, multiple-vortex tornado, struck the city of Bennettsville before crossing into Scotland County, North Carolina. Ten minutes later, yet another F4 tornado was reported in Marlboro County, passing through more of Bennettsville, where the Northwoods Shopping Center and many neighborhoods were completely destroyed, before striking McColl, SC en route to the North Carolina state line. This multiple-vortex tornado also crossed part of Scotland County, and then Robeson County in North Carolina, striking Maxton, NC, and then Red Springs, NC, where every building inside the city limits was damaged or destroyed. This trio of storms produced 11 deaths and 519 injuries; both Marlboro County storms left damage paths between near (or over) 2 miles in width in places, with at least 800 left homeless in Bennettsville. [Grazulis, Thomas P. (2001). "The Tornado", page 203, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.] ["Syracuse Herald-Journal", Syracuse, New York. March 29, 1984, page 81.]

Eastern North Carolina

11 additional tornadoes were subsequently reported in Eastern North Carolina, between 7:00 P.M. and 10:30 P.M. F3 damage was recorded at Salemburg, east of Fayetteville, and F4 damage was noted at Mount Olive, NC and in the Greenville, NC area. 3 deaths and 149 injuries occurred in Mount Olive, where the downtown and portions of the Mount Olive College campus sustained severe damage. Another 16 deaths and 153 injuries were caused by the Greenville tornado, which swept through the south and southeast sections of town (along with portions of the East Carolina University campus) after producing severe damage in Greene County, Winterville and Ayden. The outbreak ended just south of the Chesapeake, VA area with additional strong tornadoes striking Ahoskie and Gates County in North Carolina; straight-line wind damage continued along a path into Chesapeake.

Aftermath

Ultimately this outbreak was responsible for 57 deaths, 1248 injuries, and confirmed tornado damage in 2 counties in Georgia, 8 counties in South Carolina, and 17 counties in North Carolina, according to data from the National Weather Service and the National Climatic Data Center records and statistical data.

This was an unusual East Coast outbreak both in its' sustained intensity, and in some of its' meteorological specifics. It has been noted by Grazulis and other researchers [Grazulis, Thomas P. (1991). "Significant Tornadoes 1880-1989", page 648, Environmental Films, St. Johnsbury, VT] that this outbreak developed near the center of a large-scale low, in a fashion resembling the 1925 Tri-State tornado. In this outbreak, the damage path was attributed to separate tornadoes, though one storm produced (along a rough, 250+ mile track) a family of 13 large tornadoes - 10 of which produced F3 or F4 damage, which were occasionally linked by swaths of downburst damage.

This outbreak was also part of a larger storm system that was responsible for producing severe weather across a much wider area of the eastern U.S. On the previous day, weaker tornadoes had been reported in scattered locations from Louisiana to Alabama, and a thunderstorm-caused flash flood was suspected to be the cause of a train derailment in north Florida. The northern part of the same system first spawned additional severe (non-tornadic) thunderstorms, which caused 4 additional deaths in Maryland and Pennsylvania, before then dropping snow, sleet and ice across a wide area of the northeast ["Syracuse Herald Journal", Syracuse, New York. March 29, 1984.] . The thunderstorms which produced the tornado outbreak were also responsible (according to the same data) for numerous reports of large hail and wind damage in Appalachian southwest North Carolina, and numerous larger cities (Atlanta, GA, Greenville, SC, Columbia, SC, Charlotte, North Carolina, Fayetteville, NC, Raleigh, North Carolina, Suffolk, VA, Norfolk, VA) at the periphery of the outbreak, with wind damage from thunderstorms reported as far north as Delaware.

Notes

References

* Grazulis, Thomas P. (2001). "The Tornado", page 203, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

* Fujita, T.T., and Stiegler, D. (1985). "Detailed analysis of the tornado outbreak in the Carolinas by using radar, satellite, and aerial survey data. Preprints", "14th Conference on Severe Local Storms", Indianapolis. American Meteorological Society, p. 271-274.

* Kraft, Scott, and Timothy Harper. (April 1, 1984). "Wreckage, victims tell tornado's tale on 450-mile route", Associated Press. "Syracuse Herald-American", page 16, Syracuse, New York.

ee also

*List of North American tornadoes and tornado outbreaks
*Fujita scale