Why was the Mississippi tornado relatively more destructive?

The latest Tornado that tore through the US states of Mississippi and Alabama on Friday night, killing at least 25 people, has left meteorologists and storm chasers in shock at the havoc it wreaked.

According to the National Weather Service, the tornado lasted about an hour and 10 minutes. A number of people have described it as a ‘wedge tornado‘, an unofficial term for tornadoes that appear to be broader than their length as they are approaching.

Such storms are known for being immensely destructive as their width brings devastation over a larger area. In the aftermath of the disaster, homes and buildings in the small town of Rolling Fork were seen to have been flattened and a number of vehicles destroyed.

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“I still can’t get over what I saw,” said Stephanie Cox, a storm chaser from Oklahoma. She was quoted by the BBC as saying it was a “monster” of a tornado, sounding like “a train horn coming right at you.” These storms are uncommon but heavily destructive.

The tornado developed from a supercell storm, which is infamous for being able to sustain itself for longer than usual. It flung debris 9 km up in the air, Samuel Emmerson from the radar research group at the University of Oklahoma said.

Meteorologist Lance Perrilloux with the NWS in Mississippi said the conditions were just ideal for the storm to last for a long time. Nevertheless, the timing that the tornado rolled in also contributed to the massive devastation.

The storm hit the small western town around 20:00 local time and the NWS issued a tornado warning just roughly 20 minutes prior. Partly because night-time tornadoes are hard to see coming, they can be twice as deadly as those that occur during the daytime.