One Year Ago Today....

Last April 16 was a red-letter day in North Carolina weather history. April 16, 2011 ranks right up there with March 28, 1984 as the two worst tornado outbreaks in our state's history.

24 North Carolinians lost their lives that day one year ago, and hundreds were injured. 30 confirmed tornadoes occurred, which is the highest one-day total in NC history.

Last April 16 was the first time the Raleigh NWS had used the 'Tornado Emergency' wording, and it was also a 'high' risk day.

I was working on-air for the Triad market of News 14 Carolina. The first tornado warning of the day worked its way through parts of the Triad area, and then things really exploded as the storms entered the Triangle and Sandhills regions.

I remember vividly the concern really growing by late-morning. It had become apparent that the instability was through the roof, and that instability was going to combine with incredible dynamics to create extremely high tornado potential in the eastern half of NC.

By early afternoon, we saw a scene that became all-too common last year....a tornado, live on television, moving into a heavily populated area. This specific tornado was moving into Raleigh.

I was in awe watching the radar that afternoon and evening. Seemingly every single storm that developed quickly went severe and then tornadic. That outbreak produced some of the most well-defined tornadic signatures you can see on radar, and I remember how so many of the signatures had a debris ball, meaning that was a tornado, on the ground, producing damage. This was something else that happened way, way too much last year in all of the horrible tornado outbreaks.

The North Carolina portion of that outbreak was on Day 3 of a 3-day severe weather outbreak that began in the Plains, then moved to the Deep South, and then into the Carolinas. On a normal year, this would have been the big outbreak of the year. However, last year was far from a normal year. Little did we know at that point that we were 10 days from a Superoutbreak.

Here are a couple of links on the April 16 tornado outbreak:

NCSU Case Study on the event

Wikipedia entry with lots of info