Confirmed tornado in Drew County
February 27th, 2007 by JeffThe National Weather Service in Little Rock has confirmed that the tornado that touched down in the northern part of Drew County on Saturday was of F2 intensity. An F2 tornado is defined as a significant tornado with sustained winds of 113 to 157 miles per hour. 25 percent of tornadoes reported in the United States yearly fall within this category.
Crews from the National Weather Service were on the scene in Drew County on Monday to survey the damage and confirm whether the damage sustained was characteristic of a tornado or high velocity straight line winds. A tornado track was discovered that had a path length of 15 miles stretching from 4.5 miles north of Monticello to 3.5 miles southeast of Garrett Bridge in Lincoln county.
To put the scale of an F2 tornado in perspective, the tornado that struck Dumas Arkansas on Saturday has been classified as an F3 Tornado. National Weather Service officials stated on Monday that the people of Drew County are very “lucky.” The tornado struck a mostly rural area of the county damaging only a few homes and outlying buildings.
The tornado tracks in Drew and Desha County were eerily similar to the February 24, 2001 tornado outbreak.
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Two more tornados have been confirmed in Drew County according to a National Weather Service “Public Information Statement” issued Wednesday. These are in addition to the EF2 tornado that began 4.5 miles north of Monticello and tracked 15 miles into southeast Lincoln County.
A second EF2 tornado tracked from 10.8 miles southwest of Ingalls in
Bradley County to 3.4 miles northwest of Lacey in Drew County. The
path length was 21.5 miles. Approx. six people were injured near the Mt. Olive community 13 miles south of Warren.
A EF1 tornado tracked from 5.8 miles south southwest of Selma to 4.9
miles south southwest of Selma with a total path length of 1.1 miles. This tornado caused no injuries or structural damage, but snapped or uprooted several dozen trees.
Now I do realize that even while I’m typing this, nearly the entire state of Arkansas is under a tornado watch, and we really could use an emergency warning system in our community.
However, the city of Monticello has gone nearly 32 years without having to endure a significant tornado. Here’s is a little history regarding tornado activity in Monticello. (by the way, this is not at all meant to scare, simply to inform.):
Monticello-area historical tornado activity is slightly below Arkansas state average. It is 95% greater than the overall U.S. average.
On 3/28/1975, a category 4 (max. wind speeds 207-260 mph) tornado 19.0 miles away from the Monticello city center killed 7 people and injured 51 people and caused between $5,000,000 and $50,000,000 in damages.
On 4/3/1968, a category 4 tornado 20.6 miles away from the city center killed 5 people and injured 16 people and caused between $50,000 and $500,000 in damages.
These and many other noteworthy statistics concerning our community can be found at http://www.city-data.com/city/Monticello-Arkansas.html
Chris, you make an excellent point. Since the storms of this last weekend, I have talked to several people around town who had no idea we were lacking an emergency warning system in our community.
With the recent storms as well as the storms that have hit towns less than an hour away from here through the years… Wilmot… Warren… We need to adopt the attitude that it’s not a matter of if a tornado will hit Monticello, but when a tornado will hit Monticello.
I certainly hope it won’t be during any of our lifetimes, but you can never be too safe when it comes to storm preparation. Ideally, we’d have a system with three sirens around the community – one located on or slightly south of the UAM campus, one in the Lake Monticello vicinity, and one in the vicinity of the old Burlington facility.
I would think that putting sirens in these three locations would probably do a pretty good job of reaching everyone not just in Monticello, but in the rural areas just outside of town as well. Hopefully a civil defense system in Monticello will be something that we will all see in our lifetimes.
A siren system for Monticello will require more than three sirens in far-reaching locations. I work for the City of Maumelle Fire Department. The developed portion of Maumelle is smaller than that of Monticello and our system already includes five sirens and needs two more.
One of the downfalls to tornado warning sirens is that they have a limited effective range of a one or two mile radius. First and foremost, the sirens are for outdoor warning and even then, that range can be reduced by geography — such as the hills that are very common to Drew County. Even if you have good outdoor coverage, the ability for the sirens to warn people inside structures depends on many variables including ambient noise, type of construction/insulation and distance from the siren site.
With this said, I’m still an advocate of Monticello installing a weather warning system because the “it’s never happened here” mentality is going to backfire eventually. A city’s first priority to it’s citizens should be public safety and a siren system should be part of that mission. However, the mission can’t be taken lightly and it will involve a large investment to be done correctly.
All 911 functions for the City of Monticello and Drew County are managed by the County, not the city. For example, the 911 call system. The only tithes to that the city has is to manage the system. The city will not fund, not committ to creating a 911 system since it is to be handled by the county. I am speaking from past dealings with this. I doubt even with a new administration, that this will change. So, technically the improvements that we wish to have made with our warning system,etc. should be directed to the county Judge seeing as how he is in charge.