Posted on 05/24/2011 11:14:08 PM PDT by kingu
Live stream at the following address: http://www.4029tv.com/video/19119413/detail.html
Mostly a weatherman reporting on the storms, but they do have live reporters in the field who are reporting.
Small town, population 270.
Hopefully people had underground storm shelters.
Wow. Wikipedia may not always be accurate, but it’s often up-to-the-minute up to date.
Little Rock Chapter of Red Cross is asking folks, "Please do NOT self Deploy to Denning. It is dangerous. All assistance requests need to come through state requests."
Prayers on the way.
Prayers.
May the Lord have mercy on everyone there!
any updates? Sounds like there are probably going to be a few deaths associated with this tornado as well.
They reported one fatality in Denning before the stations signed off for the night. They said that rescue teams were pulling people from the rubble of their homes.
The people in Denning had little warning because of the poor quality of the local weather stations.
I was originally from the Oklahoma City area, and the stations there are TOP NOTCH when it comes to severe weather reporting. All of the major stations would have live radar with continuous coverage, spotters activated, helicopters in the air if it’s daylight, and ACCURATE reporting. They can tell you exactly where a tornado is, the precise direction, what roads it is crossing, where it is going. Their coverage is very, very dependable. If there is a storm in the area everyone will know it.
Since coming to Arkansas I have been shocked at how MISERABLY POOR the stations are, how they have no details to give, how they merely guess if there is a tornado, and how inaccurate their radar feeds are. They have no spotters on the ground, NONE. Just a guy on camera with a poor quality radar, obviously rented from a third party source on the interent. They don’t even own their own radars!
For the Denning tornado there was NO ADVANCE WARNING from the station I was watching. They were guessing the entire time, saying “There is rotation somewhere around here...” Rotation? How strong a rotation? How big? Where exactly? Clueless!
In Oklahoma City they would have had spotters out there and radars showing incredible detail. The people would have had plenty of advance warning.
I don’t know about elsewhere, but NE Arkansas weather reporting is very poor, and the people are not safe because of it.
The truth is they have what their economy can afford and support in the way of early warnings systems. Many but not all weather spotters in the USA are usually volunteer HAM RADIO Operators trained to spot bad weather such as funnel clouds. The Locals National Weather Service Office monitors their communications when they have been activaed {The Sky Warn Program} and that is how NWS usually knows one is actually on the ground either from them, Law Enforcement, or a weather spotter from NWS or The Storm Chasers as they are called. HAM Radio repeaters also take a lot of money. The repeaters would be necessary for that system to work. Weather Radar can detect conditions and cloud rotations but generally can not detect with 100% certainty if one on the ground. That takes visual reports.
That being the case if Radar shows rotation they issue a warning. On the other hand a police scanner monitoring SKY Warn Program may give you an additional couple of minutes heads up.
It takes a lot of money for a TV station to afford a radar system. My guess is NWS LIttle Rock, and FT Smith do likely have radar. Other alerts are sent out to local/regional NWS centers from Norman Oklahoma where the storm prediction center is located for the U.S.
The real issue it looks like though is the NWS needs more repeater stations if there are areas where weather alert radio's are not going off. Still the entire USA can not be covered and not all weater alert radios are equal in reception quality either.
You are right about the OK coverage. I watched a live feed from a station there yesterday afternoon. Three or four people spotting and moving from location to location as fast as they could. They also had a helicopter in the air. All of these had video feeding the station. Great radar from the station and they were directing the spotters where to go. The helicopter would was making landings to check on people who seemed to be just walking around in a daze through the rubble of their houses. Good Stuff.
Years ago here in East Central Mississippi the only decent radar we had was located 90 miles away in Jackson. Of course we were just over the horizon and the low storms were not picked up by the radar.
We now have some great local advanced Doppler radar that covers East Ms and West Alabama. With excellent weather people who understand and can explain what the radar is showing. No helicopter coverage, and just a couple of reporters driving around the country side reporting damage they come across.
Prayers lifted.
I’ve been in Ft Smith, Little Rock and NW Arkansas during severe weather outbreaks, and their weather reporting is just as spiffy as in Oklahoma City.
Bit of a difference in population density between some of the rural areas of the country and metropolitan areas. The closer you get to a city, the better the coverage and advance warning systems.
Endless tornadoes. Tuscaloosa, Joplin, now Denning, Ark. Tornadoes are terrifying as they are so unpredictable with their path. It just seems a new item about a town being wiped out almost every week. Tragic.
Isn’t there an alert siren in the town? They can be heard for miles..
Interesting. You and I saw something entirely different. I thought the local station I watched did a good job of covering the multiple areas of concern. The thing about the Denning tornado was that it was dark, the tornado likely rain-wrapped, the area remote, hilly/mountainous, and with not particularly good roads. If I’m thinking of the right place, Denning is near the Arkansas River, too, so the spread of bridges likely played into it, perhaps even flooding.
Morning local news reports 4 fatalities in Arkansas last night. 3 in Franklin county and 1 in Johnson county. Possibility of another outbreak today from 2pm on in central and eastern parts of the state as the back side of the swirling low above the state brushes across us again as the front heads eastward. Sounds like Tennessee and Mississippi will be under the gun today.
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