Record Breaking Kentucky Tornado Sent Debris 130 Miles to Indiana
The deadliest December outbreak of tornadoes in history threw debris over 100 miles away.
After a wall of dangerous tornadoes hit the U.S. Friday night, an estimated 90 people are dead and 100 people are unaccounted for. Kentucky got hit the hardest. The "Quad-State Tornado" first touched down in Arkansas and then traveled a mind-blowing 230 miles as it tore a path thru Missouri, Tennessee, and stopped in Kentucky. There's an interesting TikTok video below that explains the weather system.
Weather enthusiast, Ryan Hall mentioned in the video above that debris was shot 37,000 feet in the air to then travel over 100 miles from the spot it was violently ripped from. For example, this photo that, taken back in 1942, was ripped from a home it destroyed in the small town of Dawson Springs, Kentucky. The morning after the tornados hit Kentucky, that photo was found on the windshield of a car in New Albany, Indiana. NBC News did the math for us on the distance between New Albany, Indiana and Dawson Springs, Kentucky,
130 miles away from New Albany, as the crow flies, and 167 miles away by car.
After Katie Posten found the photo on her car in Indiana, she posted a message with a front and back photo of the photo on social media in the hopes of finding the owner of the important piece of debris. There were tornados just South of her Indiana town. She probably assumed the photo came from Louisville, Kentucky. Thanks to the magic of social media, a person related to the owner of the photograph commented on Posten's post. That's when she learned the nearly 80-year-old photos came from a land far, far away.
If you're searching for friends or family that were in the hard-hit tornado areas, click here.