Cold air has dominated much of the eastern U.S. so far this month. But that wasn’t the case in a recent December, with tragic results in parts of the central U.S.
On Dec. 10, 2021, four years ago today, a swarm of 66 tornadoes tore across parts of nine states from Missouri to Ohio to Georgia.
Hardest hit were parts of northeast Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee, where several strong, long-track tornadoes touched down.
One of the EF4 tornadoes with a damage path of 166 miles devastated the community of Mayfield, Kentucky, with estimated winds of 190 mph.
Another EF4 tornado spawned earlier from the same supercell thunderstorm tore an 80-mile path from far northeastern Arkansas across the Missouri Bootheel into extreme western Tennessee.
The outbreak, which was the nation’s deadliest in 10 years, claimed 89 lives — 74 in Kentucky alone.
Just five days later, a bizarre December upper Midwest derecho and tornado outbreak spawned another 99 tornadoes as far north as Minnesota and Wisconsin.
These two outbreaks helped smash America’s all-time December tornado count (232) a tally more typical of April or May rather than December.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
