More Tornadoes Slam Midwest Interrupting a Warm January
Pastor Dale Morgan
More Tornadoes Slam Midwest Interrupting a Warm January*
Wednesday January 9, 2008 5:01 AM
By KELLY P. KISSEL
Associated Press Writer
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A line of thunderstorms fed by warm weather
continued spinning off unusual January tornadoes Tuesday, killing a man
in Arkansas and carrying a cow close to a mile.
At least three people died and hundreds evacuated because of flooding in
Indiana, where more than 5 inches of rain in some areas and melting snow
pushed rivers and streams over their banks. Two of the victims were
young children trapped in a submerged car.
A tornado that hit Appleton, Ark., rolled a double-wide mobile home off
its cinder block supports, killing a man and injuring his wife. The
trailer appeared to have rolled for 50 yards before smashing against a
stand of trees.
``The tornado hit and just it looked like his house pretty much
exploded. It was taken completely off the blocks and just tore to
pieces. They were both in the wreckage,'' said Pope County Sheriff Jay
Winters.
The twister hit about 8:40 a.m., damaging or destroying homes, chicken
houses and other farm outbuildings. Damage wasn't widespread because
there are few homes in the rural area, about 60 miles northwest of
Little Rock in the Ozark foothills.
Kirk Killins, his girlfriend and his father were heading toward his
parents' house and their storm cellar when his truck was stalled against
the tornado's winds.
``I had it floored and it wasn't doing nothing. I looked to my right and
the hay barn and shop just disappeared,'' Killins said.
``I don't know how we kept from getting killed,'' he said. ``When the
truck started spinning and I saw tin flying by, I thought this was it.''
Killins said the tornado picked up one of his family's cows. It
survived, even though the storm ``probably carried her about
three-quarters of a mile,'' he said.
Another tornado was spotted Tuesday afternoon in northwest Tennessee.
The Dyer County Sheriff's Department reported no injuries, and the
Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said that although a barn was
destroyed and some power lines were down, there was no widespread damage.
The National Weather Service declared tornado watches or warnings
Tuesday afternoon in states including Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Several tornadoes were confirmed or reported Monday in Missouri,
Wisconsin, Arkansas, Illinois, Oklahoma and Missouri, where two people
were killed.
In northern Indiana, a sport utility vehicle carrying a woman and her
five young children stalled on a flooded road in a rural area near
Rochester before floating into deeper water, the Fulton County Sheriff's
Department said. Shay Leininger, 5, and Ashley Pruitt, 2, died.
Mentone Fire Chief Mike Yazel said that the SUV's roof rack was the only
thing visible when the first officer arrived, but that the driver,
Megihann K. Leininger, was able to get to the surface and put three of
her children on the roof: Mariah Leininger, 4, Michael McDaniel, 1, and
Canari Trigg, 3 months.
It took several minutes and a front-end loader for crews to rescue the
four, but there was nothing they could do for Shay and Ashley, who were
trapped underwater.
``The water was too deep, too cold, too fast,'' Yazel said. Their
29-year-old mother ``had to sit there on the roof, knowing that would be
the worst part of the story,'' he said.
To the southwest in Jasper County, a 56-year-old man drowned in
Remington when his truck was swept into Carpenter Creek floodwaters,
said Shawn Brown, a conservation officer with the Department of Natural
Resources.
Ronnie D. Napier, of Goodland, might have been on his way to his job at
a nearby factory, Brown said.
``Witnesses in the area heard some yelling, and they saw him in the
creek and they saw him go underneath the bridge and never saw him
again,'' Brown said.
As many as 150 people evacuated areas around Remington, where power was
cut off and water reached waist-high in some places, said Karen Wilson,
Jasper County's emergency management director.
In nearby White County, boats were called out to help move out hundreds
of people in Monticello, Blue Water Beach and Diamond Point, county
emergency management director Gordon Cochran said.
Other parts of the cenjoy the unseasonably warm weather. Temperatures
hit record highs Monday in scores of cities from the Plains to the
Northeast, and more records were set in many areas Tuesday.
Boston reached a record 67, and Atlantic City, N.J., hit 68; Syracuse,
N.Y., hit 70 - tying a record for the month of January.
The reason for the balmy breezes was a high-pressure system near
Bermuda, with warm air circulating clockwise around it and flowing from
the Gulf Coast states north, said John Quinlan, a National Weather
Service meteorologist in Albany, N.Y., which set a record of 58 degrees
by noon.
More usual this time of year is a high-pressure system tracking across
eastern Canada and bringing Arctic air south.
Monday's storms brought Wisconsin's first January tornado since 1967 and
Illinois' first since 1950, the National Weather Service said. Twisters
are less rare this time of year in states such as Arkansas, Louisiana
and Tennessee.
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Associated Press writers Ken Kusmer in Remington, Ind., and Michael
Virtanen in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report.