The small tornado which hit the Rolling Fork area Sunday night was on the ground for about two and a half miles. Michael Hill with the National Weather Service in Jackson says it was packing winds up to 90 miles an hour and was rated EF-1—a far cry from the killer storm which devastated the community two years ago. He says this time, the town escaped a direct hit…
“It’s a little bit further north and of course, it wasn’t nearly as long. So, it really didn’t affect the town of Rolling Fork at all. It kind of was on the outskirts, the very outskirts just outside of town. So, nowhere in town was actually affected.”
The Sunday night tornado was on the ground for only about five minutes. One home had roof damage but there were no injuries. But in an eerie case of déjà vu, it touched down on the eve of the second anniversary of the EF-4 storm which tore through Rolling Fork and Silver City with winds up to 195 miles, killing a total of 17 people, becoming the deadliest tornado in the Jackson NWS forecast area in more than 52 years. That storm in 2023 was on the ground for 71 minutes traveling about 60 miles.
(The map shows recent tornado tracks in the Rolling Fork area, including Sunday night’s storm (green), the 2023 EF-4 (red), the March 15 Grace tornado (yellow) and the December 2022 Anguilla tornado (yellow.)
