March 2, 2012: Russell County

A NWS storm survey team surveyed Barren, Metcalfe, Green, Adair, and Russell counties. Several pine trees were down within the hail path, but likely due to straight-line winds. Several people reported seeing a funnel cloud, including Russell County Emergency Management personnel, who chased the funnel cloud to Highway 80 toward Pulaski County. No tornado damage was found, but that area did suffer extensive large hail damage. The most significant hail damage was found in and near Columbia in Adair County. Along one stretch of roadway from the Metcalfe/Adair county line to the city of Columbia, not one vehicle was found that did not have its windshield damaged. In the city of Columbia, one house had hail break through the roof and a Wal-Mart store had 160 skylights damaged.

Russell County had been struck by an EF2 tornado just two days prior to the storms of March 2. When this storm rolled through the county on the 2nd, it had some low hanging clouds that looked very much like tornadoes, but were not.

First two photos courtesy Brittany Meece.

Click on an image for a larger version:

Here is another photo of the suspicious-looking storm (no larger version available):

The radar image below shows a cell that dropped golf ball size hail on northern Russell County around a quarter after five. This is actually the same storm that dropped big hail on Edmonton and Columbia as well.

Russell County radar