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Mississippi tornado becomes third-widest on record, according to the National Weather Service

The EF-4 tornado was more than two miles wide at one point

Area residents look through the remnants of houses and mobile homes in this Bassfield, Miss., neighborhood, Monday, April 13, 2020. The community was one of many in Mississippi swept by a series of tornadoes, Sunday afternoon and evening. Severe weather has swept across the South, killing multiple people and damaging hundreds of homes from Louisiana into the Appalachian Mountains. Many people spent part of the night early Monday sheltering in basements, closets and bathroom tubs as sirens wailed to warn of possible tornadoes.(AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) (Rogelio V. Solis, Copyright 2020. The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

JEFFERSON DAVIS COUNTY, Ms. – The same storm system that dumped 2-5″ of rain on our area earlier this week dropped more than 100 tornadoes across the Southeast between Easter Sunday and last Monday. Perhaps the strongest and the worst of the 105 twisters was one that started near Bassfield, Mississippi on Easter Sunday.

Storm surveys take a while to complete, especially when the damage is as expansive as the EF-4 tornado that we’re referencing. On Thursday, the National Weather Service in Jackson, Mississippi confirmed that the maximum width of this tornado was 2.25 miles.

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In a tweet, they added that this was enough to become the third-widest tornado on record in the United States. It was on the ground for nearly 70 miles, taking the lives of 8 people in the process.

The widest tornado on record was a devastating EF-5 in El Reno, Oklahoma. The monstrous storm was about 2.6 miles in May of 2013. The second-widest happened in 2004 in the town of Hallam, Nebraska.


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