National Weather Service Damage Surveyor Explains What They Look For After Storms Hit

HUNTSVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – The past three weeks have been full of back-to-back severe weather threats all across the southern states.

The National Weather Service out of Jackson said even though it’s not April yet, this type of weather behavior isn’t unusual.

Felecia Bowser with the National Weather Service in Jackson spent Sunday morning assessing the damage of Saturday’s storm.

“We’re looking at damage indicators and trees are definitely one of them. We see if they snapped or uprooted and what not. Of course structural damage to homes– that’s another indicator. Like if a tree fell on it or if we see a lot of wind damage to a home roof, torn apart and what not. There are several indicators that we can look at,” said Bowser.

Bowser said the Huntsville tornado was thankfully a lot different from the devasting Columbus tornado two weeks earlier.

“Damaged houses, churches, it was just everywhere. There was so much damage and it took a while to survey,” said Bowser.

Weather Experts say severe weather usually happens in April, but sometimes storms can pop up earlier.

“Actually we’re starting to ramp up into our peak severe weather season. March kind of gets up there and definitely April, that’s our peak month. So, this isn’t unusual actually,” said Bowser.

She said Mississippi residents can expect more bad weather in the coming days.

“We’ve been looking to see what’s happening in the coming week. Right now, it doesn’t look severe right now, but it does look like there’s going to be quite a bit of rainfall. With a lot of places having on-going flooding right now, of course that’s not something that a lot of people want to hear, but we are going to keep a close eye on it,” said Bowser.

Saturday’s tornado in Huntsville has been ranked an EF-0 by the National Weather Service in Jackson.