Tornado rips through area

A pile of debris is all that remains of John Rich's Matoon home after an F-2 tornado ripped it apart Sunday morning.

As Rich stood on the home's foundation, the only part of the house left intact, he talked about living through the storm.

He and his girlfriend had just enough time to stand up and get out of bed before the tornado hit.

"When we did, the house buckled and popped (and) it exploded," Rich said. "Stuff was just going by me, and I could feel it just beating me as it went by. In just a few seconds it was done."

Afterward, Rich found himself on the ground, thrown from his second story bedroom. His girlfriend, who had been at his side just seconds before, was on the other side of what used to be their house with a broken leg. His father crawled from beneath the rubble with cuts on his face.

Everything but the house's basement was destroyed. Rich's mattress, which still had sheets on it, was found lodged in a tree about 400 feet away. One of the house's doors remained twisted around a tree limb.

But they survived.

"I don't think we realized the magnitude of what we had here," Rich said.

After watching TV Saturday night, he knew storms were coming but had no notice of a tornado, he said.

That is because the National Weather Service never issued one.

At 1:46 a.m. Sunday, the NWS issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Crittenden County based on Doppler radar returns.

By the time the warning was issued, the tornado had already destroyed John Rich's house.

The NWS later estimated the tornado started around 1:45 a.m. and was on the ground for about 20 minutes.

"Weather is a dynamic process," said Pat Spoden, science and operations officer for Paducah's National Weather Service. "We are trying to forecast something that's constantly moving, and it's not always the easiest thing to do. We are trying our best."

The Paducah field office is responsible for issuing weather watches and warnings for 58 counties in western Kentucky, southern Indiana, southern Illinois and southeastern Missouri.

At the same time the tornado hit Crittenden County, another tornado ripped through the Evansville, Ind. area.

Spoden said the timing of the two tornadoes had nothing to do with the office's failure to issue a tornado warning for Crittenden County.

"We try to break up the area, so we're not all focused in on one particular area," Spoden said.

Early Sunday morning, Spoden said eight to 10 people were staffing the NWS office and each could look at a separate monitor of data for different areas.

He also said the office would review the night's events and try to see where they could have done a better job.

When the NWS issues a warning, it sends out a 1050Hz tone to activate weather radios. The tone did not sound, so people with some weather radios were not alerted that severe weather was coming.

A specialist from Kansas City visited the Paducah office Tuesday to work on the issue. Spoden said by Wednesday, that person had pinpointed and fixed the problem.

"It was an isolated incident," Spoden said.

While several things could have happened differently on the NWS end, Spoden said it is up to each individual to plan ahead for severe weather and to have more than one alert method.

He suggests having a weather radio with Specific Area Message Encoding technology, and a telephone network where friends or family can call if there is bad weather approaching.

Said Spoden: "In the Ohio Valley, you have to be aware 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."