There’s nothing more terrifying than the whirling, roaring blackness of a tornado at night, and almost half of Tennessee’s tornadoes come calling after the sun goes down.
Nearly 46% of Tennessee’s tornadoes occur at night, according to Walker S. Ashley, professor of meteorology, climatology and hazards at Northern Illinois University. Ashley was part of a team that produced a study on nighttime tornadoes in 2008.
“This is the highest proportion of nocturnal tornadoes of any state in the U.S. The next closest states are Kentucky and Arkansas at around 42%,” Ashley said via email.
“Overnight events are 2.5 times as likely to kill as events during the daytime, and this nocturnal fatality rate has been a major reason for the stalled decline in the national tornado fatality tallies since the 1990s,” he said.
Easter Sunday night’s storms rained terror on residents out of the darkness, killing three people in Hamilton County and one from flooding in Marion County.