USA Tornado outbreak of December 10–11

A deadly late-season tornado outbreak produced catastrophic damage and numerous fatalities across portions of the Southern United States and Ohio Valley from the evening of December 10 to the early morning of December 11, 2021. The event developed as a trough progressed eastward across the United States, interacting with an unseasonably moist and unstable environment across the Mississippi Valley.  Tornado activity began in northeastern Arkansas, before progressing into Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

The most prolific activity was caused by a long-track supercell thunderstorm that produced a family of strong tornadoes, if not a single long-track tornado, across four Mid-Southern states. The nocturnal tornadoes first touched down in northeastern Arkansas, and tracked through the Missouri Bootheel, ripping through towns such as Monette and Leachville, Arkansas, and Hayti and Caruthersville, Missouri; after crossing the Mississippi River into portions of West Tennessee, the storm eventually reached Western Kentucky, where the towns of Mayfield, Benton, Dawson Springs, and Bremen suffered severe to catastrophic damage.

Preliminary estimates suggest the tornado family—identified by some media outlets as the "Quad-State tornado," due to the storm's similar characteristics to the Tri-State tornado that occurred 96 years prior—may have cut a path of up to 250 miles (400 km) across the affected areas; if confirmed to be a single tornado by storm surveys, it would surpass the March 18, 1925, tornado event (which carved a 219-mile [352 km] path across Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana) in terms of path length.  Other tornadic thunderstorms affected portions of eastern Missouri, southern Illinois, western and middle Tennessee, and western and central Kentucky during the late evening into the overnight hours of December 11, including three intense tornadoes that hit Bowling Green, Kentucky; Edwardsville, Illinois; and Defiance, Missouri.

At least 88 people are confirmed to have been killed by the tornadoes, surpassing the Vicksburg, Mississippi tornado of December 5, 1953, which caused 38 fatalities, as the deadliest December tornado event ever recorded in the United States. Unconfirmed estimates suggest that the tornado outbreak may have caused 100 deaths across the four states, with 70 residents feared dead in Mayfield, Kentucky alone, which would make it the deadliest tornado event worldwide since May 2011.  In Kentucky, 74 people have been confirmed dead so far, currently making the outbreak the second-deadliest tornado event in Kentucky history, behind the Louisville-area tornado of March 27, 1890, which caused 76 deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_December_10%E2%80%9311,_2021