As Ida ravaged beyond the Louisiana coastline, the tropical system began to weaken as it migrated across parts of the South into the Mid-Atlantic. As those remnants moved towards the Mid-Atlantic, instability and warm, moist air was transported along with the post-tropical system, causing favorable conditions for mesoscale convective initiation to occur. Our team members were able to observe and follow Ida's progression towards the Mid-Atlantic through various platforms of forecasting such as the NWS WSR-88D weather radars and sounding networks such as Pivotal Weather. Not only did this help with monitoring, but this assisted in the ability to properly forecast where events were going to occur.
Initially, we went to Rising Sun, Maryland where we were able to get within the rotating mesocyclone. The tornado didn't form where we were positioned, however, 10 miles after our position it formed and went through Oxford, PA. From there, we felt like we had one more shot from the storms in southern Delaware, and our best shot at getting something would be heading toward Vineland, New Jersey. We were doing live radar analysis, similar to that on the radar analysis page to determine where the best spot would be. We were getting gas just south of Mullica Hill, New Jersey when the storm crossed the Chesapeake Bay into New Jersey. The tornado warning came up on all of our phones and we knew it was go time. We headed towards Elmer, New Jersey before following it all the way to Mullica Hill when we stopped to help with the horrific damage.
When we arrived on the scene of that development, EMS was nowhere near sight as we were the first to arrive from the outside. We talked with a high school student returning from football practice, and as he was driving he saw it get really windy. All of a sudden the roof of the house to his left gets taken off and thrown into the road in front of him, so naturally, he slams on his breaks toward the middle of the road. He covered his eyes, and he felt his driver's side window get blown out and said it felt like sand hitting the side of his body. During that time he felt the vehicle go weightless for a brief moment, and then it was all over. When he got out of his car he realized his trunk was thrown open and destroyed his rear windshield, while also realizing he was no longer in the middle of the street and was now off to the right side of the road. Those on the chase that day walked around the neighborhood to make sure people weren't hurt and that everyone was okay. After talking with one of the residents, thankfully most people weren't home from work, sports, or wherever they were. The tornado destroyed part of a house and moved both cars from inside the garage to the street approximately 100 feet away. One house was completely leveled and other houses across the street also sustained heavy damage. Based on some of the damage, we concluded that there had to have been multiple vortices within the wedge tornado.
Zoomed-in aerial image of the development destroyed by the Mullica Hill tornado. Houses along the white path were all heavily damaged while most at the southeastern end were relatively untouched. The cornfield across the street also sustained significant damage along with the tree line at the top of the image.