NEW ORLEANS — A tornado that killed a man near New Orleans this week was the metro area’s second strongest on record and left an 11.5-mile track northeast through three parishes, the National Weather Service said Thursday.
Its winds hit 160 mph Tuesday night in the suburban St. Bernard Parish community of Arabi, making it an EF-3 tornado, according to a preliminary report released Thursday.
That put it behind only an F-4 that struck Laplace in 1983, meteorologist Christopher Bannan said. Eastern New Orleans was hit by an EF-3 tornado in 2017, but its peak winds were estimated at 150 mph, he noted.
Tuesday’s twister damaged nearly 300 buildings in St. Bernard Parish, demolishing 41 of them and doing major damage to another 92, State Fire Marshal Butch Browning said Thursday. His office said Orleans and Jefferson parish officials didn’t ask for damage assessments.