Just days after a tornado ravaged through a Dollar Tree distribution center in Oklahoma, another deadly tornado hit the northern side of the state as the Midwestern U.S. contends with storms, hail and winds that are expected to linger through Wednesday.
Significant damage has been reported through the towns of Barnsdall and Bartlesville, Okla., with dozens of homes, a nursing home and an oil refinery damaged. There have been no major reports of damage to warehouses or any supply chain-related real estate thus far, although nearly 7,600 people are still without power as of Tuesday afternoon.
“Based on the impact that we’re seeing, I expect supply chain problems to be limited to the local area that was affected by the tornado, and they’re not going to be of national significance,” said Ben Ruddell, professor in the School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University.
According to the NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS), 19 total tornadoes were reported on Monday across states including Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee.
The NWS maintained tornado warnings for municipalities across Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas throughout early Tuesday a.m.
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“Even if there’s a warning that’s issued for your location, the chances that your facility is going to be affected are extremely rare,” said Ruddell, who is also a director of the Fewsion Project, which uses comprehensive data mapping to monitor domestic supply chains down to individual U.S. counties. “This is a good example of a situation where you just have to protect your people and hope for the best, and usually things will work out if you’re operating a distributor or manufacturer in the supply chain.”
Scattered severe thunderstorms are projected to move east into the Ohio Valley and parts of the southern Great Lakes throughout Tuesday and Wednesday. The highest tornado threat Tuesday will include most of Indiana, as well as northern Kentucky and western Ohio, the NWS says. By Wednesday, the threat is forecast to impact eastern Missouri, southern Indiana and Illinois, western Kentucky and northern Tennessee.
Everstream Analytics’ chief meteorologist Jon Davis noted that the U.S. has experienced multiple of these “multi-day severe weather events” in what he said was an “active spring” for tornadoes.
Much of the impacts throughout supply chains would occur throughout their transportation nodes, Davis said. According to Davis, major cargo airports are where most major logistics disruptions start, but many can still be mitigated ahead of time depending on the scenario.
“Take for example, air cargo. If you have the ability to leave an airport earlier, get in later and change routes somewhat, yeah, you’d be able to do that here,” Davis said. “Trucking and rail is going to be a little bit different, but some of that comes into timing. There are specific windows where the risk is very high. To try to avoid that risk, like a truck leaving a DC, or a rail line, there are things that can be done to mitigate that risk fear overall. So much of that comes down to the specific timing of the severe weather in area X or Y.
According to Davis, the biggest weather risks through Wednesday come from hail swaths, not the tornadoes, noting that the atmospheric configuration is conducive to more hail.
“Hail is not something that makes the nighttime news,” Davis said. “But from a standpoint of damage that can be done to operations or a trucking firm or an auto manufacturer, sometimes hail and the economic ramifications of that can be one of the biggest issues here overall.”
While weather risks pervade throughout the week, Dollar Tree hopes to move forward from last week’s natural disaster.
On April 30, more than two days after the Dollar Tree facility took the direct hit from a tornado, the company confirmed that none of the 456 associates who are employed at the Marietta distribution center were injured at the facility.
In a statement, the discount retailer said it reacted “swiftly” to maintain distribution operations following the storm, and immediately pivoted its network to deliver product to the approximately 600 Marietta-serviced Dollar Tree stores.
“We run a high performing distribution network and have activated our other distribution centers to support our stores in the region,” said Mike Kindy, chief supply chain officer, Dollar Tree, in a statement. “We will continue to manage through the near-term challenges associated with this event and are confident in our ability to continue to meet our customers’ expectations and operate our business.”
The impacted 1-million-square-foot building, located roughly 15 miles from the Oklahoma-Texas border, supplies products to stores across 12 states, including all of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, and portions of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.