The popular resort and vacation town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee was engulfed by flames overnight as a fast-moving wildfire burned at least 100 homes with over 14,000 people evacuated.
The 16-story Doubletree Park Vista Hotel in Gatlinburg is said to have sustained a major fire. It has “been completely inundated,” according to Dean Flener, spokesman for Tennessee Emergency Management Agency in Nashville. This video was uploaded to YouTube by the DailyMail which shows what it looked like as the fire was nearing the building.
As residents and visitors rushed to get out of the fire area, one local weather station produced an extreme weather report just before it went offline, succumbing to the heat and wind of the fire.
Check out the temperature of 118° with a wind at 43 m.p.h. The wind gusts at the time were nearing hurricane force! This occurred at 8:34 p.m., as evacuations were underway. There is no way to know how hot it got at this site last night. Scary stuff coming in from the Smoky Mountains this morning!
-Meteorologist Eric Sorensen
