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Severe Weather 2025

Having that Twitter post of that house being “swept clean” is and was something that gets people to hype up this tornado unfortunately. Without actually getting into the knitty and gritty of the bolts, the context of the house, whether it’s a slider or not. There’s many more components we need to look at before we start jumping to conclusions.
 
Grand Poo Bah said:
The original F scale definitely included cars in the description of ratings. These description also very clearly show many of the tornadoes this year with F4 (and even F5) damage have been rated EF3. Many tornadoes with F3 damage have been rated EF2 and so on.

View attachment 44707

And this is an F5 DI list I threw together by scrolling F5 tornadoes on Wikipedia. Obviously take with a grain of salt, but cars were used to help justify F5 ratings in at least 18 separate instances.

View attachment 44708
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To be fair, some of the f5 ratings given for tossed cars were extremely, extremely suspect (see Valley Mills). I have no clue about the actual math, but based on the number of times we’ve seen cars lofted or mangled, I don’t use it to call a tornado violent.
 
Brice W said:
Having that Twitter post of that house being “swept clean” is and was something that gets people to hype up this tornado unfortunately. Without actually getting into the knitty and gritty of the bolts, the context of the house, whether it’s a slider or not. There’s many more components we need to look at before we start jumping to conclusions.
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There wasn’t even a photo of a swept clean slab attached to the tweet! Really hurts Will’s credibility in my eyes, but maybe I just need to turn down my trust in tweets by established people the day of.
 
N0mz said:
To be fair, some of the f5 ratings given for tossed cars were extremely, extremely suspect (see Valley Mills). I have no clue about the actual math, but based on the number of times we’ve seen cars lofted or mangled, I don’t use it to call a tornado violent.
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What’s actually pretty interesting is that for some time wind engineers (specifically the cabal at Texas Tech University) maintained that cars did not go airborne in tornados. Even in the face of clear video evidence. The implied reason for their position was they were pushing a “tornado safe room” they had developed that would have been rendered useless by impact from a flying vehicle.

Doswell discusses this on his blog as well as his other excellent critiques of the EF scale & wind engineering influence.
 
I do want to add one thing and I’m not calling anyone out by name (but you all know by now who those 2 are, the usual suspects);

Tweeting vitriol at NWS offices because you’re mad over a rating is ridiculous. You’re tweeting at some intern or poor social media manager that probably doesn’t even have a hand in the survey or the actual meteorological operations of the location.
 
ColdFront said:
What’s actually pretty interesting is that for some time wind engineers (specifically the cabal at Texas Tech University) maintained that cars did not go airborne in tornados. Even in the face of clear video evidence. The implied reason for their position was they were pushing a “tornado safe room” they had developed that would have been rendered useless by impact from a flying vehicle.

Doswell discusses this on his blog as well as his other excellent critiques of the EF scale & wind engineering influence.
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You're back!!!! I was literally just thinking today how much of a bummer it is that you weren't part of this conversation. Happy to see you out of TW jail.
 
I didn’t see that tweet about the pressure drop until now. If I’m interpreting that correctly, regardless of altitude, that is a ridiculous pressure drop if it’s being measured in hPa. A pressure drop of that magnitude would bring the storm’s pressure down damn near to 800 mb at the surface if that’s being measured at sea level, which is super impressive. I wish the image in that tweet was a little more clear on what that number represents though, because I’m guessing that’s what it means.

I think the previous record holder was Manchester 2003, which funnily enough was also in South Dakota. It was an F4 that had a 100 hPa pressure drop. If that number is in hectopascals, this beats that by nearly 100 more hPa, absolutely insane.
 
I think analyzing the numerous video’s of the destruction of that home from the Gary tornado will help with identifying it’s true power and why some of the contextuals are a bit odd.

That tornado was undoubtedly stronger than EF3. But not that much stronger, low to mid range EF4
I think what happened, is that the roof of the home got torn off, shattered in midair, along with possibly a lot of the upper floor, while the lower floor and the entire subfloor got lofted up off the foundation and rolled backwards into the tree line, falling apart as it did so. No anchoring likely meant that winds simply got underneath what was left of a lighter home and rolled it before the core overtook the foundation itself. Destroying whatever was left.

I think this analysis explains what we see, and explains why the tree damage isn’t as extreme as it usually is, the home wasn’t fully blasted into the tree’s.
Of course, the guys surveying it will be able to tell the full story. I just wanted to give my thoughts.
 
OH-IOan said:
Wasn’t ColdFront who was (wrongly) banned in May?
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My sarcasm that day didn’t do me any favors. However, all is fine now and I don’t want to hijack the thread with old news!

I do want to bring up a point on Gary (independent of the damage discussion). Team Dominator came across as a bunch of morons during that chase.

I watched some streams yesterday and woo boy. Reed came across as an idiot, backing into Croft while he was blocking the road. I know some were saying Reed was stopped to keep traffic from getting too close because it was crossing the road, but my cynicism has me thinking he was doing it to keep the conga line out of his shot.

Then Jordan Hall was a complete donkey in the way he was talking to his girlfriend. Really soured on those guys this season.
 
OH-IOan said:
Anyways, away from the drama...

I hope this is legit.
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I had no idea what this means so I did some Googling. The standard value for atmospheric pressure at sea level is 1013.25 millibars aka hectopascals (hPa). A 200 mb pressure drop is the equivalent of the pressure of the atmosphere at a mile above sea level.

If this measurement is saying the atmospheric pressure dropped to 198.9 that'd be an over 80% pressure drop. This would be especially mind blowing considering the atmospheric pressure at 36,000 feet (cruising altitude) is around 300 hPa. I doubt that's what happened.
 
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ColdFront said:
My sarcasm that day didn’t do me any favors. However, all is fine now and I don’t want to hijack the thread with old news!

I do want to bring up a point on Gary (independent of the damage discussion). Team Dominator came across as a bunch of morons during that chase.

I watched some streams yesterday and woo boy. Reed came across as an idiot, backing into Croft while he was blocking the road. I know some were saying Reed was stopped to keep traffic from getting too close because it was crossing the road, but my cynicism has me thinking he was doing it to keep the conga line out of his shot.

Then Jordan Hall was a complete donkey in the way he was talking to his girlfriend. Really soured on those guys this season.
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Chasing has gotten pretty bad this season. The way some of these chasers have gone after these tornadoes is honestly a little insane. Remember Brad Arnold by Greensburg? Literal seconds away from getting sucked into that monster. Shelton and Paigey also played that storm way, way too close. At this point, it's only a matter of time before we get Twistex v2. IIRC someone almost accidentally got hit in Enderlin and had to shelter in a ditch. I would say, hopefully, we get a culture change in the chasing world, but honestly, I don't see a way where this doesn't end in loss of life.
 
N0mz said:
Chasing has gotten pretty bad this season. The way some of these chasers have gone after these tornadoes is honestly a little insane. Remember Brad Arnold by Greensburg? Literal seconds away from getting sucked into that monster. Shelton and Paigey also played that storm way, way too close. At this point, it's only a matter of time before we get Twistex v2. IIRC someone almost accidentally got hit in Enderlin and had to shelter in a ditch. I would say, hopefully, we get a culture change in the chasing world, but honestly, I don't see a way where this doesn't end in loss of life.
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Don't forgot Copic almost getting rolled by the multi-vortex in Arkansas in May.
 
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