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Significant Tornado Events

GrenadinesDes said:
I think I know why the tornado talk got taken down. On the weather side of wikipedia, TT was decided by members to be unreliable for tornado articles since alot of TT articles are user generated and often have unsupported claims to them
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Interesting, I wonder if the real reason is they were threatened by a copyright strike from TT though. TT usually does great work (for the premium articles, at least).
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
I'm gonna start posting some stuff on Guin again, as it's been awhile. I recommend this older Wikipedia version of the article on Guin with lots of TornadoTalk's info on it before it was taken down:

en.wikipedia.org

1974 Guin tornado - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org


Also, damage aerial from Wikipedia:
View attachment 49323

I'm gonna post lots more stuff on Guin in the next week or so:
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This is an interesting aerial. Most of this screams F4, but there is a house on the far right that appears to have been swept from its foundation. No way to tell anchoring from this kind of image though, so we’ll never know. Could have just been a slider home.
 
GrenadinesDes said:
I think I know why the tornado talk got taken down. On the weather side of wikipedia, TT was decided by members to be unreliable for tornado articles since alot of TT articles are user generated and often have unsupported claims to them
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The literal opposite is true... Wikipedia is user-generated, TornadoTalk is not.

While it's possible Wikipedians removed TornadoTalk from their list of "reliable sources", it's more likely TT got greedy and threatened them with legal action because they'd rather have the article's valuable information locked behind their precious paywall.
 
TH2002 said:
The literal opposite is true... Wikipedia is user-generated, TornadoTalk is not.

While it's possible Wikipedians removed TornadoTalk from their list of "reliable sources", it's more likely TT got greedy and threatened them with legal action because they'd rather have the article's valuable information locked behind their precious paywall.
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?? Im not lying this is literally the reason for TT being considered not allowed on wiki
 

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TH2002 said:
The literal opposite is true... Wikipedia is user-generated, TornadoTalk is not.

While it's possible Wikipedians removed TornadoTalk from their list of "reliable sources", it's more likely TT got greedy and threatened them with legal action because they'd rather have the article's valuable information locked behind their precious paywall.
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My question is, at what point is information reserved for Tornado Talk alone to distribute, especially behind a paywall? It seems really odd for them to be able to threaten legal action in the first place over something like that, that’s super greedy. I don’t doubt that such a thing is possible, I’m just really confused about it.
 
TornadoTalk's greed aside... their research is of very high quality, and I find it hilariously ironic that Wikipedia considers them an "unreliable source" considering the poor credibility of some of their "reliable" sources and wikipedia itself... but I'll just leave that can of worms unopened on this thread.
 
Not that this is entirely important, but I just got done reading what I missed and man this is the most posts I’ve ever seen in one day on this thread — and very entertaining ones at that! I poked around a bit this afternoon before getting on again tonight and genuinely had to do a double take at the page number.

Also, while I enjoyed delving into the (very interesting) discussion, borderline hilarious takes, and the back and forth, can we at least keep the discussion in the right thread…
I notice this happening quite often when the EF scale gets brought up in this thread it tends to lead to what we saw earlier, and we have an entire other thread dedicated to that exact topic. Not that all of the talk earlier was related to the EF scale, but a good chunk (probably a few pages worth) was more relevant to the other thread.

Anyway, to get back on track and to contribute to this thread, I’m going to make a thorough post either tomorrow or Sunday regarding the several multi-ton tanks carried extreme distances by the Greensburg tornado. I sorta went into it on X, but after going over and analyzing everything I believe I’ve got a full picture on what really happened there, and am pretty positive I’ve solved what had previously been a 3 year mystery to me. Looking forward to sharing everything that I’ve gathered with you all!

(p.s. I’m backtracking but for the first time ever on this site some of the comments made tonight genuinely had me laughing my a$$ off. Definitely a historic night on the forum.)
 
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I’m noticing some common threads here in the sentiments among a lot of these younger, overly dismissive, newer, and not particularly knowledgeable tornado intensity enthusiasts. I suspect there is a group chat or community outside of TalkWeather in which this “defaulting to skepticism and nit picking/dismissing everything” is currently “in” and being falsely equated to having higher knowledge in the field of tornado intensity and damage surveying. That mindset is likely being rewarded and reinforced by others who make people who engage in that kind of approach feel like they’re “on the right track” and are learning the “right way” to look at tornado damage and intensity estimation, unlike those crazy people over at TalkWeather who just overhype and call everything an EF5 candidate.

This is coming from someone who already went through that phase of essentially cosplaying as mister super conservative, nit picking, smarty pants damage surveyor who’s level headed skepticism allowed me to rise above all the “hype” and “exaggeration”. That was me when I was younger, and I truly thought I had it all figured out, but I can tell you based on experience that defaulting to skepticism and relentless nit picking brings you no closer to having a better understanding of the relationship between tornado intensity and damage. But I get it, everyone wants to distance themselves from the “omgg there’s a muddy spot and a bare slab in that one pic! this was an f5!” that we all once were when we were first getting into this. I went through that phase too when I was much younger, and I also went through the aforementioned phase afterwards where I overcorrected and became too skeptical and conservative as I got older. I think we’re seeing a lot of people collectively in that overcorrection phase as they get older too. I’m 31 now, and I now know that when it comes to the topic of tornado damage and intensity estimation, having a good grasp on things doesn’t come down to being skeptical OR being bullish. It comes down to being observant, objective, and putting more stock into what actually happens in real life tornado events of various intensities, instead of putting stock into what you’ve heard other people say is or isn’t significant.

The best things you can do to have a good grasp on tornado damage and intensity is to observe all available damage info from various tornado events in great detail, take notes, build a mental catalog of tornado events and the damage they caused, look at both the structural and contextual damage, compare the two, recognize patterns, recognize inconsistencies, and overall just study the aftermath of historic tornado events like case law. If you do that over the course of multiple years, combined with poring over official studies and presentations from EF scale experts like Jim LaDue, you’ll truly get a good feel for things.

But going down the “grass scouring is meaningless” and “it doesn’t really matter that a truck was found two miles from its point of origin” route will do nothing but cloud your judgement and make you blind to what’s important in the realm of intensity estimation.
 
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Also I got a few requests for what are the most reliable contextual indicators for extreme intensity. Here’s what I’ve observed over the years that I’ve learned to take seriously:

-Grass scouring, especially lawn grass scouring, and especially if almost all surface vegetation is removed, exposing bare soil.

-Extreme debris granulation. I’m talking houses being churned up into a fine wood-chip or mulch like substance. This is quite rare.

-Extreme debarking, as in entire groves of trees and shrubs with essentially zero bark left at all. Think Buckeye, Bassfield, Vilonia, Greensburg, Smithville, Bridge Creek, Moore, and others. Can be given less weight though if there is specific evidence of debris loading.

-Extremely violent debris patterns, or as I like to say “the most impressive debris pattern, is no debris pattern at all”. What I mean by this is homes being so thoroughly obliterated that there is virtually no recoverable debris, or when what small amount of debris that remains is widely dispersed over a huge area with no actual scatter path away from the foundation. Extreme wind rowing is also impressive, but not quite as impressive as what I just described.

-Tossing or lofting of massive extremely heavy multi-ton objects. Train cars, fertilizer tanks, oil tanks, oil rigs, etc. You get the idea.

-Vehicles thrown extremely long distances, such as a mile or more away from their points of origin. I don’t think people realize how rare this is.

-Concrete scouring, which is so rare that it’s barely worth mentioning. It only happens in the most high-end of high-end events.

-Vehicle disassembly or stripping. This goes beyond your standard mangling. What I mean is vehicles being torn into multiple pieces, or being completely stripped down to their frames/chassis. Not quite as reliable as the others I’ve mentioned, but still significant.

That’s pretty much it. Things like trenching, asphalt scouring, farm field scouring, parking stop removal, and your standard vehicle tossing and mangling have occurred too many times below high-end intensity for them to be considered reliable high-end event indicators.
 
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buckeye05 said:
-Extreme debarking, as in entire groves of trees and shrubs with essentially zero bark left at all. Think Buckeye, Bassfield, Vilonia, Greensburg, Smithville, Bridge Creek, Moore, and others. Can be given less weight though if there is specific evidence of debris loading.
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Tri State 1925 is another example of violent tornado causing extreme debarking. There was a photo which shows grove of sassafras and persimmon trees left without a single bark. There were instances of other extreme tree damage in its path but only some were photographed (including the 18-acre forest at the C.S. Conger farm)
 
Jesus this thread has descended into chaos. I do not condone any form of insults, no matter what opinion people have. Science after all is a field that evolves based on people having new and "controversial" arguments which challenge existing concepts. Anyways, as far as the issue of scouring and debarking goes, tree debarking is certainly something we can correlate with higher intensity tornadoes, however it is on its own not always the best indicator, it is heavily influenced by debris, including dirt and fine "granulation". That being said, I think it takes a violent tornado to produce consistent, and complete debarking to trees, though as we have seen in the past, you can have a fully debarked tree next to sub-violent structural damage.

As for Ground Scouring, I think its commonly misunderstood or taken out of context. Crop scouring is a different phenomenon and should be considered as such. Consistent Ground scouring is definitely indicative of a violent tornado, however I do feel as though mud bias can factor in making some photos seem particularly bad.
 
TH2002 said:
TornadoTalk's greed aside... their research is of very high quality, and I find it hilariously ironic that Wikipedia considers them an "unreliable source" considering the poor credibility of some of their "reliable" sources and wikipedia itself... but I'll just leave that can of worms unopened on this thread.
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I'm still going to use wikipedia over TT any day of the week, especially since TT loves paywalling everything and I rather not give money to read a likely mediocre at best article
 
buckeye05 said:
Also I got a few requests for what are the most reliable contextual indicators for extreme intensity. Here’s what I’ve observed over the years that I’ve learned to take seriously:

-Grass scouring, especially lawn grass scouring, and especially if almost all surface vegetation is removed, exposing bare soil.

-Extreme debris granulation. I’m talking houses being churned up into a fine wood-chip or mulch like substance. This is quite rare.

-Extreme debarking, as in entire groves of trees and shrubs with essentially zero bark left at all. Think Buckeye, Bassfield, Vilonia, Greensburg, Smithville, Bridge Creek, Moore, and others. Can be given less weight though if there is specific evidence of debris loading.

-Extremely violent debris patterns, or as I like to say “the most impressive debris pattern, is no debris pattern at all”. What I mean by this is homes being so thoroughly obliterated that there is virtually no recoverable debris, or when what small amount of debris that remains is widely dispersed over a huge area with no actual scatter path away from the foundation. Extreme wind rowing is also impressive, but not quite as impressive as what I just described.

-Tossing or lofting of massive extremely heavy multi-ton objects. Train cars, fertilizer tanks, oil tanks, oil rigs, etc. You get the idea.

-Vehicles thrown extremely long distances, such as a mile or more away from their points of origin. I don’t think people realize how rare this is.

-Concrete scouring, which is so rare that it’s barely worth mentioning. It only happens in the most high-end of high-end events.

-Vehicle disassembly or stripping. This goes beyond your standard mangling. What I mean is vehicles being torn into multiple pieces, or being completely stripped down to their frames/chassis. Not quite as reliable as the others I’ve mentioned, but still significant.

That’s pretty much it. Things like trenching, asphalt scouring, farm field scouring, parking stop removal, and your standard vehicle tossing and mangling have occurred too many times below high-end intensity for them to be considered reliable high-end event indicators.
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Grazulis once said that the best way to determine strength in extremely bad/blurry/black+white photos was looking for extremely mangled vehicles.
 
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