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Severe WX Sunday March 3 Severe Threat

Equus

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Wooooow. The car photo is incredible. We can check off every mark of violent tornado contextual evidence at this point. I have little doubt that this monster had EF5 potential had it struck a well built home at its absolute peak.
 
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Yeah, extreme mangling of vehicles like that is one of those contextual indicators I was talking about.

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Equus

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There's probably at least one reasonably well built frame home in the path that could be rated EF4, but then again, it could have been battered by huge airborne pine trunks and disintegrating mobile homes. Lots of complexities. Contextual support with vehicle and vegetation damage easily would allow for an upgrade if it's a borderline case, but I'm interested to see if they find a decently well built home in the heart of the path to begin with.
 

Equus

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Imo concrete block foundations make me really uncomfortable in tornado alley, it seems all too easy for the house to be grabbed in one big chunk and pushed over into nearby woods. Unless the blocks are properly filled and anchored to the house frame it seems nearly as unstable as a mobile home.
 

RF16Gold

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Idk about “concentrated in a small area”. The demographics of the major cities and towns in the county suggest that the Hispanic/Latino population is distributed relatively evenly.

That is true, but in many rural parts of this state a good number of Hispanic folks tend to stick closely together in out of the way places like this area.
 

buckeye05

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Anyone seen any photographic evidence of really intense debarking and scouring yet? That's the one thing i'm not really seeing a ton of that would otherwise make me think this was a truly high-end event.
 

buckeye05

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Imo concrete block foundations make me really uncomfortable in tornado alley, it seems all too easy for the house to be grabbed in one big chunk and pushed over into nearby woods. Unless the blocks are properly filled and anchored to the house frame it seems nearly as unstable as a mobile home.
The debris pattern in the above picture actually does suggests the house was vaulted in once piece and thrown into the woods.
 
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warneagle

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Preliminary EF2 rating for the Talbotton tornado, but survey teams are still out there.
 

WesL

"Bill, I'm talkin' imminent rueage"
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Equus

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Peachtree City tends to be a lot more conservative than other offices; I'd not be shocked if nothing in GA passed high EF2.
 

buckeye05

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You're definitely right about Peachtree City, though to be fair, most of the damage in Talbotton looked like obliterated manufactured homes to me. EF2 might end up being be as high as they can go, regardless of bias.
 

warneagle

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Yeah. Most of the homes in the worst-affected areas are probably mobile homes and prefab houses that aren’t great damage indicators for more significant tornadoes. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Talbotton bumped up to low-end EF3. Still curious to see what they have to say about the Marshallville tornado and the second tornado the Crawford/Peach storm produced east of Macon.
 

Equus

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Yeah construction quality is just so overwhelmingly low on average in the Southeast they're probably right on the money on some of these ratings... though in most cases a case could be made for low EF3 too.
 

buckeye05

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Yes, technically speaking, destruction of manufactured homes can be rated as high as low-end EF3 according to the EF scale, but there has to be overwhelming contextual evidence of a tornado exceeding EF2 strength (I think Peachtree City rated portions of the 2017 Adel tornado path EF3 based on tied-down manufactured homes that were completely obliterated).

Also, based on the damage i'm seeing to metal-framed buildings in the Eufaula area, I'd expect an EF3 rating with that one.
 

Equus

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I remember BMX rating a tornado on 4/15/11 mid EF3 based on double-wide damage, having vaulted it through the air a significant distance and disintegrating with fatalities if I remember correctly. Certainly can be done but usually requires complete obliteration.
 
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