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pohnpei

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The EF4 damage made by Cullman tornado 2011 was described as well constructed residence slab clean on DAT files. I can only find this famaous photo of this house which also showed some evidence of wind rowing. I am wondeing is there any other photos that can show different angles of this house? Only by judging this photo, 175 mph rating seems a little bit low to me or maybe this house was not that well built?
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Before view
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That last pic is particularly impressive when you zoom in. Multiple large, and likely well anchored homes completely swept away with only basements left at the center of the path. Here's a larger and higher resolution version. I see at least 5 potential F5 homes in the picture, including the one near the Ohio River circled in yellow. This was a large and well built home that was not only swept away but also lost two of its basement walls. It's hard to see, but you can still make it out if you enlarge the photo and zoom in. Low-level winds in this area were so violent, even the basement carpeting was swept away at that residence from what I've heard. The second picture is a ground view of the aforementioned home circled in yellow.
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This pic is interesting. This is from the Green Street area, apparently one of the hardest hit, and 18 out of the 31 fatalities occurred here:

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I highly recommend this link for finding damage pics of Brandenburg:
 
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The EF4 damage made by Cullman tornado 2011 was described as well constructed residence slab clean on DAT files. I can only find this famaous photo of this house which also showed some evidence of wind rowing. I am wondeing is there any other photos that can show different angles of this house? Only by judging this photo, 175 mph rating seems a little bit low to me or maybe this house was not that well built?
View attachment 3740
Before view
View attachment 3737
So, the only one I can find of the wind-rowing that occurred when this house was struck. The bottom two pics are of the house impacted by the Cullman tornado, the top two are ground scouring from the Cordova tornado (so disregard the top 2 photos for purposes of this discussion). Of note is 5 members of a 6-person family were killed here. The house was large and made of brick, but not well-anchored, I think that was the basis for EF4 instead of EF5.

Cullman tornado.png
 
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buckeye05

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View attachment 3739
The EF4 damage made by Cullman tornado 2011 was described as well constructed residence slab clean on DAT files. I can only find this famaous photo of this house which also showed some evidence of wind rowing. I am wondeing is there any other photos that can show different angles of this house? Only by judging this photo, 175 mph rating seems a little bit low to me or maybe this house was not that well built?
View attachment 3740
Before view
View attachment 3737
Take a closer look at the foundation. See the use of cinder blocks instead of a poured concrete slab or basement foundation? That is a pretty major structural flaw, even if there were anchor bolts. The problem with a cinder block foundation is that it lacks what engineers call a “continuous load”. In other words, the mortar between the blocks crack easily, causing the blocks to shift, resulting in the foundation failing beneath the bolts. For that reason EF4 was the correct rating. This is also why Cookeville was not rated higher.

So yes while this house was large, it was built on a weak foundation.
 
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buckeye05

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This article listed the DOW reading of Harper tornado on May 12 2004. The peak Vg of this tornado was 94m/s. Based on the timing information provided by NCDC, this reading probably belonged to the F4 one which lasted 5 minutes and tracked 1.2 miles.
the damage video can be found on Youtube

On the other end of the spectrum, this one should have been rated F5. Anchor bolted house completely gone with virtually no debris recovered, automobile torn into many small scraps of metal, extensive ground scouring, and some of the most extreme tree damage I have ever seen. It was almost Jarrell-like. F4 was the wrong call, and the lead surveyor eventually acknowledged that.
 
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On the other end of the spectrum, this one should have been rated F5. Anchor bolted house completely gone with virtually no debris recovered, automobile torn into many small scraps of metal, extensive ground scouring, and some of the most extreme tree damage I have ever seen. It was almost Jarrell-like. F4 was the wrong call, and the lead surveyor eventually acknowledged that.
Yeah at least Chance Hayes acknowledged this tornado deserved an F5 rating. John Robinson would never acknowledge that the Vionia, AR deserved an EF5 rating. He actually retired later that year in 2014. He seemed like a very arrogant person.
 

ARCC

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So, ABC 33/40 has some damage aerials vids from the Tuscaloosa-Birmingham tornado and some aerial vids from Hackleburg, so apparently there was more videos from the Hackleburg-Phil Campbell tornado that are no longer up on YouTube? That's irritating....perhaps the Wayback Machine may have some of these videos available if you dig enough.

Yeah, years ago someone uploaded the complete track in segments in pretty high res are he flew it in his plane. I’ve hunted for it several times
 

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Ťhe tornado hits Tianjin, China in 1969.8.29 might be one of the most violent tornados ever recorded in Asia. I guess it probably reaches F5.
I find it difficult to find any information on this tornado. That damage certainly looks nasty.
 

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Ťhe intensity of 1984 USSR tornado outbreak is probably exaggerated to the level of urban legend. In fact, there isn't any figures supporting the saying extreme intensity.
 
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zvl5316

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I find it difficult to find any information on this tornado. That damage certainly looks nasty.
In fact information about this tornado is limited to timed-honoured reports in Chinese (but it is still a lucky thing to see reports considering the weird social and political conditions in China in 1969). This tornado killed 98 people in a village before entering Tianjin City. It then enters an industrial area in Tianjin and nearly levelled six large factories (17 killed in this area) and it is said that trees in that area were peeled. The tornado still knocked down a college hall before lifted (the figure). It is still the deadliest tornado in China after 1949.
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pohnpei

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Some high quality aerial footage of Smithville MS EF5
 

pohnpei

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Some severe damage of this tornado can be found in this aerial video but yet to find high end tree damage like the woods extremely debarked by Pilger East.

three different angle of this tree damage and the ground souring . Based on DAT, it was likely mainly made by Pilger East alone.
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Not far from this place, Pilger West also regained its strength and leveled a likely well-constructed house with bolts and washers and wind rowing feature showed in ths picture(rated high end EF4). NWS website may mistook it for the East one, based on DAT, it was made by the West one.
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three different angle of this tree damage and the ground souring . Based on DAT, it was likely mainly made by Pilger East alone.
View attachment 3760View attachment 3761View attachment 3762
Not far from this place, Pilger West also regained its strength and leveled a likely well-constructed house with bolts and washers and wind rowing feature showed in ths picture(rated high end EF4). NWS website may mistook it for the East one, based on DAT, it was made by the West one.
View attachment 3763
At least 2 of these tornadoes from the Pilger family likely had EF5 potential. The second photo shows trees that were stripped completely naked of all their bark just like in Moore, OK on May 20, 2013.
 

buckeye05

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three different angle of this tree damage and the ground souring . Based on DAT, it was likely mainly made by Pilger East alone.
View attachment 3760View attachment 3761View attachment 3762
Not far from this place, Pilger West also regained its strength and leveled a likely well-constructed house with bolts and washers and wind rowing feature showed in ths picture(rated high end EF4). NWS website may mistook it for the East one, based on DAT, it was made by the West one.
View attachment 3763
The thing is, that area of trees was likely hit by both tornadoes, so it’s hard to say how much of the debarking was from one individual tornado. Also had that house not been hit by a vehicle, it would have been an EF5 candidate for sure.
 

buckeye05

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a likely underated tornado occured on May 10 2015 Delmont SD which was rated EF2
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Yeah I remember thinking the same thing when they rated Delmont EF2. An EF2 is not under any circumstances going to cause that degree of tree and structural damage. It was a solid EF3, likely a high-end one at that. I have no idea what the survey team was thinking. What a complete and utter farce...
 

buckeye05

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You know, the more I look at Delmont, the more I think it may have possibly reached EF4 strength. It leveled and swept away quite a few homes, and the third pic from the top in that earlier post shows what appears to be grass scouring consistent with a violent tornado. Ridiculously underrated event.

Now that I think of it, the same office (NWS Sioux Falls) also applied an EF2 rating to a tornado that completely destroyed structures and swept away at least one home in Wessington Springs, SD on June 18, 2014. Again, at least EF3 would have been appropriate. Seems like this office is one of the worst when it comes to lowballing ratings.
 
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