I would be inclined to agree, that central cutting line is something else. It appears I may have been incorrect about the highest wind speeds being achieved during the shrinking stage, as it seems the most drastic scouring appears to have occurred where the tornado was widest. Think I may have to review the footage of the tornado's lifespan again.
Yes, considering the contextual and car damage,It did peaked at its widest point and shortly after that it hit the machine shop,threw various vehicles and caused one fatality
Yeah this was the barn. Unfortunately you can’t see the concrete pieces here though. They were scattered towards the horizon through that path of scouring you can see in the background. I wish NWS Grand Forks didn’t get rid of the pics.
I'd love to find more damage photos from this thing, especially the house that was supposedly so obliterated the survey team likely missed it (assuming that's not a myth of some sort). Also, what's up with the wobbly core of this thing?
The missing house is a rumour,It has already been clarified by stormtrack users.
I reviewed the aerial footage,this slab may be the barn.other slabs can be found around the barn,I really hope Grand Forks could release Wilkin's damage photos
Doswell's chase logs do have a few pictures of Pampa's demise, with the Hoover funnel cloud in the background:
You can also see Pampa begin to lift at the end of Sheriff Stubblefield's video. This is basically what was represented in the 2nd photo from the OKweather blog.
Since at this point Pampa was around ~10 minutes into its 11 minute lifespan, and the mapped path of the tornado shows Pampa didn't get far into the residential area after crossing Price Road as Hoover started to coalesce, I think the 6 minute quote was just an error of memory.
Interesting aftermath photos from Dalton, had not seen those before. I will say that Mulvane's automobile damage was more impressive than I anticipated. While likely underrated I didn't remember Mulvane as being as visually impressive as some of these other tornadoes, but those cars definitely meet the definition of "mangled beyond recognition"...like some of the other drill bits on the list, Mulvane also had a spectacular shrinking/rope stage where it attained its highest wind speeds, although it seems to differ in that it didn't appear to reach violent class intensity before its shrinking stage.
Since Dalton's highest wind speeds seemed to occur closer to the end of its life, a possibility is that its ground scouring appears less prominent than Wilkin's because it was most intense when the tornado was thinner - though I'm not sure the aerial views really bear this out. But yes, undoubtedly still impressive. It would seem to me that the scour patterns from these smaller tornadoes are not necessarily far narrower than those of most violent wedges, for the most part; this seems consistent with the observation that only a small core in most such monsters is doing the worst damage (subvortices notwithstanding) whereas pretty much the entire condensation funnel of a drill bit is core. It also makes Jarrell all that much more of an anomaly.
Someday I think I am going to have to look for pictures of scouring from Pampa. A newspaper clipping mentioned that the tornado drained 10-12 ft of water from a dammed pond, coupled with what are perhaps the highest vertical wind speeds seen in any tornado to date I would think Pampa would have been more than capable. The lack of imagery is indeed quite unfortunate.
Now, as for an event that's less remarkable in terms of strength, here's Dallas/Lancaster from 2012:
Probably most well known by the public for being caught on tape lifting tractor trailors, and most well known by myself for striking pretty close to home. This footage displays an interesting transition where what had previously been a stubby medium sized stovepipe disappears and then reorganizes into an elephant trunk before restrengthening. Perhaps not uncommon, but what I don't know is whether it was entering its shrinking stage, or whether this was a "secondary" mature stage, like a reverse Andover if you will.
That is indeed fascinating, I don't think I'd remembered it myself. Though they probably comprise a relatively small percentage of violent tornadoes (or, at least, violent tornadoes that were actually rated as such), drill bits certainly do seem to be responsible for quite some amount of interesting phenomena.
Incredible that 22 people were killed in the space of only 2 miles and likely a few minutes, I've head about this thing before and I do wish there were more high-quality photographs of its damage available; I can't help but wonder if this thing achieved F5 intensity but the construction material of the buildings it struck was likely dubious at best, so they couldn't go any higher than F4 with ranking it.
A death toll that high from such a brief tornado suggests that it was likely genuinely violent. That’s extremely impressive, and not to mention tragic.
It may have been capable but I doubt it given that its short track over a fairly populated area. It certainly was violent though. There were frail buildings along its path for sure but reports and aerial photos indicate that the tornado leveled some fairly large and ostensibly well built homes as well.
Ten members of the same extended family perished in the tornado as well. I think the area basically doubling or tripling in population due to Hilda, the erratic nature of hurricane spinups, and the time of day(630am) all contributed to the high fatality rate as well. Add in no basements and you've got a bad situation. Even today those circumstances and the violent nature of the tornado would make for a terrible end result.
Hurricane-spawned tornadoes are usually weak, correct? Are there any ideas on what would allow one to achieve such rapid intensity in extremely short time?
Yeah they're mostly of the EF0-EF2 variety. The most prolific tornado producing hurricanes seem to be majors that weaken before striking the Gulf Coast. Ivan, Rita, and Katrina all come to mind in addition to Hilda and Carla. TS Lee as well but that's different. So I'd speculate the drier, colder air that gets entrained into a decaying tropical system acts to enhance instability(lapse rates, surface heating)in the RFQ area where low-level shear is highest. You can also get low-topped mini sups when the RFQ is void of tropical convection. Maybe enhanced mid-level shear impinging on the strong low-level circulation plays a role as well. I'll defer to people that know more than me in making definitive statements but that makes sense to me.
Are they usually narrow, drillbit type tornadoes? I imagine there isn't a whole lot of (if any) hurricane-spawned wedges.
Katrina dropped an F2 in Peach County, Georgia that wiped out a credit union about a third of a mile from my dad's office, as well as some of the big pecan orchard that runs behind it. Thankfully it was pretty narrow (about 50 yd) and moving in the other direction, and he only lost some shingles. It was after closing time so nobody was in the credit union at the time. I couldn't find any damage photos, but you can see a bit of footage of the damage to the credit union in the second video on this page: https://www.13wmaz.com/article/news...hurricane-katrina-hit-central-ga/93-557331899
Well apparently Charles City had the fastest windspeeds documented in any tornado ever, lol. Amazing that it's still considered F5 after all these years.
At 2:37 in this vid you can something a virtually identical horizontal vortex on Red Rock, man that thing was incredible and likely had an insane amount of violent potential.
I’ve said this before, but estimating wind speed based on spiral markings is complete and utter pseudoscience. Unfortunately, Dr. Fujita used this method for some of his ratings, namely Goessel and Xenia. Both of those have undeserved reputations for being remarkably violent because of this. In reality, there wasn’t much that was really remarkable about them at all. Both would be rated EF4 today.
