• Welcome to TalkWeather!
    We see you lurking around TalkWeather! Take the extra step and join us today to view attachments, see less ads and maybe even join the discussion.
    CLICK TO JOIN TALKWEATHER

Significant Tornado Events

Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
This is interesting, given the 1987 Yellowstone Tornado that occurred nearby this area. I've seen some speculation that the 1987 event was also a downburst, or the tornado had a much shorter path length then originally documented and the majority of the damage was actually downburst damage. I don't buy much of that but figured I might as well mention it, given the similarities with this event in terms of location and being a possible mixture of downburst and tornado. Hopefully I'm not misinterpreting something I read.
Click to expand...
Downbursts don’t debark trees or scour topsoil and I don’t buy the hypothesis that most or all of the 1987 event was a downburst.
 
Another tornado that got misclassified as a downburst was the 10/14/2003 Cranberry-Fox Run PA event. Debris was carried five miles, radar showed rotation, trees fell in a pattern indicative of a tornado, baskets were strewn across the parking lot and a mailbox was lifted from the front of a nearby store and blown to the rear of the lot, damage occurred in a narrow swath, a large construction trailer was rolled through a parking lot and into a store and debris was wrapped around decks. Downbursts don't carry debris 5 miles and the other contextual evidence suggests that this was a tornado and possibly a significant one as several homes reportedly lost roofs and walls.
 
MNTornadoGuy said:
Downbursts don’t debark trees or scour topsoil and I don’t buy the hypothesis that most or all of the 1987 event was a downburst.
Click to expand...
So it did scour soil? I've never been able to find a picture of that, only a few of downed trees and not much else. I wish I could find ground-level views of the damage and not just aerials.
But yeah I don't buy that idea either, I'd have to find the post or article, maybe I read it wrong.
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
So it did scour soil? I've never been able to find a picture of that, only a few of downed trees and not much else. I wish I could find ground-level views of the damage and not just aerials.
But yeah I don't buy that idea either, I'd have to find the post or article, maybe I read it wrong.
Click to expand...
Fujita said that topsoil was scoured and plastered against trees.
 
The February 1, 1955 Commerce Landing, MS tornado was classified as "very severe thunderstorms" and not a tornado despite the fact that a funnel was seen and vehicles were tossed hundreds of yards. The body of one victim was reportedly carried for half a mile. Structural damage was rated F3 by Grazulis. Was part of a localized albeit devastating outbreak of tornadoes.

Tornadoes in Northern MS – February 1, 1955 – Tornado Talk

www.tornadotalk.com www.tornadotalk.com
 
TH2002 said:
The February 1, 1955 Commerce Landing, MS tornado was classified as "very severe thunderstorms" and not a tornado despite the fact that a funnel was seen and vehicles were tossed hundreds of yards. The body of one victim was reportedly carried for half a mile. Structural damage was rated F3 by Grazulis. Was part of a localized albeit devastating outbreak of tornadoes.

Tornadoes in Northern MS – February 1, 1955 – Tornado Talk

www.tornadotalk.com www.tornadotalk.com
Click to expand...
Grazulis said the reason the tornadoes weren't counted as tornadoes was 100% racial.
 
MNTornadoGuy said:
Sadly I believe that might have been the reason why. Black communities were hard-hit by these tornadoes.
Click to expand...
It's probably a major factor for why so many Dixie events (1875, 1884, 1908, 1920, 1932, 1936 and this one being the first that come to mind) were poorly documented and why the fatality and injury are likely highly underestimated and under-reported, as blacks were often not included in death tolls or injured ones in hospitals were never followed up on. In fact, with Tupelo 1936 I think the Salvation Army & National Guard were prohibited from assisting the black residents of Tupelo because of the Jim Crow laws in place.
 
Casuarina Head said:
Yes, indeed, and I also went by the monikers Ground Scouring and snowflake22 on both the original and revived American Weather fora. At no point under my latest iteration did I present rumours as fact, but merely noted that I was reiterating them to the best of my recollection(s), while not presenting them outright as “factual.” Obscure reports do tend to fascinate me, as always, and in this sense I bear some sense of kinship with CAL, although, unlike him, I do have high-functioning autism that muddles the link between the left and right hemispheres, hence the “scatterbrained,” impressionistic vibe, if not nature, of my otherwise highly detailed contributions. Sometimes I can engage in superficially technical matters, on a broad scale, so long as I corral my left hemisphere effectively.

See above.
Click to expand...
Well if that’s the case, I apologize for the harshness. However, these unfounded claims and broad leaps in logic you presented over the years stuck around as fact, whether you presented them as fact or not.

I also figured out that you’re likely the source of the false claim that the Waupauca, WI F4 of September 26, 1951 produced pavement scouring. There is a photo floating around of asphalt scouring from the Waupaca, WI F2 of June 23, 2004. It seems to me that you saw the word “Waupaca” in the image URL and erroneously attributed it to the 1951 event without any further digging or research. These are the kind of leaps in logic that cause these rumors to develop. You just have to be more careful than that.
 
I'm posting this video in a couple of threads as it's pretty noteworthy:

On the topic of Joplin, this is a video that, while not exactly hard to find, is incredible. One, it demonstrates the dangers of rain-wrapped tornadoes and two, it shows how quickly supercells can turn day into night (it's around 5:45 in the afternoon in this video). It's easy to miss on YouTube due to its title not being very notable and I remember stumbling upon by pear chance back in November of 2011 and it had less than 100 views, I posted it in some threads and on Facebook and then it became pretty popular.

FYI the uploader was the was the driver in the video and he's alive and well, don't worry).

 
Equus said:
The entry for the 1955 MS tornado and a mention in Part A

View attachment 6135
View attachment 6136
Click to expand...

The 2/2/1955 edition of the Decatur Daily has the storms on the front page and subsequent pages. They can be seen online with a subscription to Newspaper Archives.

Keep in mind that into the 1950's Decatur was still the most populated city in North Alabama, though Huntsville passes Decatur by 1960.
 
Two very similar tornado events that I find fascinating (and no one ever seems to make this comparison) are the March 13, 1990 Hesston-Goessel tornadoes and the May 10, 2008 Picher-Neosho tornadoes. As the Hesston tornado weakened, the parent supercell spawned another tornado. The original tornado became a satellite tornado of and was ultimately absorbed into the new tornado which also intensifed to F5 before striking Goessel. Virtually the same scenario happened in 2008. As the Picher, OK tornado weakened, the parent supercell spawned another tornado which the original tornado was absorbed into - the new tornado also intensifed to EF4 before striking Neosho, Missouri.

In cases like these, I have to wonder if had it not been for modern radar and the vast amount of videographers, if these events would have been counted as one tornado rather than two separate ones. In the case of the Tri-State Tornado we'll never know for sure.
 
TH2002 said:
Two very similar tornado events that I find fascinating (and no one ever seems to make this comparison) are the March 13, 1990 Hesston-Goessel tornadoes and the May 10, 2008 Picher-Neosho tornadoes. As the Hesston tornado weakened, the parent supercell spawned another tornado. The original tornado became a satellite tornado of and was ultimately absorbed into the new tornado which also intensifed to F5 before striking Goessel. Virtually the same scenario happened in 2008. As the Picher, OK tornado weakened, the parent supercell spawned another tornado which the original tornado was absorbed into - the new tornado also intensifed to EF4 before striking Neosho, Missouri.

In cases like these, I have to wonder if had it not been for modern radar and the vast amount of videographers, if these events would have been counted as one tornado rather than two separate ones. In the case of the Tri-State Tornado we'll never know for sure.
Click to expand...
Here's a video of Hesston and Goessel merging. Pretty cool stuff:



So last year was the 30th anniversary of the March 13, 1990 Tornado Outbreak. While the Hesston and Goessel, KS F5s are well-known and documented many other tornadoes from that outbreak are not. This link had some pictures and articles of the long-track F4 that went through the area near Lawrence, Nebraska on that day. While officially this is the longest path in Nebraska state history at 124 miles, I'm sure it was actually a tornado family. A ton of newspaper articles I've never seen before on this thing are in the link below:

The March 13, 1990 Tornado Outbreak - 30 Years Later!
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
Here's a video of Hesston and Goessel merging. Pretty cool stuff:



So last year was the 30th anniversary of the March 13, 1990 Tornado Outbreak. While the Hesston and Goessel, KS F5s are well-known and documented many other tornadoes from that outbreak are not. This link had some pictures and articles of the long-track F4 that went through the area near Lawrence, Nebraska on that day. While officially this is the longest path in Nebraska state history at 124 miles, I'm sure it was actually a tornado family. A ton of newspaper articles I've never seen before on this thing are in the link below:

The March 13, 1990 Tornado Outbreak - 30 Years Later!
Click to expand...

I've seen that video, definitely one of the more important tornado videos ever filmed if you ask me.

You are right in that nobody really seems to talk about Lawrence or any of the other tornadoes that touched down during that outbreak. For example an F4 also touched down in Iowa on March 13. Here's some great footage of the Lawrence tornado as it was in the Guide Rock area:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top