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Significant Tornado Events



Seems like a Smithville's picture. Not sure whether it had been posted here before.

There was a video from that spot posted on youtube but I cannot find it anymore. They must have pulled it down. They were looking at it as they got into their shelter. The tornado came through about a 1/4 west of that spot but everything there was leveled. I lived in that neighborhood for 4 years and watched a lot of storms come from that direction... they always came from that direction.
 
One last Upper Midwest event I'd like to talk about for now: the April 30, 1936 Iowa-Minnesota tornado outbreak. It has been mentioned in this thread before but I'll elaborate more on the event. The first notable event of this outbreak was the Lake Okoboji IA F4. Cottages and homes along the lake were swept away or completely leveled. This tornado continued through the countryside leveling entire farms before moving through (and dissipating in) Terrace Park where more homes were destroyed. The contextual damage this tornado produced was rather impressive with trees being heavily debarked, cars being thrown up to 330 yards with one Plymouth car being wrapped around a tree, scouring occurred as "two places appeared as if swept by a huge broom. Oats and shelled corn mixed with mud was plastered everywhere." Two people were killed by this tornado.
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2 hours later a much larger and longer-tracked event touched down on the south edge of Estherville IA. 430 ft of railroad track on a bridge in the southern half of Estherville was torn up before this tornado moved into rural areas and begin to rapidly intensify. In the rural areas of Emmet County IA the tornado was extremely violent. Entire farms were swept away with debris being scattered over a wide area, trees were stripped of all but the largest branches and debarked, dirt inches deep was plastered against the walls of one farmhouse, mattresses were carried up to a mile and a half, and cars were thrown. The storm started to weaken as it entered Martin County MN but was still intense enough to level farms including ones that were damaged by another tornado/downburst complex that passed through the county earlier. The tornado dissipated into a downburst complex as it approached Blue Earth MN. 2 people were killed in MN and over 61 were injured in both MN/IA.
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One last Upper Midwest event I'd like to talk about for now: the April 30, 1936 Iowa-Minnesota tornado outbreak. It has been mentioned in this thread before but I'll elaborate more on the event. The first notable event of this outbreak was the Lake Okoboji IA F4. Cottages and homes along the lake were swept away or completely leveled. This tornado continued through the countryside leveling entire farms before moving through (and dissipating in) Terrace Park where more homes were destroyed. The contextual damage this tornado produced was rather impressive with trees being heavily debarked, cars being thrown up to 330 yards with one Plymouth car being wrapped around a tree, scouring occurred as "two places appeared as if swept by a huge broom. Oats and shelled corn mixed with mud was plastered everywhere." Two people were killed by this tornado.
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2 hours later a much larger and longer-tracked event touched down on the south edge of Estherville IA. 430 ft of railroad track on a bridge in the southern half of Estherville was torn up before this tornado moved into rural areas and begin to rapidly intensify. In the rural areas of Emmet County IA the tornado was extremely violent. Entire farms were swept away with debris being scattered over a wide area, trees were stripped of all but the largest branches and debarked, dirt inches deep was plastered against the walls of one farmhouse, mattresses were carried up to a mile and a half, and cars were thrown. The storm started to weaken as it entered Martin County MN but was still intense enough to level farms including ones that were damaged by another tornado/downburst complex that passed through the county earlier. The tornado dissipated into a downburst complex as it approached Blue Earth MN. 2 people were killed in MN and over 61 were injured in both MN/IA.
Couple other photos from this event:

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pjoA6Pa.jpg


dnJosPi.jpg


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What do y’all think is the most notable tornado of 2011? not in terms of damage or what not, but like all the major tornadoes of that year ranked by how shocking and historical they were
 
So, I don't remember if I ever posted this before (I know, that seems to be a running theme here), but Oklahoma was visited by a massive, extremely violent tornado in the spring of 1947. And no, not Woodward. The next month, on May 31, a large section of the town of Leedey was virtually obliterated by a tornado that - according to several people who witnessed both - was actually even more intense than Woodward. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to agree with that, but it's certainly in the same conversation:

First, we'll start with something unusual for that time period: a sequence of photos showing the early stages + strengthening of the tornado itself.

S8EcxyF.jpg


G7UknBy.jpg


The first few homes it encountered were almost entirely flattened. Nearby, an Oldsmobile was thrown into a tree and demolished:

eNhQJXl.jpg


OprYBXD.jpg


ueoB20e.jpg


Needless to say, things escalated rather swiftly from there. After blowing down the town's water tower, the tornado proceeded to absolutely obliterate home after home after home.

2BZ7BFY.jpg


5SlX45L.jpg


B6Aywb8.jpg


UzUDzyg.jpg


n9bJkIc.jpg


OAfp8cY.jpg


RL39LCd.jpg


BwzWv1i.jpg


Two churches and a hotel were destroyed as well:

c0iTx9x.jpg


zFi5zHK.jpg


ZcvlUb6.jpg


JCev8PF.jpg


A number of vehicles were thrown great distances and crumpled into nearly unrecognizable balls, like this one-ton pickup that was parked not far from the Baptist church:

3N7O3c0.jpg


In some areas, the ground was reportedly scoured to a depth of a foot or more. Debris was granulated so badly in the core of the path one person remarked that "at least at Woodward there was debris left." By the time the tornado lifted, it had almost literally erased an entire swath right through the middle of Leedey:

2VvxbTM.jpg
 
So, I don't remember if I ever posted this before (I know, that seems to be a running theme here), but Oklahoma was visited by a massive, extremely violent tornado in the spring of 1947. And no, not Woodward. The next month, on May 31, a large section of the town of Leedey was virtually obliterated by a tornado that - according to several people who witnessed both - was actually even more intense than Woodward. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to agree with that, but it's certainly in the same conversation:

First, we'll start with something unusual for that time period: a sequence of photos showing the early stages + strengthening of the tornado itself.

S8EcxyF.jpg


G7UknBy.jpg


The first few homes it encountered were almost entirely flattened. Nearby, an Oldsmobile was thrown into a tree and demolished:

eNhQJXl.jpg


OprYBXD.jpg


ueoB20e.jpg


Needless to say, things escalated rather swiftly from there. After blowing down the town's water tower, the tornado proceeded to absolutely obliterate home after home after home.

2BZ7BFY.jpg


5SlX45L.jpg


B6Aywb8.jpg


UzUDzyg.jpg


n9bJkIc.jpg


OAfp8cY.jpg


RL39LCd.jpg


BwzWv1i.jpg


Two churches and a hotel were destroyed as well:

c0iTx9x.jpg


zFi5zHK.jpg


ZcvlUb6.jpg


JCev8PF.jpg


A number of vehicles were thrown great distances and crumpled into nearly unrecognizable balls, like this one-ton pickup that was parked not far from the Baptist church:

3N7O3c0.jpg


In some areas, the ground was reportedly scoured to a depth of a foot or more. Debris was granulated so badly in the core of the path one person remarked that "at least at Woodward there was debris left." By the time the tornado lifted, it had almost literally erased an entire swath right through the middle of Leedey:

2VvxbTM.jpg
Leedey was basically if Jarrell went through a town.
 
I was reading on the Tri State tornado of 1925 and it formed in some unusual conditions. Sometimes along its track temperatures were only in the low 60s and dews in the mid 50s. Usually it was in an environment with temps in the mid to upper 60s and dews in the mid 50s to near 60. I wonder how low temps and dews can be in the formation of a violent tornado. There must have been some high SRH, wind shear, and steep mid level lapse rates contributing to high CAPE values on March 18, 1925. https://stormtrack.org/community/th...s-with-f-4-ef-4-and-f-5-e-f5-tornadoes.27344/
 
Speaking of F5 tornadoes, what was probably one of the best candidates for an F5 from the 1870s struck the city of Richmond MO on June 1, 1878. This narrow but extremely violent tornado tore across the most thickly built part of Richmond completely devastating it. Homes were swept away or obliterated with debris being ground down into 1 foot wide fragments, large locust trees were completely debarked, grass was completely scoured from the ground, a large iron bridge was destroyed and gravestones were shattered.



 
So, I don't remember if I ever posted this before (I know, that seems to be a running theme here), but Oklahoma was visited by a massive, extremely violent tornado in the spring of 1947. And no, not Woodward. The next month, on May 31, a large section of the town of Leedey was virtually obliterated by a tornado that - according to several people who witnessed both - was actually even more intense than Woodward. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to agree with that, but it's certainly in the same conversation:

First, we'll start with something unusual for that time period: a sequence of photos showing the early stages + strengthening of the tornado itself.

S8EcxyF.jpg


G7UknBy.jpg


The first few homes it encountered were almost entirely flattened. Nearby, an Oldsmobile was thrown into a tree and demolished:

eNhQJXl.jpg


OprYBXD.jpg


ueoB20e.jpg


Needless to say, things escalated rather swiftly from there. After blowing down the town's water tower, the tornado proceeded to absolutely obliterate home after home after home.

2BZ7BFY.jpg


5SlX45L.jpg


B6Aywb8.jpg


UzUDzyg.jpg


n9bJkIc.jpg


OAfp8cY.jpg


RL39LCd.jpg


BwzWv1i.jpg


Two churches and a hotel were destroyed as well:

c0iTx9x.jpg


zFi5zHK.jpg


ZcvlUb6.jpg


JCev8PF.jpg


A number of vehicles were thrown great distances and crumpled into nearly unrecognizable balls, like this one-ton pickup that was parked not far from the Baptist church:

3N7O3c0.jpg


In some areas, the ground was reportedly scoured to a depth of a foot or more. Debris was granulated so badly in the core of the path one person remarked that "at least at Woodward there was debris left." By the time the tornado lifted, it had almost literally erased an entire swath right through the middle of Leedey:

2VvxbTM.jpg
Yeah, I posted stuff on this thing a while back but at least it's being resurrected in this thread. This thing was surprisingly well documented for the time.

 
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