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zvl5316

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Considering the tornadoes ignored by official statistics and the significant tornado/weak tornado ratio from careful statistics of NWS, my guestimate is there are on average about 100 tornadoes in China a year in 21th century. Considering the significant decreasing trend of number of tornadoes in China, I guestimate there might be on average about 200 tornadoes and 1 violent tornado a year in China from 1950 to 2000.
 
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eric11

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Two tough day, AT LEAST A DOZEN OF tornado was confirmed by Chinese Weather Bureau and other sources, and the number is still counting, including the two killer Shengze EF3 and Wuhan EF2(which is very likely to be upgraded to EF3).Keep hearing fatalities from other affected area, so the death toll and injuries may keep rising....This is the worst tornado event since Funing EF4 nation wide and may be one of the strongest tornado outbreak in China since a decade ...
I surveyed the damage in Shengze yesterday, the tornado landed on a farmland and then went directly into downtown Shengze.It only lasted several minutes and covered a short path around 1.25 mi, 80-100 yrd wide according to local survey team (Me and my friend use GE and drones to estimated the path was actually a little bit longer, around 1.5-1.7 mi, though extremely short for tornadoes with such strength).There're more survey teams arriving today so let's see if there's any updates.Me and my friend took a lot of photographs and use drones to investigate and flim the damage path(which I think it's the first time in Chinese history to use a drone filming such high-quality videos during tornado damage survey).I'll update the photos I've taken here and on Twitter, as well as other tornadoes during the outbreak.
 

MNTornadoGuy

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Two tough day, AT LEAST A DOZEN OF tornado was confirmed by Chinese Weather Bureau and other sources, and the number is still counting, including the two killer Shengze EF3 and Wuhan EF2(which is very likely to be upgraded to EF3).Keep hearing fatalities from other affected area, so the death toll and injuries may keep rising....This is the worst tornado event since Funing EF4 nation wide and may be one of the strongest tornado outbreak in China since a decade ...
I surveyed the damage in Shengze yesterday, the tornado landed on a farmland and then went directly into downtown Shengze.It only lasted several minutes and covered a short path around 1.25 mi, 80-100 yrd wide according to local survey team (Me and my friend use GE and drones to estimated the path was actually a little bit longer, around 1.5-1.7 mi, though extremely short for tornadoes with such strength).There're more survey teams arriving today so let's see if there's any updates.Me and my friend took a lot of photographs and use drones to investigate and flim the damage path(which I think it's the first time in Chinese history to use a drone filming such high-quality videos during tornado damage survey).I'll update the photos I've taken here and on Twitter, as well as other tornadoes during the outbreak.

Wow that is an extremely impressive outbreak for China. Also do you know what DI got the Shengze tornado rated as a prelim EF3?
 
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So, I couldn't fit the US and Canadian portions into the same screengrab, but the map's starting to fill in a bit. Obviously still need to add a number of tornadoes, and some of them here are still a WIP, but it's getting there. What a fascinating and bizarre collection of tracks, though:

View attachment 9583

View attachment 9584

Sweet, you picked one of my choices :)

I've always been fascinated by this outbreak due to the improbability of it occurring at all, especially in the Great Lakes region. One thing I wonder is if there was any violent tornadoes that touched down directly on the Great Lakes and spent all their life over water and thus were never recorded as there wouldn't be any tracks to easily verify.
Getty images has some photographs of the Grand Valley and Barrie F4 damage; the majority aren't that impressive but there's a handful of real instances violent damage (either the result of a narrow core or suction vortex) that can be found in some of them.

Also, will your entry go into detail about the circumstances that led to this event? I'm still not quite sure how it all transpired, since it seems to be a freak occurrence that likely won't happen again any time soon.
 
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andyhb

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Yeah with that kind of grass scouring, I find it highly unlikely that the Laramie tornado was only an EF3. While this tornado was slow-moving, there wasn’t really any significant debris loading to speak of, yet it left only bare soil in some areas. That’s impressive.
Have a friend who surveyed it, he is convinced it was at least EF4 because of this.
 

eric11

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Wow that is an extremely impressive outbreak for China. Also do you know what DI got the Shengze tornado rated as a prelim EF3?
I've heard that one of the EF3 points was given to this debarked hardwood tree I photoed.One of my friends showed them the pic, they discussed several minutes later and decided to attain an EF3 rating, but they also mentioned the incongruity between the tree and the contextual damage, I don't know how to explain this, it's pretty weird. Maybe it was hit by some nasty subvortices?
IMG_20210516_124337.jpg
IMG_20210515_113143.jpg
I believe there were other EF3-level damage since I wasn't able to cover the whole path on the ground. Our drones took a pic of maybe a leveled two story house at the beginning of the path.Some clean might already have been done but we're not sure about that.
1621136161933.jpg
 

locomusic01

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Sweet, you picked one of my choices :)

I've always been fascinated by this outbreak due to the improbability of it occurring at all, especially in the Great Lakes region. One thing I wonder is if there was any violent tornadoes that touched down directly on the Great Lakes and spent all their life over water and thus were never recorded as there wouldn't be any tracks to easily verify.
Getty images has some photographs of the Grand Valley and Barrie F4 damage; the majority aren't that impressive but there's a handful of real instances violent damage (either the result of a narrow core or suction vortex) that can be found in some of them.

Also, will your entry go into detail about the circumstances that led to this event? I'm still not quite sure how it all transpired, since it seems to be a freak occurrence that likely won't happen any time soon.
I wanna save the photos for my article, but the Barrie tornado produced some really impressive damage. Grand Valley maybe a little less so, but I haven't really gotten too deep into that tornado yet besides getting the path down. Both definitely deserving of violent ratings though.

Some of the "weaker" OH/PA tornadoes may have deserved violent ratings too, IMO. I'd never really paid much attention to many of them, but some were pretty damn impressive.

Honestly, I'm super excited about this one. I thought it might be hard to track down survivors in some of these areas, but I've literally already talked to like 50+ people. It's actually been kinda overwhelming lol

By circumstances, you mean the meteorology of it? If so, yeah, it's pretty fascinating and obviously very unusual. I think that's an important aspect of the story.
 

MNTornadoGuy

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I've heard that one of the EF3 points was given to this debarked hardwood tree I photoed.One of my friends showed them the pic, they discussed several minutes later and decided to attain an EF3 rating, but they also mentioned the incongruity between the tree and the contextual damage, I don't know how to explain this, it's pretty weird. Maybe it was hit by some nasty subvortices?
View attachment 9587
View attachment 9586
I believe there were other EF3-level damage since I wasn't able to cover the whole path on the ground. Our drones took a pic of maybe a leveled two story house at the beginning of the path.Some clean might already have been done but we're not sure about that.
View attachment 9588
Well considering that the tornado wasn’t very large (~100 yards at max) it is a likely that the isolated debarked hardwood trees were due to extremely narrow brief sub-vortices. Another possibility is that the trees were unhealthy.
 
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Well considering that the tornado wasn’t very large (~100 yards at max) it is a likely that the isolated debarked hardwood trees were due to extremely narrow brief sub-vortices. Another possibility is that the trees were unhealthy.
It reminds me of the debarked tree at Canton Lake 2011 that was right next to a ton of trees that weren't debarked, perhaps an extremely narrow and brief subvortex hit it and dissipated before hitting anything else.
 
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I wanna save the photos for my article, but the Barrie tornado produced some really impressive damage. Grand Valley maybe a little less so, but I haven't really gotten too deep into that tornado yet besides getting the path down. Both definitely deserving of violent ratings though.

Some of the "weaker" OH/PA tornadoes may have deserved violent ratings too, IMO. I'd never really paid much attention to many of them, but some were pretty damn impressive.

Honestly, I'm super excited about this one. I thought it might be hard to track down survivors in some of these areas, but I've literally already talked to like 50+ people. It's actually been kinda overwhelming lol

By circumstances, you mean the meteorology of it? If so, yeah, it's pretty fascinating and obviously very unusual. I think that's an important aspect of the story.
Yes, the meteorology of it is fascinating.

Also they apparently discovered another F1 tornado that touched down in Ontario after 8 PM that was lost in the initial documentation of the event. https://www.theweathernetwork.com/c...85-outbreak-how-a-lost-14th-tornado-was-found
 
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eric11

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Well considering that the tornado wasn’t very large (~100 yards at max) it is a likely that the isolated debarked hardwood trees were due to extremely narrow brief sub-vortices. Another possibility is that the trees were unhealthy.
Actually, I think both are reasonable assumptions.I checked the bark closely and noticed they're tiny bug holes on it.It really interesting to see a severely debarked tree standing in an unharmed forest.
What convinced me of its EF3 rating is that this wasn't the only debarked tree. ~50 yards south of it, another portions of severe tree damage was discovered, these trees are the same species
This healthy tree was snapped into half and severely debarked
IMG_20210516_131505.jpg
This, uh.....I don't know how to describe it
IMG_20210516_131620.jpg
It looks as if the tree was striken by lightning. Actually, it was twisted by extreme wind direction change at very low ground level
IMG_20210516_131715.jpgIMG_20210516_131726.jpg
The tornado looks like having cheery-picking several trees to annihilate, while left the rest mostly intact.
 

MNTornadoGuy

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Actually, I think both are reasonable assumptions.I checked the bark closely and noticed they're tiny bug holes on it.It really interesting to see a severely debarked tree standing in an unharmed forest.
What convinced me of its EF3 rating is that this wasn't the only debarked tree. ~50 yards south of it, another portions of severe tree damage was discovered, these trees are the same species
This healthy tree was snapped into half and severely debarked
View attachment 9589
This, uh.....I don't know how to describe it
View attachment 9591
It looks as if the tree was striken by lightning. Actually, it was twisted by extreme wind direction change at very low ground level
View attachment 9592View attachment 9593
The tornado looks like having cheery-picking several trees to annihilate, while left the rest mostly intact.
The way the tree snapped is typical of unhealthy trees.
 

eric11

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Preliminary survey results from the May 14-15th severe weather outbreak in China. Already 13 confirmed tornadoes and 15 suspected tornadoes in total. Considering the shortage of survey teams and most tornadoes occurred in rural areas, the final number will keep rising in comingdays. Map plotted by my friend. (ID:shear)
-690f6b1acb3497d3.jpg
There're only 3 official tornado survey teams in China, so it's extremely difficult to figure out the exact strength, width and total number of tornadoes. We collected information from different platform like Tiktok and Weibo to help us get close enough to the true number of this outbreak. Anyway it's the largest and worst severe weather/tornado outbreak in Cina for a while.
 

MNTornadoGuy

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Preliminary survey results from the May 14-15th severe weather outbreak in China. Already 13 confirmed tornadoes and 15 suspected tornadoes in total. Considering the shortage of survey teams and most tornadoes occurred in rural areas, the final number will keep rising in comingdays. Map plotted by my friend. (ID:shear)
View attachment 9594
There're only 3 official tornado survey teams in China, so it's extremely difficult to figure out the exact strength, width and total number of tornadoes. We collected information from different platform like Tiktok and Weibo to help us get close enough to the true number of this outbreak. Anyway it's the largest and worst severe weather/tornado outbreak in Cina for a while.
Wow that's an pretty large tornado outbreak for China. Were there any possible significant tornadoes from 5/15?
 

zvl5316

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Does anyone know if any significant tornadoes have been recorded in Tibet?
There have been some accounts of tornadoes on Tibet Plateau including Tibet autonomous region, Qinghai Province and parts of Sichuan Province and Gansu Province. Some of the recorded tornadoes happened at the altitude of 4000+m or even 5000+m. There was even a killer tornado on the altitude of ~3300m in Qinghai in 1982 which is definitely the highest killer tornado in the world.
However, the only video account is only a funnel above Damxung, Tibet on July 1, 2017:
 
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So, this appears to be the piece of literature wherein Bridge Creek-Moore was referred to as "minimal F5".


Perhaps this stuff was typed relatively early after the tornado happened and there wasn't much time for a thorough analysis of the damage survey yet, but it's ridiculous how errors like this still remain in the literature decades after the fact. I mean, nothing about this tornado strikes me as "minimal" in the least.
 

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Super random and probably a long shot, but does anyone happen to have contact info for Greg Forbes? If so, please PM me rather than posting publicly. I used to have his email address at one point but I seem to have lost it and I can't for the life of me recall who gave it to me.
 
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