Significant Tornado Events

[MNTornadoGuy]

i love how pembroke was an EF5 candidate lmao. could you image if the first ef5 in 8 years was a short track in south eastern Georgia that swept away two random house's in a small subdivision.

Pembroke was not an EF5 candidate, the contextual damage near the homes or anywhere along the path was not high-end.

 

[tornado examiner]

it WAS high end. just not THAT high end....

 

[buckeye05]

large well built anchor bolted concrete foundation homes swept clean often means its an EF5 candidate before further analysis is done. aka looking at contextual damage and potential construction flaws.

That’s not how surveys work. As I’m sure you’ve seen, the survey team starts with the expected damage (a clean slab’s expected damage is technically EF4) then increases or decreases the rating as more analysis takes place, and construction and context details are examined. Starting with an assumption of EF5 would be working backwards.

Plus, the lack of extreme contextual damage from Pembroke/Black Creek ruled out EF5 from the very start. You have to consider contextual discrepancy when analyzing damage.

 

[tornado examiner]

the arabi tornado and jacksboro tornado now have there damage aerials up on google earth pro. i dont know if any others have yet.

edit: also round rock is up.

 

[locomusic01]

I swear this is so cruel it's almost worse than no photo at all:

This is one of a series of shots a man took of the Saegertown tornado as it was passing south of Centerville, likely right around the time it was causing its two fatalities. I've looked all over for better versions and have come up empty so far. I do have a few better photos of the tornado, but they were taken further west by someone else.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

I swear this is so cruel it's almost worse than no photo at all:

This is one of a series of shots a man took of the Saegertown tornado as it was passing south of Centerville, likely right around the time it was causing its two fatalities. I've looked all over for better versions and have come up empty so far. I do have a few better photos of the tornado, but they were taken further west by someone else.

I guess it was scanned from a newspaper?
Are there any program that would allow you to make the image clearer or colorize it?

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

I guess it was scanned from a newspaper?
Are there any program that would allow you to make the image clearer or colorize it?

No image editor could restore a photo that bad.

 

[locomusic01]

I guess it was scanned from a newspaper?
Are there any program that would allow you to make the image clearer or colorize it?

Yeah, it's from the Titusville Herald. I assume the scan was really poor and the original print didn't look quite so bad, but maybe that's just the way it was. I could probably clean it up a tiny bit but I don't think there's anything you can do to bring out detail that just isn't there. The guy who took the photos is named in the caption but that ended up being another dead end, which sucks out loud.

 

[Lake Martin EF4]

I swear this is so cruel it's almost worse than no photo at all:

Press F.

Also, are these fairly accurate for cell paths? I already know the Centerville and Thompson Run cells are wrong (I thought Thompson Run was a different cell from Centerville based on a few close together F3 tracks one of which seemed to be in just the right direction), but are the others correct?

 

[locomusic01]

Press F.

Also, are these fairly accurate for cell paths? I already know the Centerville and Thompson Run cells are wrong (I thought Thompson Run was a different cell from Centerville based on a few close together F3 tracks one of which seemed to be in just the right direction), but are the others correct?

View attachment 13833

You'd think so, right? But in reality things get pretty wiggy because there are two distinct lines of supercells (kinda three actually), each of which featured some pretty deviant motions and probably some messy cell mergers and whatnot. So it turns out, for example, that Niles-Wheatland and Moshannon are separate cells - the Moshannon supercell formed almost over near the PA-OH-WV border and drifted northeastward, coming pretty close to the Atlantic cell before moving more eastward and producing Moshannon -> Elimsport -> Drums/Freeland.

The Niles-Wheatland cell formed over toward Akron and only produced Niles-Wheatland -> Dotter -> Emlenton (the latter two being more or less simultaneous).

The Atlantic cell looks about right, although it started further west and produced Mesopotamia -> Atlantic -> Tionesta -> Lamont.

The whole Centerville area is kind of a mess because there was so much going on. Based on timing and satellite, my best guess is that the main cell there produced Linesville -> Saegertown -> Thompson Run -> undocumented tornado near Clarendon and a smaller cell to the south produced Centerville before merging/weakening/dissipating.

Oh, and another rogue cell seems to have developed in between the Albion and Linesville/Saegertown cells and spit out the Dorset F2. Or I suppose it's also possible the Dorset cell produced Saegertown etc. and the Linesville cell produced Centerville? Not quite as clean of a fit but still plausible.

Like I said, pretty wiggy.

 

[Lake Martin EF4]

You'd think so, right? But in reality things get pretty wiggy because there are two distinct lines of supercells (kinda three actually), each of which featured some pretty deviant motions and probably some messy cell mergers and whatnot. So it turns out, for example, that Niles-Wheatland and Moshannon are separate cells - the Moshannon supercell formed almost over near the PA-OH-WV border and drifted northeastward, coming pretty close to the Atlantic cell before moving more eastward and producing Moshannon -> Elimsport -> Drums/Freeland.

The Niles-Wheatland cell formed over toward Akron and only produced Niles-Wheatland -> Dotter -> Emlenton (the latter two being more or less simultaneous).

The Atlantic cell looks about right, although it started further west and produced Mesopotamia -> Atlantic -> Tionesta -> Lamont.

The whole Centerville area is kind of a mess because there was so much going on. Based on timing and satellite, my best guess is that the main cell there produced Linesville -> Saegertown -> Thompson Run -> undocumented tornado near Clarendon and a smaller cell to the south produced Centerville before merging/weakening/dissipating.

Oh, and another rogue cell seems to have developed in between the Albion and Linesville/Saegertown cells and spit out the Dorset F2. Or I suppose it's also possible the Dorset cell produced Saegertown etc. and the Linesville cell produced Centerville? Not quite as clean of a fit but still plausible.

Like I said, pretty wiggy.

Note that the Albion-Corry cell has been cut a bit short - I do not know if the Jamestown tornado was produced by this cell. I am, however, fairly certain that Salem and Beaver Falls were the same cell.

EDIT: Also wondering if Tidioute and Kane were the same cell as well.

 

[locomusic01]

Oh, yeah. Albion -> Corry -> Jamestown are all the same family. New Waterford (Salem) -> Beaver Falls and Tidioute -> Kane are also correct. Some of the paths don't quite line up smoothly, but that's pretty typical as mesos occlude and redevelop. The Albion and Atlantic families are actually pretty good illustrations of what Fujita termed "combined mode" families, where supercells transition from producing tornadoes in parallel to producing them in series as they mature.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

The tree damage from the Dayton EF4:

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

When was it considered an EF5 candidate? Not intended to be snarky btw - I'm pretty much out of the loop on any recent events. From the little I saw, my impression was more low-mid EF4, which I think is about where it was rated.

On a related note, that kind of thing is probably more common than we realize. I've been surprised by how many of the tornadoes I've researched strengthened really quickly and reached/neared peak intensity quite early on. We tend to associate stronger tornadoes with longer tracks, but that's at least partly an artifact of sampling bias - longer-tracked storms have more chances to do damage. I'm sure we miss plenty of strong/violent tornadoes that spin up quickly but end up dissipating without hitting much.

I do think most EF4+ strength tornadoes likely reach their peak intensities early on their lives and likely keep them up until the end. Short and long-tracked extreme tornadoes. Smithville is probably the most extreme case of this; it achieved EF4 intensity within literal seconds of touching down.
I also think most tornadoes are at least EF2 strength but fail to hit any DIs capable of registering anything above EF1 damage.

 

[locomusic01]

That reminds me - I'd assumed the Barrie tornado started off fairly weak because you pretty much never see anything about its path outside of town. Turns out that's totally wrong. Within probably 30-60 seconds of touching down, it was snapping and debarking most of the trees in a pine forest plantation, producing a narrow swath of ground scouring and launching at least one vehicle a couple hundred yards. Based on her description, one woman might've literally seen it touching down a few seconds before it tore her house in half.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

So, this is an update from Max of extremeplanet, looks like life has gotten in the way of him posting on the site, but it looks he plans to come back someday.

2022 UPDATE

It’s been seven years since I last posted on ExtremePlanet, yet the number of people who have reached out to me over the years has been remarkable. I am so grateful that my website has reache…

extremeplanet.wordpress.com

 

[locomusic01]

So, this is an update from Max of extremeplanet, looks like life has gotten in the way of him posting on the site, but it looks he plans to come back someday.

2022 UPDATE

It’s been seven years since I last posted on ExtremePlanet, yet the number of people who have reached out to me over the years has been remarkable. I am so grateful that my website has reache…

extremeplanet.wordpress.com

Nice! Was hoping he'd pop up again eventually.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Nice! Was hoping he'd pop up again eventually.

I commented on it and shot him an email about your blog, Tornado Talk and the Talkweather forums; I'll see if he replies.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Seems that area is a general tornado magnet. The amount of times Harvest has been hit (not just by weak tornadoes) is nothing short of astounding in all the wrong ways.


Really does make me wonder, though I say I wouldn't even try to get any sleep if a seemingly endless onslaught of violent tornadoes was impacting my area.


Huh, never occurred to me that it could be something that easily explainable. Feel kinda stupid now.

Also on your last sentence; tornadoes further up north tend to be spawned by high cloud bases, whereas Dixie tornadoes are spawned by low-hanging cloud bases, which possibly contributes to the shape of the condensation funnel.

 

[Equus]

The tree damage from the Dayton EF4:

That first pic looks startlingly intense at first glance but on a little side note looking closer I'm 99% sure the trees that look completely debarked are sycamores, which have naturally whitish back until fully mature (can see the start of mature bark at the bottom of the one right of center and on the right edge) and are super common along waterways in that part of the country; not to take away from the intensity of course, as there are clearly other hardwoods in those pics with some degree of debarking like the one on the left and I see a bunch of them snapped low to the ground