Significant Tornado Events

[MNTornadoGuy]

Damage from the March 1953 Knox City TX F4. This large tornado swept away many rural homes with some farms having nothing left on them, severely debarked trees and leveled an 8 block area of Knox City.

 

[locomusic01]

Yooooo! So, I found a large collection of photos a few months ago in a university archive, mostly from the path of the Grand Valley F4 (GV, Orangeville, Tottenham, etc) but also some from the Alma F3 and possibly the Wagner Lake F2. Based on the descriptions they're a mix of aerial survey photos and ground-level shots taken by local news photographers, but the only problem is they're the original 35mm negatives so they're only accessible in person.

Anyway, I called + emailed the library where the collections were held but I never heard anything back, so I'd pretty much written it off.. until today. The librarian just emailed me and said that she's placed the whole batch (five packages in all) in their queue to be digitized. She said it could be a few weeks, which is cutting it awfully close, but I'm so freakin' stoked. I've got a decent collection of photos from the Grand Valley F4 either way but this could be huge.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Yooooo! So, I found a large collection of photos a few months ago in a university archive, mostly from the path of the Grand Valley F4 (GV, Orangeville, Tottenham, etc) but also some from the Alma F3 and possibly the Wagner Lake F2. Based on the descriptions they're a mix of aerial survey photos and ground-level shots taken by local news photographers, but the only problem is they're the original 35mm negatives so they're only accessible in person.

Anyway, I called + emailed the library where the collections were held but I never heard anything back, so I'd pretty much written it off.. until today. The librarian just emailed me and said that she's placed the whole batch (five packages in all) in their queue to be digitized. She said it could be a few weeks, which is cutting it awfully close, but I'm so freakin' stoked. I've got a decent collection of photos from the Grand Valley F4 either way but this could be huge.

Do you think that Barrie or Grand Valley was the strongest Canadian tornado of the outbreak? I know that Barrie produced some high end contextual damage.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Yooooo! So, I found a large collection of photos a few months ago in a university archive, mostly from the path of the Grand Valley F4 (GV, Orangeville, Tottenham, etc) but also some from the Alma F3 and possibly the Wagner Lake F2. Based on the descriptions they're a mix of aerial survey photos and ground-level shots taken by local news photographers, but the only problem is they're the original 35mm negatives so they're only accessible in person.

Anyway, I called + emailed the library where the collections were held but I never heard anything back, so I'd pretty much written it off.. until today. The librarian just emailed me and said that she's placed the whole batch (five packages in all) in their queue to be digitized. She said it could be a few weeks, which is cutting it awfully close, but I'm so freakin' stoked. I've got a decent collection of photos from the Grand Valley F4 either way but this could be huge.

Awesome, if only more places were like this!
Also, I'd love this because there's so many photographs of this thing I'd love to see, in particular the most extreme damage.

 

[locomusic01]

Do you think that Barrie or Grand Valley was the strongest Canadian tornado of the outbreak? I know that Barrie produced some high end contextual damage.

Definitely Barrie IMO. Grand Valley produced multiple swaths of clearly violent damage throughout its path, but Barrie at its peak was almost Niles-Wheatland level. You could make a pretty good case it was the second most intense tornado of the outbreak (although my opinion on that seems to change from day to day lol).

Edit: Actually I should add a caveat. There are two specific places along GV's path where the damage was very intense but I don't have a lot of good photos, which is one of the reasons I'm super excited to see this collection. I'm hoping there are some better shots from those areas somewhere in there.

 

[locomusic01]

Awesome, if only more places were like this!
Also, I'd love this because there's so many photographs of this thing I'd love to see, in particular the most extreme damage.

Yeah, I was very pleasantly surprised. Although maybe I shouldn't speak too soon - the same sort of thing happened with a university that had a collection of photos from Tupelo, and when they sent the first contact sheets they also sent me an absolutely ridiculous quote of like $30 or 40 per photo. That was quite a surprise, too.

Not sure it was worth $40 or whatever but this one was pretty nifty:

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Yeah, I was very pleasantly surprised. Although maybe I shouldn't speak too soon - the same sort of thing happened with a university that had a collection of photos from Tupelo, and when they sent the first contact sheets they also sent me an absolutely ridiculous quote of like $30 or 40 per photo. That was quite a surprise, too.

Not sure it was worth $40 or whatever but this one was pretty nifty:

Oh yeah I remember that one! It never wound up in your article, though.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Definitely Barrie IMO. Grand Valley produced multiple swaths of clearly violent damage throughout its path, but Barrie at its peak was almost Niles-Wheatland level. You could make a pretty good case it was the second most intense tornado of the outbreak (although my opinion on that seems to change from day to day lol).

Edit: Actually I should add a caveat. There are two specific places along GV's path where the damage was very intense but I don't have a lot of good photos, which is one of the reasons I'm super excited to see this collection. I'm hoping there are some better shots from those areas somewhere in there.

What's weird with Barrie is it constantly contracted and re-expanded and went back and forth from F0-F5-F0 within the space of a few miles. Must've not lasted long over the water....

 

[locomusic01]

Oh yeah I remember that one! It never wound up in your article, though.

Holy crap you're right! I never even noticed lol. I gotta remember to add it sometime.

 

[locomusic01]

What's weird with Barrie is it constantly contracted and re-expanded and went back and forth from F0-F5-F0 within the space of a few miles. Must've not lasted long over the water....

The first half of its path (give or take) was actually pretty consistent. The very worst of the damage occurred in a roughly ~3/4 mile stretch from Crawford St. to the raceway area, but it was very intense right from the beginning. It did get a lot more erratic once it climbed up the hill into Allandale and beyond though. Basically widespread F1-F2 with little pockets of F3 and one other brief burst of F4 around Trillium Crescent.

What happened out over Kempenfelt Bay is still a bit of a mystery, although I guess it doesn't ultimately matter much.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

The first half of its path (give or take) was actually pretty consistent. The very worst of the damage occurred in a roughly ~3/4 mile stretch from Crawford St. to the raceway area, but it was very intense right from the beginning. It did get a lot more erratic once it climbed up the hill into Allandale and beyond though. Basically widespread F1-F2 with little pockets of F3 and one other brief burst of F4 around Trillium Crescent.

What happened out over Kempenfelt Bay is still a bit of a mystery, although I guess it doesn't ultimately matter much.

Yeah anytime a tornado tracks over a large body of water like Lake Simcoe or Lake Erie (with Temperance, for instance) there's no way to track the path and there likely won't be any damage except for possibility a boat submerged (not that it'd ever be caught). Barrie's official length is a little over 6 miles but I'm guessing it had many more miles over the water (again, like Temperance) but of course no way to know for sure.
As a side note, is Temperance, MI the longest waterspout track on record? Or are there longer ones? I've always wondered how long a tornado could stay across a large body of water before all the cold air and/or other temperature/condensation differences from the water would destabilize it. Who knows, I guess?

 

[locomusic01]

Yeah anytime a tornado tracks over a large body of water like Lake Simcoe or Lake Erie (with Temperance, for instance) there's no way to track the path and there likely won't be any damage except for possibility a boat submerged (not that it'd ever be caught). Barrie's official length is a little over 6 miles but I'm guessing it had many more miles over the water (again, like Temperance) but of course no way to know for sure.
As a side note, is Temperance, MI the longest waterspout track on record? Or are there longer ones? I've always wondered how long a tornado could stay across a large body of water before all the cold air and/or other temperature/condensation differences from the water would destabilize it. Who knows, I guess?

There have been several strong/violent tornadoes that have traveled considerable distances over large lakes and such, although my brain is giving me 404 errors at the moment. IIRC the 1924 Lorain F4 formed over Sandusky Bay and cut across Lake Erie on its way to Lorain, which must be a good 20 miles or more.

 

[locomusic01]

Oh, speaking of the Temperance F4, I don't remember if I ever posted these. Probably did, but whatever. Some day I gotta see if I can correct the camera shake a little in Photoshop.



Edit: Also, one of the original tornado photos. Unfortunately I didn't see it until it was already too late to buy it so it's watermarked.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Oh, speaking of the Temperance F4, I don't remember if I ever posted these. Probably did, but whatever. Some day I gotta see if I can correct the camera shake a little in Photoshop.



Edit: Also, one of the original tornado photos. Unfortunately I didn't see it until it was already too late to buy it so it's watermarked.

Man, the top (crown?) of that thing looks really nasty; reminds me of Andover and Tuscaloosa. I wonder if this may have actually been the most intense tornado (or 2nd after Flint-Beecher) but because it spent 30+ miles over Lake Erie it failed to do much damage (thankfully). What's amazing is how violent it already was in its few miles on land, it likely had F5 potential.

 

[buckeye05]

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

Yeah when I first drove over there, at first glance, I thought the whole tree line was debarked, only to realize it was just light-colored tree trunks once I got a closer look. While there was a smaller pocket of legitimately violent debarking, it’s so frustrating how literally only one photo of it seems to exist, thanks to NWS Wilmington never posting survey photos. The one I posted yesterday is the only one I know of unfortunately.

 

[locomusic01]

Somebody just emailed me this single picture along with the subject line of "1985 tornado" and nothing else. So that's.. something? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[locomusic01]

Man, the top (crown?) of that thing looks really nasty; reminds me of Andover and Tuscaloosa. I wonder if this may have actually been the most intense tornado (or 2nd after Flint-Beecher) but because it spent 30+ miles over Lake Erie it failed to do much damage (thankfully). What's amazing is how violent it already was in its few miles on land, it likely had F5 potential.

Yeah, Temperance was very likely an F5 in potentia based on some of the descriptions of damage around Temperance and Telegraph(?) roads especially. Homes swept completely away, trees basically stripped down to stumps, ground scouring, vehicles (including semi-trucks) hurled hundreds of yards and demolished, etc. I really need to go back and expand that article someday. Palm Sunday, too.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Somebody just emailed me this single picture along with the subject line of "1985 tornado" and nothing else. So that's.. something? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hmmm, for some reason I'm thinking either Big Beaver or Kane threw a Volkswagen bus hundreds of yards but not entirely sure.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Damage from the 1957 Ruskin Heights tornado:

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Damage from the 1957 Ruskin Heights tornado:
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Check out this thread on it:

'Ruskin Heights' tornado (1957)

- 44 killed (500+ injured) - 71 mile track - Debris spotted at 30,000 feet by pilots flying near the storm - Mail from Grandview, MO was found in Iowa (165 miles away) http://www.flatlandkc.org/news-issues/cover-story/60th-anniversary-ruskin-heights-tornado-kansas-city-missouri/...

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