I held off on that for now because I'm waiting to hear from a couple people who lived in that general area. I'm hoping someone might be able to give me some more info on it, but if not I'll probably just add it. I'm reasonably confident in it anyway.
Will any of these have the ability to be downloaded into Google Earth in a kml file?Okay, so I think this will probably be the final version of my outbreak map. It doesn't include the Leamington, ON F0 and the Tobyhanna, PA F1 because they were apparently ridiculously tiny + I didn't really find enough info to map them anyway. It does include the two undocumented tracks I'm most confident in though (listed as F?), which would make a total of 46 tornadoes - 32 in the US and 14 in Canada. All 91 fatalities are also included along with their names - 79 in the US and 12 in Canada. Of the US deaths, 67 were in PA and 12 were in Ohio.
Another cool thing I didn't realize before: you can click on each tornado track to see its total area. Not surprisingly, Moshannon is by far the largest at 63.1 mi². In fact, the next closest is Atlantic at "only" 33.1 mi². Despite being ~42 mi long, Niles-Wheatland only encompasses 7.5 mi² because much of the path was quite narrow.
May 31, 1985 — The United States - Canada Outbreak - Google My Maps
May 31, 1985 — The United States - Canada Outbreakwww.google.com
There are no photos of the Estill tornado.
Wow, you'd have thought there would be something. Lots of folks (well at least some) would have been up at 6AM and darn near everyone has a cellphone camera now. Whole different area of my State so I'd have no idea of who to ask there.
I'm sure there is, just a matter of digging them up somewhere.
Ahhh. Of course. Such is the story of tornadoes past midnight and before sunrise, it seems.
No, no, Estill was at 3 AM. Only insommniacs are usually up at that hour and everyone who was woken up by sirens was probably a lot more busy either running for shelter or getting killed.
Hmmm... the Wikipedia article said touchdown was 6:10 AM with a duration of 27 minutes. If it was 3AM then yeah, pics would be unlikely. If anyone has Wikipedia editing access maybe they can fix it in both the "Estill" and "Nixville" pages.
Yeah, sure:
It is certainly comparable with Greensburg in similar intensity IMO.
11 years ago today - here's some lesser seen footage. May 20 was also the 9th anniversary of the Moore tornado.
These next two videos are particularly frightening; filmed in the parking lot of St. John's, so this guy was EXTREMELY lucky.
His Chevy Blazer lost all its windows, the luggage rack and tail lights, but still fared well compared to other vehicles parked nearby:
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Homes that were swept from their foundations:
An incredibly violent tornado going through a densely populated area is obviously never going to end well, but Joplin was truly a worst-case scenario compounded by confusing, mixed signals and the storm's rain-wrapped nature. There was little many of those in the path could have done, and that's the worst part.
May those who were lost 11 years ago R.I.P.
It’s pretty interesting how it just went from total annihilation to minor damage in only 1-3 miles.
It looks like utter desolation.
I've never heard anyone not agree that this was the most damage-intense tornado ever, and the slow ground speed absolutely played a role in that. As I understand it, at some parts of it's path it was moving at only 3-5 MPH; something like a fast walking or jogging pace. It moved faster after Double Creek but the 1-3 miles took much longer than what we normally see, so I can understand how the weakening would seem quick- only it really wasn't.
