• Welcome to TalkWeather!
    We see you lurking around TalkWeather! Take the extra step and join us today to view attachments, see less ads and maybe even join the discussion.
    CLICK TO JOIN TALKWEATHER

Significant Tornado Events

TH2002 said:
As promised, here is some of the Super Outbreak stuff I've come across lately

Some assorted shots from Hackleburg and Phil Campbell
15956

View attachment 14502
View attachment 14504

The Rainsville property where the ground covering a storm shelter was scoured away, partially exposing it
View attachment 14499
In-ground-shelter-where-a-family-in-Rainsville-survived-as-an-EF-5-destroyed-their-home.png

View-of-Rainsville-residents-home-location-at-the-time-of-our-interview-July-2011-In.png


Mangled pickup truck from Tuscaloosa
View attachment 14501

Cherokee Valley Rd in Ringgold
Click to expand...
Hasn’t Ringgold been speculated as a potential EF5 candidate?
 
locomusic01 said:
I've been thinking a bit about what's next, but instead of narrowing down my options I've unsurprisingly ended up going in the opposite direction. I remembered that I'd started doing a bit of research on the May 19-21, 1957 outbreak sequence, which is really intriguing to me. Obviously Ruskin Heights is historic (and probably a bit underrated), but several of the other tornadoes were quite violent as well. IIRC, Grazulis tagged all three of the F4s (Concordia, KS; Rush City, MN; Fremont, MO) as "near-F5." Concordia also had a bunch of fairly significant satellites, which is pretty neat.

I've also wanted to tackle the 6/23/44 Appalachians outbreak for a long time. I've got quite a bit of material collected on Shinnston and Wellsburg-Chartiers and at least a little bit on the others, including the violent Belmont, WI F4 the day before. Feels like that might end up being a bigger project than I wanna take on right now though. Same deal with the 4/26/91 and 3/23/13 outbreaks.

Kinda like the idea of just focusing on a single tornado so I don't have to invest another full year into one article, but that really limits my options. Plainfield could be interesting and wouldn't be a huge project, I guess. New Richmond? Fergus Falls? Lubbock? I'm driving myself crazy already lol
Click to expand...
Barneveld. Perhaps you wind up digging up an actual photo of the thing? Who knows?

EDIT: Actually, do the Redding Fire Tornado. There already exists a detailed write up on the Camp Fire later that year, and I kinda wanna see a Carr Fire article of similar or better quality. (Also because I watched the Storm Stories: The Next Chapter episode about it)
 
Last edited:
Lake Martin EF4 said:
Barneveld. Perhaps you wind up digging up an actual photo of the thing? Who knows?
Click to expand...
Probably no photos exist of Barneveld since it struck in the middle of the night and essentially without warning. I do think it deserves to be covered, though. It was part of a fairly large outbreak but only a few were strong tornadoes. Another option I considered is the 5/31/47 Leedey F5, which would be pretty quick and easy, but I've already posted a bunch of stuff on it here and I'm not sure there's really that much more to add. Maybe Fargo? Lubbock?

I should just do the obvious thing and start with Blackwell-Udall. Or, y'know, take a break for a few days and stop driving myself nuts. Anyway, I'll figure it out eventually - I'm done rambling/whining. Probably. Maybe not.
 
locomusic01 said:
Probably no photos exist of Barneveld since it struck in the middle of the night and essentially without warning. I do think it deserves to be covered, though. It was part of a fairly large outbreak but only a few were strong tornadoes. Another option I considered is the 5/31/47 Leedey F5, which would be pretty quick and easy, but I've already posted a bunch of stuff on it here and I'm not sure there's really that much more to add. Maybe Fargo? Lubbock?

I should just do the obvious thing and start with Blackwell-Udall. Or, y'know, take a break for a few days and stop driving myself nuts. Anyway, I'll figure it out eventually - I'm done rambling/whining. Probably. Maybe not.
Click to expand...
1944 WV outbreak could be another anomalous event to cover, but given you just did that might wanna do something else. Also, TornadoTalk has a pretty thorough article on it that may be hard to top lol.
Hudsonville, MI could be another single tornado article, Sneed, AR maybe (although might be hard to find info on that one). Brandon, MS would be good too for underrated events. Candlestick Park is another one that it's hard to find photographs of the worst-effected areas, who knows what you could dig up?
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
1944 WV outbreak could be another anomalous event to cover, but given you just did that might wanna do something else. Also, TornadoTalk has a pretty thorough article on it that may be hard to top lol.
Hudsonville, MI could be another single tornado article, Sneed, AR maybe (although might be hard to find info on that one). Brandon, MS would be good too for underrated events. Candlestick Park is another one that it's hard to find photographs of the worst-effected areas, who knows what you could dig up?
Click to expand...
Pretty sure they've already covered like every tornado ever, so I'm not really worried about that. Hudsonville's really high on my list but I wouldn't wanna do it without also covering the rest of the outbreak. There were like a dozen other tornadoes/tornado families that warrant attention. Same deal w/the Brandon outbreak (which is.. a lot). Candlestick Park could be a good option though.
 
locomusic01 said:
Pretty sure they've already covered like every tornado ever, so I'm not really worried about that. Hudsonville's really high on my list but I wouldn't wanna do it without also covering the rest of the outbreak. There were like a dozen other tornadoes/tornado families that warrant attention. Same deal w/the Brandon outbreak (which is.. a lot). Candlestick Park could be a good option though.
Click to expand...

TornadoTalk hasn't covered 1884 Enigma yet, or a lot of the 1896 outbreak sequence. Or Great Natchez 1840. Or the 1908 Dixie Outbreak. Or April 1920. Or March 1932. Or Glazier-Higgins-Woodward. Or Hudsonville, surprisingly enough. Or.... you get the idea. You could beat them to the punch on lots of things lol.
Yeah, I forgot about Brandon being part of a larger outbreak but you could just focus on the 6 F4s from that day, I suppose.
Smithfield 1977 would be another good one, as there wasn't much of a larger outbreak associated with it (I'd love to find photographs of the dump trucks it carried off the ridge).
The 1998 Florida outbreak is definitely another anomalous event that deserves more attention.
Probably should just take a rest from writing novel-sized articles for awhile lol.
 
Last edited:
locomusic01 said:
I don't even know what to do with myself now that it's done. Kinda having a mild existential crisis.

ricky bobby idk GIF
Click to expand...
That's a normal recovery phase after such intensive effort. It'll pass, and then you'll see the ways this thing has helped you grow as a writer and an individual. Sounds trite, but it's a real thing and quite nice to experience. Just go with the flow.

And then after some time, you'll get a little restless, get curious about something, and suddenly there you are, deep in another project. :)

I'll mention this on Wordpress, too, but congrats on bringing that event to life on so many levels. Thanks for sharing it with us all!
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
"The Worst of the Worst" lol. Grazulis should come up with a similar category.
Click to expand...
Oh, yeah - another idea that I jotted down but never really did anything with. It's kinda what it sounds like but not quite:

April 11, 1965. April 3, 1974. April 27, 2011. To produce the most massive, devastating outbreaks of all time takes atmospheric conditions that are nearly ideal for producing destructive tornadoes. Not surprisingly, these super outbreaks are often associated with some of the most violent tornadoes on record.

Naturally, this begs the question: how bad can things really get? What's the worst that these environments — virtually fine-tuned for violence — can actually produce? To find out, let's take a look at some of the most extraordinary outbreaks in history and examine the strongest tornadoes from each.
Click to expand...
I've always wanted to do some variation of a "strongest tornadoes" list, but I don't think you can really objectively rank them like that, so this was one of my ideas for approaching it from a slightly different angle.

bjdeming said:
That's a normal recovery phase after such intensive effort. It'll pass, and then you'll see the ways this thing has helped you grow as a writer and an individual. Sounds trite, but it's a real thing and quite nice to experience. Just go with the flow.

And then after some time, you'll get a little restless, get curious about something, and suddenly there you are, deep in another project. :)

I'll mention this on Wordpress, too, but congrats on bringing that event to life on so many levels. Thanks for sharing it with us all!
Click to expand...
Thank you, BJ! That's sage advice, although I think "restless" may just be my natural state.
 
SouthFLwx said:
Hasn’t Ringgold been speculated as a potential EF5 candidate?
Click to expand...
I have no doubt Ringgold reached EF5 strength, and as Max pointed out on his site it would have undoubtedly achieved F5 back in 1974.

All of the homes on Cherokee Valley Rd were apparently poorly constructed, and most of them were in fact on unreinforced block foundations, though at least two (unanchored?) slab homes were also swept away there. I have not been able to find close up photos of the slab homes though.

Ringgold did also sweep away a large brick home in Apison that was on a CMU foundation, but sustained total loss of its anchored subflooring, nearby trees were severely debarked and the foundation itself stayed largely intact. I could see an argument for EF5 for that one home considering Rainsville, though there is zero chance it would be considered for an EF5 rating these days.
 
locomusic01 said:
I've been thinking a bit about what's next, but instead of narrowing down my options I've unsurprisingly ended up going in the opposite direction. I remembered that I'd started doing a bit of research on the May 19-21, 1957 outbreak sequence, which is really intriguing to me. Obviously Ruskin Heights is historic (and probably a bit underrated), but several of the other tornadoes were quite violent as well. IIRC, Grazulis tagged all three of the F4s (Concordia, KS; Rush City, MN; Fremont, MO) as "near-F5." Concordia also had a bunch of fairly significant satellites, which is pretty neat.

I've also wanted to tackle the 6/23/44 Appalachians outbreak for a long time. I've got quite a bit of material collected on Shinnston and Wellsburg-Chartiers and at least a little bit on the others, including the violent Belmont, WI F4 the day before. Feels like that might end up being a bigger project than I wanna take on right now though. Same deal with the 4/26/91 and 3/23/13 outbreaks.

Kinda like the idea of just focusing on a single tornado so I don't have to invest another full year into one article, but that really limits my options. Plainfield could be interesting and wouldn't be a huge project, I guess. New Richmond? Fergus Falls? Lubbock? I'm driving myself crazy already lol
Click to expand...
Would LOVE to see Brandenburg Ky 1974
 
So I was just looking through my files and whatnot and I found the Blackwell-Udall map that I totally forgot I made a while back. It's pretty rough, especially outside of those towns, but it kinda reminds me of the Greensburg family (the tornadoes were probably both wider than I have here at some points). The other interesting thing is, were there really only two tornadoes? There were a few rural homes destroyed roughly around the red mark here [edit: I marked the wrong area - it should be a little further north near the branch in the river], including one in which five kids were killed. The green mark is Udall. As you might be able to tell, that doesn't exactly line up. What's even more confusing is that there's a town (Oxford) south of the red mark that doesn't seem to have been hit, so.. wtf?

6SMCyVJ.png


I never did the deaths for Udall at the time (obviously, there were a LOT of them), but I did for Blackwell:

ylcIsb3.png
 
CalebRoutt said:
Would LOVE to see Brandenburg Ky 1974
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'd really like to do Brandenburg too (I've got a fair bit of stuff on it), but I've never liked the idea of doing a single tornado from a major outbreak. For anyone who listens to the Hardcore History podcast, Dan Carlin often says he's addicted to context - I think I have the same problem. I guess I'm gonna have to get over it eventually though, otherwise there are a LOT of tornadoes I'll never realistically be able to cover.
 
There's a BAMS article from the year after the event that attempts to reconstruct the Blackwell-Udall paths, but something tells me it may not be quite accurate lol

FXcdC1S.png


I mean, we've seen tornadoes take profoundly weird paths like that before (lookin' at you, Jordan '76) so I suppose anything's possible, but I'm a little bit skeptical of squiggles. More often than not it's an indication of multiple tornadoes being lumped together, especially in this era where tornado families and cyclical supercells weren't really well-understood.
 
A Guy said:
I has this sketch map from somewhere too:

View attachment 14505
Click to expand...
Yeah, that squiggly section there is where things get really wonky. I'm also more than a little skeptical that the Udall tornado would've just abruptly curved sharply to the right like that. IIRC Grazulis suggested the damage there was probably downbursts, which makes me wonder whether the tornado actually continued north or even northwest beyond town. From what I found last time I did some quick digging, it doesn't seem like there was really any effort to look for a continuation of the damage path out that way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top