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Significant Tornado Events

Marshal79344 said:
What do you guys think about this list?

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I would list Holly Springs 12/23/2015 (however poorly documented it was by the survey teams) and the 6/28/2018 Camp Crook "EF3" as definite EF5's and all of the Pilger family tornadoes except Wakefield are good EF5 contenders as well (if you had to hold me at one though, Stanton would be my pick).

Might as well also add that I will say it's POSSIBLE Doran MN 6/17/2010 and Henryville 3/2/2012 were EF5s, I feel they definitely were capable of causing damage within the EF5 threshold but I'm a bit on the fence about them overall.
 
TH2002 said:
I would list Holly Springs 12/23/2015 (however poorly documented it was by the survey teams) and the 6/28/2018 Camp Crook "EF3" as definite EF5's and all of the Pilger family tornadoes except Wakefield are good EF5 contenders as well (if you had to hold me at one though, Stanton would be my pick).

Might as well also add that I will say it's POSSIBLE Doran MN 6/17/2010 and Henryville 3/2/2012 were EF5s, I feel they definitely were capable of causing damage within the EF5 threshold but I'm a bit on the fence about them overall.
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Was Holly Springs the real scary looking tornado that has that type of it crossing a highway in Mississippi? I swear that thing could've been rated EF5 based on the monstrous appearance alone.
 
locomusic01 said:
Pittsfield-Strongsville, Lebanon-Sheridan, Kokomo-Greentown and Coldwater Lake-Manitou Beach all have compelling cases as well, to varying degrees. Tbh we should probably just give Coldwater Lake an F5 purely on its monstrous appearance:

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This pic reminds me of Joplin when it grew into a wedge extremely rapidly within touchdown...spooky...
 
Speaking of Holly Springs, here's another one of my "armchair surveys" for that tornado:
Holly-springs-damage-Hoover-Road.png
Southwest of the Lamar Rd vicinity (where the tornado most probably attained peak intensity) a cluster of four homes was destroyed on Hoover Road. The concrete foundation visible at the bottom was probably poured post-tornado for the home that replaced the manufactured one destroyed in the tornado. A mobile home was also destroyed here, along with another home of unknown construction and a fairly large home (at top) built on a concrete slab. Although none of these homes were exceptionally old (the top three weren't there in the 2007 imagery) I can't infer anything else about their construction or the degree of damage each of them incurred. I will say that the fact there is still debris visible on the slab of the home at the top of the photo (three months after the tornado) makes it less likely in my opinion that it was leveled or swept away, but who knows? No need to mention that this area wasn't surveyed by NWS Memphis.

Holly-springs-damage-church-rd.png
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Three homes were destroyed in the Country Church Road vicinity. Three people died in the poorly constructed home visible in the bottom left of the satellite photo and the ground level photo. The body of one of the victims was found a quarter mile away. One home built on a concrete slab was also destroyed (degree of damage unknown) along with a home of unknown construction, although a new home can be seen in its place. Just northeast of this area the Calvary Baptist Church and several outbuildings at an RV business were heavily damaged or destroyed.

Holly-springs-damage-medlock-rd.png
The tornado spent about six and a half miles downing forest and destroying outbuildings before it struck yet another homesite on Medlock Rd, destroying a slab-built home and wiping out several outbuildings (the outbuildings at the bottom center of this photo replace ones that were destroyed in the tornado). This home was very close to the large, verifiably well built home that was given a 170MPH EF4 DI, and ended up being the main basis for the EF4 rating.

This has been said before, but I simply can't put in words how unbelievably half-@ssed MEG's official survey for this historical December tornado was, and it's something I'll never be able to get over. Regardless of its official status though, I can conclude that this tornado was almost certainly an EF5, and hopefully someone like Grazulis can finally give it the recognition it deserves.
 
TH2002 said:
Speaking of Holly Springs, here's another one of my "armchair surveys" for that tornado:
View attachment 15153
Southwest of the Lamar Rd vicinity (where the tornado most probably attained peak intensity) a cluster of four homes was destroyed on Hoover Road. The concrete foundation visible at the bottom was probably poured post-tornado for the home that replaced the manufactured one destroyed in the tornado. A mobile home was also destroyed here, along with another home of unknown construction and a fairly large home (at top) built on a concrete slab. Although none of these homes were exceptionally old (the top three weren't there in the 2007 imagery) I can't infer anything else about their construction or the degree of damage each of them incurred. I will say that the fact there is still debris visible on the slab of the home at the top of the photo (three months after the tornado) makes it less likely in my opinion that it was leveled or swept away, but who knows? No need to mention that this area wasn't surveyed by NWS Memphis.

View attachment 15154
535332

Three homes were destroyed in the Country Church Road vicinity. Three people died in the poorly constructed home visible in the bottom left of the satellite photo and the ground level photo. The body of one of the victims was found a quarter mile away. One home built on a concrete slab was also destroyed (degree of damage unknown) along with a home of unknown construction, although a new home can be seen in its place. Just northeast of this area the Calvary Baptist Church and several outbuildings at an RV business were heavily damaged or destroyed.

View attachment 15158
The tornado spent about six and a half miles downing forest and destroying outbuildings before it struck yet another homesite on Medlock Rd, destroying a slab-built home and wiping out several outbuildings (the outbuildings at the bottom center of this photo replace ones that were destroyed in the tornado). This home was very close to the large, verifiably well built home that was given a 170MPH EF4 DI, and ended up being the main basis for the EF4 rating.

This has been said before, but I simply can't put in words how unbelievably half-@ssed MEG's official survey for this historical December tornado was, and it's something I'll never be able to get over. Regardless of its official status though, I can conclude that this tornado was almost certainly an EF5, and hopefully someone like Grazulis can finally give it the recognition it deserves.
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Yeah, this strikes me as another Vilonia where a survey was deliberately botched so it wouldn't be an EF5.
 
TH2002 said:
Although none of these homes were exceptionally old (the top three weren't there in the 2007 imagery) I can't infer anything else about their construction
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If built to code, anything after about 2005 should have anchor bolts or straps and rafter/truss clips.

The main issue is that localities are who set and adopt building codes as well as enforcing them, so which version is in effect varies as does enforcement. Many of the counties I work in use code versions 2- 5 years behind the times and IIRC anchor bolts/straps plus roofing clips came into the books somewhere around 01- 03. Thus everything after 07 is likely to have them, but the no-code areas will be significant so you can't know for certain without local research.

Phil
 
Sawmaster said:
If built to code, anything after about 2005 should have anchor bolts or straps and rafter/truss clips.

The main issue is that localities are who set and adopt building codes as well as enforcing them, so which version is in effect varies as does enforcement. Many of the counties I work in use code versions 2- 5 years behind the times and IIRC anchor bolts/straps plus roofing clips came into the books somewhere around 01- 03. Thus everything after 07 is likely to have them, but the no-code areas will be significant so you can't know for certain without local research.

Phil
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I remember on the old thread someone posted this PDF of construction codes by state and the consistency of enforcement and AL & MS ranked the worst; Mississippi was like 4/100 on average or something absurd like that, Alabama was 2nd with 17/100 or the like. No wonder so many homes are swept clean in those areas of the country and why tornado fatalities are often higher.
 
Enforcement is the bug-a-boo, varying from strict to the mere formality of a signature on the permit. Often there are no requirements specified for who may be an inspector, or they are so vague that the guy who haul;s off the dumpsters can be construed as having "construction experience". Nepotism or friends in the right places often weights the hiring of officials in this line of work. TBH I'd say that maybe 10%- 15% of the inspectors I've dealt with were truly qualified to do their work so yeah- codes and a building inspection can mean everything or nothing at all.
 
Sawmaster said:
The comments section has a couple people with photos and films in case anyone wants to pursue that.

Phil
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I might; I'm hoping stuff like this happens with other tornadoes, probably quite a few people with videotapes of tornadoes no one knows about because they haven't converted them from camcorder to digital; if they had a motivator to do so that'd be great.
 
The tornado that passed east of Timken, KS on 5/24/2011 is one of the lesser known tornadoes from that outbreak, but it's one I feel was definitely capable of causing major damage and was probably stronger than EF2. Despite remaining in rural areas, this tornado unfortunately claimed two lives and left a third person critically injured when a large tree fell on and crushed a parked car. At least one home also had its roof torn off. Trees were debarked as the tornado crossed Highway 281 south of Great Bend (the debarked trees can be seen at the beginning of this video).

If this tornado didn't make an abrupt left turn and dissipate after crossing the highway, and had it maintained its intensity it would have probably made a direct hit on the western part of town, so I think it's safe to say Great Bend dodged a MAJOR bullet that day.
 
Lake Martin EF4 said:
Slightly unrelated: here's some slightly unnerving video of the Vilonia, AR EF5:


And related to Timken here's the wall cloud. At the end there's just a flood of rain so it looks like this was a rainwrapped tor:


EDIT: absolutely not rainwrapped:
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Need to correct myself: Timken was a different tornado, meant to say the EF2 passed east of Seward. Sadly I don't think there's any footage of the Great Bend tornado, which would make sense if it was rain wrapped.
 
TH2002 said:
Need to correct myself: Timken was a different tornado, meant to say the EF2 passed east of Seward. Sadly I don't think there's any footage of the Great Bend tornado, which would make sense if it was rain wrapped.
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Also thank you you've gotten me sucked down a rabbit hole and now I'm basically just looking for any 4/14/2012 footage I can. Here's the Manchester, OK EF1 that was probably a lot stronger according to velocity:


And the Wichita, KS EF3:
 
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