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Significant Tornado Events

buckeye05 said:
Yeah that’s not the photo unfortunately. The one I saw was apparently a screen capture of some video taken of the tornado. It actually looked like someone took a photo of a tv screen. There were those horizontal “line” artifacts that you get when you take a pic of one of those really old school TVs while they’re on. But saying that it probably wasn’t real because most QLCS are rain wrapped isn’t a fair deduction. It happens more than people realize. In fact, the one that hit my old neighborhood in 2015 had a fully condensed funnel, despite being embedded in a tiny squall line and hardly visible on radar.

But yeah, it was a photo I haven’t seen before of since, looked to be in the right setting, was in an article about that tornado, and labeled specifically mentioning that it was a photo of the Vancouver tornado itself, captured from a brief video that was taken that day. It very much seemed legit to me.
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Later today I'll restart the search. Might go onto r/vancouver and ask if anyone in that subreddit's seen it.
 
locomusic01 said:
Yeah, by all accounts it was an absolute monster. Most sources seem to agree it was at least two miles wide when it tore through Amite, and IIRC the report written by Isaac Cline (of Galveston Hurricane fame) states 2.5 miles. The Mississippi section of the path (very likely one or more separate tornadoes) was more like half a mile.
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Oh! I'd also like to know about that F3 from the Enigma Outbreak which is also on the list.
 
Lake Martin EF4 said:
Oh! I'd also like to know about that F3 from the Enigma Outbreak which is also on the list.
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I dunno why I listed it that way tbh - it's the F4 (possibly F5) that formed south of Cartersville and struck near Cagle, Tate, Jasper and Mount Oglethorpe. The damage swath was actually over three miles wide at times, but some of that was downbursts. The tornado itself may've been up to two miles wide and is notable for having completely swept away what were described as large, well-constructed homes in some of the wealthier areas in the region. IIRC the "official" death toll was around 20 but in reality was probably 30+. Some of the victims were reportedly hurled over half a mile and apparently mile after mile of forest was just obliterated.
 
locomusic01 said:
I dunno why I listed it that way tbh - it's the F4 (possibly F5) that formed south of Cartersville and struck near Cagle, Tate, Jasper and Mount Oglethorpe. The damage swath was actually over three miles wide at times, but some of that was downbursts. The tornado itself may've been up to two miles wide and is notable for having completely swept away what were described as large, well-constructed homes in some of the wealthier areas in the region. IIRC the "official" death toll was around 20 but in reality was probably 30+. Some of the victims were reportedly hurled over half a mile and apparently mile after mile of forest was just obliterated.
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I also read on Stormtrack from you that a tornado in Kansas in the 30s was calculated as having a path width of SEVEN MILES. Boy, if that was true, I wonder what the funnel looked like.
 
locomusic01 said:
I dunno why I listed it that way tbh - it's the F4 (possibly F5) that formed south of Cartersville and struck near Cagle, Tate, Jasper and Mount Oglethorpe. The damage swath was actually over three miles wide at times, but some of that was downbursts. The tornado itself may've been up to two miles wide and is notable for having completely swept away what were described as large, well-constructed homes in some of the wealthier areas in the region. IIRC the "official" death toll was around 20 but in reality was probably 30+. Some of the victims were reportedly hurled over half a mile and apparently mile after mile of forest was just obliterated.
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BTW, have you heard anything substantiating the claim that an infant was transported across 5 counties in the 1984 Carolinas outbreak?
 
locomusic01 said:
I dunno why I listed it that way tbh - it's the F4 (possibly F5) that formed south of Cartersville and struck near Cagle, Tate, Jasper and Mount Oglethorpe. The damage swath was actually over three miles wide at times, but some of that was downbursts. The tornado itself may've been up to two miles wide and is notable for having completely swept away what were described as large, well-constructed homes in some of the wealthier areas in the region. IIRC the "official" death toll was around 20 but in reality was probably 30+. Some of the victims were reportedly hurled over half a mile and apparently mile after mile of forest was just obliterated.
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There's also the Rockingham-Philadelphia, NC F4 (likely F5) that had a detailed survey done by someone a couple days after the event and it more or less obliterated forests and swept away large grain/water mills and the like.
 
Lake Martin EF4 said:
I also read on Stormtrack from you that a tornado in Kansas in the 30s was calculated as having a path width of SEVEN MILES. Boy, if that was true, I wonder what the funnel looked like.
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Hmm.. I have no idea what I may've been referring to. I vaguely recall an event in Oklahoma in like 1930 or 1931 or something that supposedly had a damage swath 5-7 miles wide, but that's because it was multiple tornadoes in close proximity, probably with downbursts and such in between. There was a similar event in Iowa once, but for the life of me I can't remember the year.

Lake Martin EF4 said:
BTW, have you heard anything substantiating the claim that an infant was transported across 5 counties in the 1984 Carolinas outbreak?
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No, but that seems like another one of those stories that seems to pop up in major events. A bit like the car that was supposedly carried into the next county or the slab foundation that was pulled clean out of the ground - some kind of combination of miscommunication, misinterpretation of facts and plain ol' urban legend.

I suppose an infant could be carried a pretty considerable distance in just the right circumstances, though. There are plenty of examples of tornadoes transporting relatively "heavy" debris (as in, on the order of a few pounds or more) dozens of miles.

Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
There's also the Rockingham-Philadelphia, NC F4 (likely F5) that had a detailed survey done by someone a couple days after the event and it more or less obliterated forests and swept away large grain/water mills and the like.
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Yeah, I'd give anything to have good photos (or at least really detailed information) on the entire event to get a better sense of its true scale and intensity. Just based on what we do know, all four of the F4 tornadoes sound like they could've possibly warranted F5 ratings if we had more evidence to justify it. The Maynard-Blountsville, GA F3 may've also been in that sort of F4+ range, and there are a bunch of other tornadoes for which we just don't have much info at all, but we know just enough to know they were probably very significant (which is one of the reasons I'd like to revisit it someday).
 
Lake Martin EF4 said:
I also read on Stormtrack from you that a tornado in Kansas in the 30s was calculated as having a path width of SEVEN MILES. Boy, if that was true, I wonder what the funnel looked like.
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That was the Blair OK F4 tornado/downburst family of 16 Jun 1928. Local media referred to the combined event as being seven miles in width, per damages.
 
Casuarina Head said:
That was the Blair OK F4 tornado/downburst family of 16 Jun 1928. Local media referred to the combined event as being seven miles in width, per damages.
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That's the one - I was a few years off. Something similar (multiple tornadoes + downbursts in close proximity) happened near Greensburg the same day, though there wouldn't have been much in the way to record damage.
 
locomusic01 said:
That's the one - I was a few years off. Something similar (multiple tornadoes + downbursts in close proximity) happened near Greensburg the same day, though there wouldn't have been much in the way to record damage.
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Interestingly, a man, the farmer William Keeler, caught in the Greensburg F2+ family on the same date actually was inside the circulation and subsequently provided an account that was republished by Snowden D. Flora’s Tornadoes of the United States (1953). His was one of the earliest reports taken from inside a tornado by a survivor. Thomas P. Grazulis also mentions that one or more tornadoes from the same family literally ploughed the earth to such a depth (approximately six feet, according to The Tornado: Nature’s Ultimate Windstorm, p. 14) that a horse could be safely buried, according to local media.
 
Lake Martin EF4 said:
I ran the numbers. 32 F4+, 9 F5.
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Add 1936 Tupelo-Gainesville, 4/3/74 and 4/27/11 you'll see that Mississippi and northern Alabama are the Armageddon zones. Georgia doesn't get gollywhopped by tornadoes as much, which is what makes stuff like 1884 unique. It's basically 4/27/11 but shifted further east.
 
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