Hello All!
First time post here, but long time lurker. Wanted to share a project I have been working on over the past month or so. Since this community has a legendary repository of pictures and documentation related to significant events throughout history.
Around a year ago on here, I noticed multiple posts deep in the significant tornado thread had radar shots of the 1974 super outbreak. I thought this was very intriguing, but that also told me these had to be archived somewhere in full. Around a month ago, I began reaching out to multiple government agencies. This really didn’t yield any leads, however, I reached out randomly to someone well known in the WX community. Thanks to former SPC forecaster Roger Edwards, who was gracious enough to take the time to answer my questions, I was able to get in touch with the right folks and find an archive of BNA (Nashville) returns from that day. The radar scans were on microfiche, so I had to pay a decent sized fee to get the scans digitized to PDF. Why BNA? Tennessee was arguably the center of the outbreak that day and saw multiple supercells that produced many of the tornados.
Once receiving them, I immediately went to work. I found multiple, deeply informative published studies online regarding the 1974 super outbreak. These will inform a lot of future research I plan on doing. My day job involves a lot of programming, so I used my skills in python and software to start analyzing the PDFs and triangulating and geolocating the different returns. The final product will involve the radar returns being set to play one after another and annotated to give it a “real life” view. That is still in progress and I plan on uploading that to YouTube at some point.
I wanted to share a few of the annotated shots so far since I think this community would find it interesting! These are just pauses in the video that call out the individual tornado producing cells either on screen or actively producing, when it goes to the next frame the annotations are removed so full viewing of the echos are shown.
In this shot, the complex of echos on the left are the Elizabethtown/Frankfort supercells and to its north, the Brandenburg/Louisville echo. The mature, large cell to the northwest of the scope is the DePauw F5 supercell. Over the next hour, it would drop the F5. The echos to the southeast are what Corfidi identified as “Convective Band 1” supercells. These cells went on to produce multiple tornados across eastern TN, such as Cleveland, and Georgia.
This shot shows the Mannsville/Richmond KY supercell entering the scope range. Brandenburg’s cell is now more defined, the cells to its south are the aforementioned Elizabethtown supercell and a non-tornado producing supercell.
Here is a shot of the Elizabethtown supercell producing its first tornado, the Leitchfield F4. Interestingly enough, you see it has a nudger shower/cell to its southwest. Cleveland/Etowah TN F3 is also now visible in the southeast. Brandenburg is still a monster of a supercell as it treks off scope to drop the Louisville F4, and then the New Castle KY F2.
Finally, what I’d consider the peak of the outbreak. Multiple discrete supercells, almost all producing tornados. The Boone Forest KY F4 is noted, as well as the Cookeville F4. The cell pair to the south of the center of the scope are the 2 Tanner supercells that trekked into Tennessee and dropped more tornados. I also have identified the other cells in this shot, but those annotations are after these.
Edit: also, apologies if this didn’t need its own post. I can delete and post in the significant tornados thread if needed!
First time post here, but long time lurker. Wanted to share a project I have been working on over the past month or so. Since this community has a legendary repository of pictures and documentation related to significant events throughout history.
Around a year ago on here, I noticed multiple posts deep in the significant tornado thread had radar shots of the 1974 super outbreak. I thought this was very intriguing, but that also told me these had to be archived somewhere in full. Around a month ago, I began reaching out to multiple government agencies. This really didn’t yield any leads, however, I reached out randomly to someone well known in the WX community. Thanks to former SPC forecaster Roger Edwards, who was gracious enough to take the time to answer my questions, I was able to get in touch with the right folks and find an archive of BNA (Nashville) returns from that day. The radar scans were on microfiche, so I had to pay a decent sized fee to get the scans digitized to PDF. Why BNA? Tennessee was arguably the center of the outbreak that day and saw multiple supercells that produced many of the tornados.
Once receiving them, I immediately went to work. I found multiple, deeply informative published studies online regarding the 1974 super outbreak. These will inform a lot of future research I plan on doing. My day job involves a lot of programming, so I used my skills in python and software to start analyzing the PDFs and triangulating and geolocating the different returns. The final product will involve the radar returns being set to play one after another and annotated to give it a “real life” view. That is still in progress and I plan on uploading that to YouTube at some point.
I wanted to share a few of the annotated shots so far since I think this community would find it interesting! These are just pauses in the video that call out the individual tornado producing cells either on screen or actively producing, when it goes to the next frame the annotations are removed so full viewing of the echos are shown.
In this shot, the complex of echos on the left are the Elizabethtown/Frankfort supercells and to its north, the Brandenburg/Louisville echo. The mature, large cell to the northwest of the scope is the DePauw F5 supercell. Over the next hour, it would drop the F5. The echos to the southeast are what Corfidi identified as “Convective Band 1” supercells. These cells went on to produce multiple tornados across eastern TN, such as Cleveland, and Georgia.
This shot shows the Mannsville/Richmond KY supercell entering the scope range. Brandenburg’s cell is now more defined, the cells to its south are the aforementioned Elizabethtown supercell and a non-tornado producing supercell.
Here is a shot of the Elizabethtown supercell producing its first tornado, the Leitchfield F4. Interestingly enough, you see it has a nudger shower/cell to its southwest. Cleveland/Etowah TN F3 is also now visible in the southeast. Brandenburg is still a monster of a supercell as it treks off scope to drop the Louisville F4, and then the New Castle KY F2.
Finally, what I’d consider the peak of the outbreak. Multiple discrete supercells, almost all producing tornados. The Boone Forest KY F4 is noted, as well as the Cookeville F4. The cell pair to the south of the center of the scope are the 2 Tanner supercells that trekked into Tennessee and dropped more tornados. I also have identified the other cells in this shot, but those annotations are after these.
Edit: also, apologies if this didn’t need its own post. I can delete and post in the significant tornados thread if needed!
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