Enhanced Fujita Ratings Debate Thread

[DanLarsen34]

Also I absolutely agree that New Richmond definitely deserves to be brought up in the “most violent of all time” conversation. People have compared the damage intensity to Joplin or Moore, but I would go as far as to say New Richmond was possibly even more extreme than both of those. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an entire residential area of a town completely get erased out of existence to the degree shown in the panoramic pic. Sure certain tornadoes have swept away subdivisions, but entire large residential neighborhoods being swept away? That’s pretty much unheard of (though Joplin, Flint, and Tri-State 1925 did come close in some areas).

Absolutely agree. The panoramic photo is the best way to get a scale and sense of just how insane the damage was. I always start on the right side of the image, then pan left which shows you how progressively worse the damage got. You can’t even tell what kind of structures were on the left side of the image.

Even one of the closer historical tornadoes to this that I remember being really impressed by, the 1947 Glazer/Higgins/Woodward tornado, didn’t quite reach this level of complete destruction even though that tornado is still considered to be among the most violent tornadoes ever