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Hurricane & Tornado Anniversaries


Here's a video (runtime 14:04) that goes into more detail about that particular tornado:



The tornado actually managed to strike five churches along its path{1.}, all of which were packed for Palm Sunday services. Four of them escaped disaster (some by the barest of margins--one had its roof torn entirely off, sparing the congregation who were huddling under the pews from being hit by falling debris; another church's bell tower toppled outward instead of inward), while the Goshen church was unfortunate enough to to have its roof and a wall collapse on the congregation with little to no warning. It's entirely possible that one could've gotten an even worse disaster with only a few tweaks to how things played out at the other churches, or alternately the Goshen church could've also escaped disaster with only a few tweaks there too. It really makes you think...

{1.} To be fair, considering that Alabama is part of the Bible Belt, what with a fairly high density of churches in that region, it's very possible for a tornado to end up hitting multiple churches along its track as an end result.
 
Here's a video (runtime 14:04) that goes into more detail about that particular tornado:



The tornado actually managed to strike five churches along its path{1.}, all of which were packed for Palm Sunday services. Four of them escaped disaster (some by the barest of margins--one had its roof torn entirely off, sparing the congregation who were huddling under the pews from being hit by falling debris; another church's bell tower toppled outward instead of inward), while the Goshen church was unfortunate enough to to have its roof and a wall collapse on the congregation with little to no warning. It's entirely possible that one could've gotten an even worse disaster with only a few tweaks to how things played out at the other churches, or alternately the Goshen church could've also escaped disaster with only a few tweaks there too. It really makes you think...

{1.} To be fair, considering that Alabama is part of the Bible Belt, what with a fairly high density of churches in that region, it's very possible for a tornado to end up hitting multiple churches along its track as an end result.

Seems pretty unusual for such a violent event to occur in the morning - I imagine if the timing of the trough was even better than it was you'd be looking at an even higher end event than what ended up occurring. Mornings seem like the most rare time of day to get severe weather, particularly tornadoes.
 
Seems pretty unusual for such a violent event to occur in the morning - I imagine if the timing of the trough was even better than it was you'd be looking at an even higher end event than what ended up occurring. Mornings seem like the most rare time of day to get severe weather, particularly tornadoes.
Exactly. Such an early time for a violent tornado were my thoughts also,
 
Seems pretty unusual for such a violent event to occur in the morning - I imagine if the timing of the trough was even better than it was you'd be looking at an even higher end event than what ended up occurring. Mornings seem like the most rare time of day to get severe weather, particularly tornadoes.
In general yes, but it's less so in the south and especially early in the season, since your main source of heat is warm air advection from the Gulf rather than solar heating during the day (and you're not getting as much help from the sun that time of year anyway since the days are shorter and the angle of the sun is lower).
 
*F4.
I don’t think people understand the difference between the two: there could be seven F4’s in a single outbreak, while seven EF4’s happen over 2-3 years
True. For example, if 3/31/23 happened in the 90’s, it’s very likely that the high end EF3 tornadoes in the outbreak would’ve been given an F4 rating. Robinson-Sullivan would’ve surely been given the rating and I’m quite confident Little Rock and Bethel Springs would get it too.
 
As already mentioned above, it’s the 52nd anniversary of the gold standard of outbreaks, the original super outbreak.

The more I’ve read and researched on it, the more I want to know. I’ve read every single published study in AMS. You would think such a high level outbreak would have a readily apparent synoptic signature that sets it apart from others? Not even close.

1. Filling surface low instead of deepening
2. A trough that started out as negative the early morning of but phased to neutral and later even positive as the day went on with the outbreak in full swing
3. Height falls not even occurring over the warm sector
4. 500 MB warming instead of cooling
5. A multi-state meridional MCS that passed over the outbreak area mere hours before tornados impacted the very same areas.
6. Low level confluence due to the geography of the Mississippi River delta combined with 700 MB cooling led to the formation of your KY/IN/OH supercells. 200 miles east of the nearest surface boundary, a dry line/cold front. Talk about deep warm sector convection.
 
FIRST! HAHAHAHAHA-

AHEM

Today marks 52 years since the 1974 Super Outbreak. I'd elaborate more, but there's already so much out there about it.

That said, I'm still wondering if that Tanner II image is legit or not.

EDIT: originally wrote 52 DAYS since lol, corrected
I think Tanner 2 is a lot more violent than people give it credit for in my opinion. Unfortunately lost a lot of my tornado damage photos from this outbreak due to a software update, but once I find them again, will gladly post some.
 
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