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Severe WX March 30th- April 1st 2023 (South, Southeast, Ohio Valley, Upper Midwest)

tornado examiner said:
Several of the tracks from this outbreak are now on google earth. Just looking at the track of the Robinson tornado…even though the imagery is from may 2nd…the track is still extremely evident in the intense ground marks and tree damage
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It amazes me how botched some of the surveys in this outbreak were. Even Wynne Arkansas I'm noticing has some impressive damage from google earth that has zero damage points assigned to the location.
 
Tanner said:
It amazes me how botched some of the surveys in this outbreak were. Even Wynne Arkansas I'm noticing has some impressive damage from google earth that has zero damage points assigned to the location.
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Agreed. In my opinion there were likely 5-6 tornadoes capable of EF4+ damage, and from what I can recall there were at least 3-4 instances of what could be considered as EF4 damage by some - most of which was never even surveyed, so we will never know! The most important nature of major outbreaks like these is undoubtedly the awful human cost and impact to lives, but I personally believe that keeping an accurate meteorological record is also necessary.
 
At some point DVN updated their summary page and added radar images and a few more photos in addition to my video snapshot (under the "Photos & Video" tab), but I really wish they would:

1.) Relabel the tornadoes in chronological order (right now their "Tornado #1" starts at 5:18 PM, when the Keota tornado started at 4:12 PM, and the Farson/Martinsburg tornado moved into their CWA some time before that).

2.) Create a comprehensive track map for the outbreak in their CWA, similar to what OUN did for 5/3/99 and some other larger outbreaks. There are some tornadoes' tracks that I'd like to be able to see in spatial/temporal comparison to each other, that I can't.

Namely, I'm referring to the end of the Keota EF4, and the Amish-Frytown EF0 which occurred from 4:32-4:37 PM. I previously thought what I saw from my second location (IA-1 & 110th St. on the northwest edge of Kalona) was all the rope-out of the former, but in retrospect I think I might have also caught the latter.

When I first pulled up, there was a low-contrast, tall stovepipe tornado just visible in the distance. This I am fairly sure was indeed the shrinking/weakening Keota tornado. These photos are timestamped 4:38 PM, apparently my DSLR's clock is a little off.

IMG_4058-2048.jpgIMG_4060-2048.jpg

In the one minute (per my DSLR's timestamps) that it took me to haul my tripoded camcorder out of the car, set it up and start rolling, I had lost visual on the stovepipe. I had a moment of "Crap, where'd the tornado go?" headscratching before I spotted a debris swirl with a diffuse, tilted trunk/rope funnel extending to it. This became fully condensed for a few seconds as it sped off into the rain.

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Thinking about it after the fact, this rope appeared quite a bit closer to me than the ~6 miles that the end of the Keota track was from my location according to the map. It would also jive with the storm's pattern of cycling to the east-northeast as with the original EF3/EF4 handoff.
 
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It looks like the Hedrick/Keota tornadoes finally got their own section on the Wikipedia page for this outbreak a couple weeks ago.

Seems like the description of the Keota tornado was heavily based on my video. Couldn't have written it better myself, although the time given is an hour fast:

It touched down to the southwest of Keota in Keokuk County, Iowa at 5:12 p.m. CDT and moved northeastward, crossing Iowa 92. It quickly intensified as it damaged or destroyed multiple outbuildings and hog confinement buildings at EF2 intensity. At this point, the tornado began to take in copious amounts of dust and grew into a large wedge tornado, captured on video by many storm chasers in the area.
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UK_EF4 said:
Agreed. The fact they completely missed, and from what I have seen, failed to even acknowledge the homes/area with the most intense damage says a lot. Probably one of the worst surveys of the decade or perhaps even longer, at least in my opinion.
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I think the reason why they couldn't survey the worst area is because of the flooding
 
Ivanthetornadoenthusiast said:
I think the reason why they couldn't survey the worst area is because of the flooding
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I just don't buy the "official" excuse though. Aerial footage showed that two or three farmsteads where very obvious violent damage occurred were not inaccessible to the survey crews.
 
TH2002 said:
I just don't buy the "official" excuse though. Aerial footage showed that two or three farmsteads where very obvious violent damage occurred were not inaccessible to the survey crews.
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There were locations of violent structural and contextual damage literally on the same road as other surveyed buildings.. just completely ignored. The surveys on this outbreak were in some cases particularly poor: There were likely 6-7 violent tornadoes, of which 3-5 produced damage which could be argued to be violent level.
 
UK_EF4 said:
There were locations of violent structural and contextual damage literally on the same road as other surveyed buildings.. just completely ignored. The surveys on this outbreak were in some cases particularly poor: There were likely 6-7 violent tornadoes, of which 3-5 produced damage which could be argued to be violent level.
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Tracks having listed wind speeds which don’t match the highest di. Most notably Robinson and stinesville. Robinson on the dat is rated for 155 yet had multiple 165mph di’s. And stinesville being rated 138 mph with di’s of 153mph
 
Surprise thread bump. A gentleman on here I respect heavily @Marios Wallace did some digging on the Robinsons-Sullivan tornado from this year, and we managed to get the attention of James Auten from NWS Lincoln. Auten said he and his team are, “in the process of gathering more photos, ground, and aerial, to add more DI’s and to reevaluate existing DI’s.” He also mentioned that the process is slow and we shouldn’t expect any updated details until after the new year
 
Tanner said:
Surprise thread bump. A gentleman on here I respect heavily @Marios Wallace did some digging on the Robinsons-Sullivan tornado from this year, and we managed to get the attention of James Auten from NWS Lincoln. Auten said he and his team are, “in the process of gathering more photos, ground, and aerial, to add more DI’s and to reevaluate existing DI’s.” He also mentioned that the process is slow and we shouldn’t expect any updated details until after the new year
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Robinson finally getting the re-analysis it needed? What what whaaat?
 
Shakespeare 2016 said:
I think NWS Lubbock should also have to do a reanalysis of the Matador tornado. Almost every bit of extreme contextual damage from that tornado screamed high-end EF4+
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While I don't think the structural damage in Matador met the criteria for an EF5 rating, even going by the current constraints of the EF scale they would have been well within their rights to go EF4.

With that said, if that one home on the north side of town had a strong poured concrete foundation with proper anchor bolts all the way around, I do feel an EF5 rating would have been necessary.
 
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