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Severe weather threat 4/23/26 (Central/Southern Plains)

It should be a close call, but I think this was a high-end EF4.
I haven't seen any well-built (looking) homes totally swept clean.
Damage path is also fairly short - about 3 miles long, and most of the property damage is in that one little subdivision.
It started like 5 minutes before it hit the Air Force base and ended very close to the munincipal airport ofter a failed occlusion. The path was not just 3 miles, probably upwards of 8-10 miles.
 
Are those completely debarked trees in the bottom left? Also fairly certain that is clear cut grass scouring now. Would like to hear @buckeye05 input.
Generally it’s very tough to determine tree debarking from aerial imagery, and you really need ground level pics to confirm it. But yeah definitely grass scouring, although based on what I’ve seen so far, maybe not quite to the Moore 2013 degree I was comparing it to earlier. Right now I can say EF4 with confidence, but I’m not quite ready to call it a strong EF5 candidate yet. I’d need to see more photographic evidence and get more construction info before making a call like that. I may not have seen the most intense damage yet.
 
Looking at KOKO 5 New's aerial coverage. It looks like it peaked right as it was exiting the subdivision. I see three homes (701, 702, and 713 on Ridgeway Dr) that stand-out as potential EF4+ indicators. I don't think EF5 is out of the question yet; We'll see how well built these homes were. To be honest, however, neither the contextual or house damage strikes me as slam-dunk EF5. We'll see.

Also, from what I've heard, it looks like there are zero fatalities so far with this tornado. Very glad that these people made it out ok.
 
You know, for years I felt weird, even sort of guilty, about being so interested in tornadoes, being amazed to see them, finding them beautiful. But I think there's something about the contrast of horror and devastation with beauty and grace that's just inherently captivating, that appeals to some instinct deep in our minds and makes it hard for us to look away. And I think this is one of the photos that really sums that up.
You're far from being the only one. Tornado climatologist Tom Grazulis opened his tornado climatology tome Significant Tornadoes 1680-1991 with the following paragraph:
Nothing in the earth's atmosphere so uniquely combines spectacle, terror and random violence against unsuspecting and innocent people as the tornado. Few other phenomena can form so quickly, vanish so suddenly, leave behind such misery and yet still be seen as beautiful.
 
SPC getting a lot of heat for their risk area and the OK tornadoes yesterday.
Clearly not from anyone with a lick of intelligence. There was a 10% CIG1 extending into N OK with a 5% CIG1 extending south of that. I don't think confidence was high enough in sustained storms to upgrade to a CIG2.
 
SPC getting a lot of heat for their risk area and the OK tornadoes yesterday.
A lot of folks on twitter don't understand that SPC forecasters aren't issued crystal balls on their first day of work. They can make the best forecast in the world and the atmosphere will still do whatever it wants to do. If the SPC missed something yesterday they will take a look at it and review it and I'm sure no one knows when they missed more than those forecasters do. Joe Blow on twitter screaming at them probably isn't going to provide them with any new information about a forecast miss.
 
Been a long time since we've had a slam dunk EF4 tornado.
...and by "a long time" I mean less than 12 months ago. This is some pretty exceptional damage though, I believe there was one instance of topsoil being ripped up in a photo, but it's possible that I was misinterpreting that photo. I'll send it if I can find it.

Edit: I found the photo, the possible topsoil that was ripped up is in the foreground in front of the slab.
 
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