Five deaths unfortunately from that one. China has had more tornado deaths than the US so far this year.
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Significant Tornado Events - Global Edition
- Thread starter atrainguy
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A little over a week ago I added a Mosin-Nagant to my gun collection. Mine was made in 1938 in Izhevsk, Russia (then part of the Soviet Union). But something is missing...
Oh, here we go:
Oh, here we go:
gregassagraf
Member
Tornado in Rio Grande do Sul yesterday:
That’s a real shame. I noticed they no longer seem interested in rating them either. Why??
Dunno. They've never really solicited reports but I wouldn't have though collecting them would pose much budgetary strain. Inspecting and rating would take more, and maybe they just have different priorities.
The lack of surveying and rating is really problematic because there are quite significant events being missed, among them one near Bathurst a couple of years ago that was one of the best looking tornadoes I've ever seen here and news reports said tracked more than 20 km, and a possible one (might have been microbursts) that mowed down a huge number of trees on the Gold Coast last December. Studying these events would help better understand how they occur here, so it's a big miss.
I remember both of those! Based on the damage they left behind, I’d say they were strong/significant.
There was also the Armidale tornado, which produced some pretty significant house damage in town, and really impressive tree damage outside of town.
It’s just a real shame they aren’t being properly surveyed, documented, and rated.
Well I wouldn't be surprised if the Armidale one would only rate as an F1 on damage.
I'd be careful with tree damage here. In my experience Eucalypts often topple easily. It'd take an expert to see if this is a real pattern and what the factors might be (tree and root structure. tree age, health and isolation, soil conditions and moisture etc). But I would be reticent to say the same patterns that apply in North America would necessarily apply here.
wdotornadoes
Member
Last month, I surveyed a QLCS tornado in southern Germany. It tracked through two villages damaging homes and caused heavy tree damage, with, for example, trunks being considerably thrown.
The tornado originated west of the small village Wackersberg with 67 residents. It went straight through the village, damaging every building within the narrow path (about half of all the buildings in the village). Roofs were damaged and considerable debris impacts were visible in the masonry of residential buildings, e.g. roof parts and tiles that were deeply embedded into walls.
Roof damage is surprisingly minimal for the most part, especially with the residential buildings, as the individual tiles are commonly screwed to the sturdy roof truss, which requires higher wind speeds to lift them. The high stability of roof structure in western Europe also became evident during the IF4 tornado in South Moravia, Czech Republic in 2021, where it was a common picture that the masonry of some (modern) homes was significantly damaged and penetrated by debris, while the roof and especially the roof truss were *relatively* intact (of course, many times more extreme than in this case here). Another reason could be the very fast forward movement of the tornado combined with the small diameter, resulting in a very short impact duration.
Despite the often minor roof damage, there is damage that indicates upper F1 (IF1.5) intensity in the village. For example, a barn that was destroyed, with parts of it being lifted over a hedge and carried for dozens of meters. Metal sheeting was thrown ~ 250 meters.
The tornado then continued snapping several trees east of the village. A steep, forested valley follows. Despite the steep gradient and rapid forward movement, the tornado did not lose contact to the ground and left a continuous path with uprooted/snapped trees and visibly convergent tree fall patterns. Some trees on the left-hand side of the path even fell in the completely opposite direction to the direction of movement. Something that, from what I have observed so far, is rather special in the case of very fast-moving, small-scale events.
In the village of Holnstein at the bottom of the valley, again roofs were slightly damaged, similar to the damage in Wackersberg. The tornado was captured by a CCTV camera here. The video shows the very small vortex (condensed part a maximum of 1-2 meters wide) moving at very high speed. With the footage, I was able to *roughly* calculate the movement speed. It shows the vortex tracking ~ 220 meters in ~ 7 seconds à ~ 31.5 m/s = ~ 113 km/h = ~ 70 mph. Don’t take this result too literally, as it is impossible to calculate perfectly by such footage alone.
Link to the footage:
The subsequent climb on the other side of the valley with a maximum gradient of ~ 50% was probably too much for the tornado. Here a clearly visible trace of the tornado is briefly lost. However, it should be said that the area could not be surveyed in more detail due to the gradient.
South of the village Stauferbuch there was some of the most impressive damage I have ever seen so far. When approaching a visible impacted row of trees, the first thing I noticed were medium-sized branches that stuck deep in the ground dozens of meters west of the tree row. These were therefore thrown in the opposite direction to the movement with visibly a lot of force. In a narrow area of the tree stand, all trees were snapped, uprooted, or at least significantly damaged. Some of which were over a hundred years old. The fall pattern was also extremely convergent.
What was even more remarkable was that the tornado transported tree trunks and many large branches from the tree stand onto the following field. One trunk seemed snapped more than one time. A treetop was transported about 150 meters to the east and then impacted a farm building on the east side, so it must have flown west again for a short time. Small branches were carried up to about 400 meters.
Immediately afterwards, the tornado apparently dissipated abruptly, as no more damage was found. A *possible* explanation for the massive intensity peak just before dissipating could have been the tightening of the ending rotation, as seen often on a larger scale with mesocyclones, whose rotation sometimes becomes tighter towards the end of their existence before disappearing.
The full survey can be found here: https://www.torkud.de/post/vholnstein24/
The tornado originated west of the small village Wackersberg with 67 residents. It went straight through the village, damaging every building within the narrow path (about half of all the buildings in the village). Roofs were damaged and considerable debris impacts were visible in the masonry of residential buildings, e.g. roof parts and tiles that were deeply embedded into walls.
Roof damage is surprisingly minimal for the most part, especially with the residential buildings, as the individual tiles are commonly screwed to the sturdy roof truss, which requires higher wind speeds to lift them. The high stability of roof structure in western Europe also became evident during the IF4 tornado in South Moravia, Czech Republic in 2021, where it was a common picture that the masonry of some (modern) homes was significantly damaged and penetrated by debris, while the roof and especially the roof truss were *relatively* intact (of course, many times more extreme than in this case here). Another reason could be the very fast forward movement of the tornado combined with the small diameter, resulting in a very short impact duration.
Despite the often minor roof damage, there is damage that indicates upper F1 (IF1.5) intensity in the village. For example, a barn that was destroyed, with parts of it being lifted over a hedge and carried for dozens of meters. Metal sheeting was thrown ~ 250 meters.
The tornado then continued snapping several trees east of the village. A steep, forested valley follows. Despite the steep gradient and rapid forward movement, the tornado did not lose contact to the ground and left a continuous path with uprooted/snapped trees and visibly convergent tree fall patterns. Some trees on the left-hand side of the path even fell in the completely opposite direction to the direction of movement. Something that, from what I have observed so far, is rather special in the case of very fast-moving, small-scale events.
In the village of Holnstein at the bottom of the valley, again roofs were slightly damaged, similar to the damage in Wackersberg. The tornado was captured by a CCTV camera here. The video shows the very small vortex (condensed part a maximum of 1-2 meters wide) moving at very high speed. With the footage, I was able to *roughly* calculate the movement speed. It shows the vortex tracking ~ 220 meters in ~ 7 seconds à ~ 31.5 m/s = ~ 113 km/h = ~ 70 mph. Don’t take this result too literally, as it is impossible to calculate perfectly by such footage alone.
Link to the footage:
The subsequent climb on the other side of the valley with a maximum gradient of ~ 50% was probably too much for the tornado. Here a clearly visible trace of the tornado is briefly lost. However, it should be said that the area could not be surveyed in more detail due to the gradient.
South of the village Stauferbuch there was some of the most impressive damage I have ever seen so far. When approaching a visible impacted row of trees, the first thing I noticed were medium-sized branches that stuck deep in the ground dozens of meters west of the tree row. These were therefore thrown in the opposite direction to the movement with visibly a lot of force. In a narrow area of the tree stand, all trees were snapped, uprooted, or at least significantly damaged. Some of which were over a hundred years old. The fall pattern was also extremely convergent.
What was even more remarkable was that the tornado transported tree trunks and many large branches from the tree stand onto the following field. One trunk seemed snapped more than one time. A treetop was transported about 150 meters to the east and then impacted a farm building on the east side, so it must have flown west again for a short time. Small branches were carried up to about 400 meters.
Immediately afterwards, the tornado apparently dissipated abruptly, as no more damage was found. A *possible* explanation for the massive intensity peak just before dissipating could have been the tightening of the ending rotation, as seen often on a larger scale with mesocyclones, whose rotation sometimes becomes tighter towards the end of their existence before disappearing.
The full survey can be found here: https://www.torkud.de/post/vholnstein24/
TornadoesUK
Member
The European Severe Weather Database has added an IF5 damage indicator to their report for the 1967 Palluel, France IF5. It is listed as 'Damage Indicator: BRE, Degree of Damage: 2'. The strongest damage was at a farm/factory site that had almost all of its' walls razed to the ground. Walls of that building (or building complex) showed very strong frames (sturdiness class E acc.to IF-Scale doc) with wall thickness of 40-80cm. The wall thickness was based on ruins of the damage so there is some uncertainty with the rating. 
gregassagraf
Member
Tornado in Rio Grande do Sul today, May 11th, 2024.
