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locomusic01
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Yup, there's a pretty good case to be made that it may have peaked around the West Frankfort area (to the extent that there was any noticeable "peak"). I think the general consensus used to be that Tri-State was very strong over an incredibly long path, but that it wasn't especially intense compared to other high-end tornadoes. Probably a product of the fact that the most well-known photos only show modest damage. In reality, it produced consistent strong-to-violent damage over virtually its entire path, interspersed with a number of super impressive feats.Not sure if you saw this post but some pretty impressive damage with this thing documented by an engineering study:
Significant Tornado Events
I found an engineering study about damage from the Tri-State tornado in Murphysboro, De Soto, some rural areas, and West Frankfort. It included examples of extreme damage that I'll list below; Orient Mine, West Frankfort - A Buick roadster was carried ~200 ft and demolished. - One 60,000 gallon...talkweather.com
The "cyclone fence" posts being bent at such low ground level is crazy, testament to extremely intense surface winds.