Significant Tornado Events

[MNTornadoGuy]

On 7/9/2009, a significant outbreak of 4 F2 tornadoes struck western Ontario. The two most notable tornadoes were the Fisherman's Cove and the Lac Seul tornado.

The Fisherman's Cove tornado snapped and uprooted hundreds of trees before completely sweeping away two poorly-anchored cabins. Three people were killed in one of these cabins. It continued over the lake growing to a half-mile in width, uprooted/snapped down thousands of trees.








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The Lac Seul tornado was probably the strongest tornado of this event and was produced by the same supercell that produced the previous tornado. This massive tornado mowed down literally hundreds of thousands of trees in a nearly-mile-wide swath.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

On 7/9/2009, a significant outbreak of 4 F2 tornadoes struck western Ontario. The two most notable tornadoes were the Fisherman's Cove and the Lac Seul tornado.

The Fisherman's Cove tornado snapped and uprooted hundreds of trees before completely sweeping away two poorly-anchored cabins. Three people were killed in one of these cabins. It continued over the lake growing to a half-mile in width, uprooted/snapped down thousands of trees.
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The Lac Seul tornado was probably the strongest tornado of this event and was produced by the same supercell that produced the previous tornado. This massive tornado mowed down literally hundreds of thousands of trees in a nearly-mile-wide swath.
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I've always wondered the largest amount of trees downed by a single tornado. Yellowstone downed approximately 1 million, many of the Dixie events have downed tens of thousands, I wonder if anything larger has occurred but gone undocumented (like some Amazon rainforest tornadoes).

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

I've always wondered the largest amount of trees downed by a single tornado. Yellowstone downed approximately 1 million, many of the Dixie events have downed tens of thousands, I wonder if anything larger has occurred but gone undocumented (like some Amazon rainforest tornadoes).

The best bet for one would be a 1+ mile wide long-tracked violent tornado that pasts through mostly dense forest.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

The best bet for one would be a 1+ mile wide long-tracked violent tornado that pasts through mostly dense forest.

Yellowstone or some of the Amazon tornadoes would likely be the top contenders, then.
Well they weren't long tracked but they did pass through nothing but dense forest.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Yellowstone or some of the Amazon tornadoes would likely be the top contenders, then.

Intense long-tracked and large tornadoes are extremely rare in the Amazon Rainforest. Also, the 1985 Parker Dam PA tornado downed ~2,475,000 trees.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Intense long-tracked and large tornadoes are extremely rare in the Amazon Rainforest. Also, the 1985 Parker Dam PA tornado downed ~2,475,000 trees.

I wouldn't say they are rare there, just not well documented. Here, check this post out:

Significant Tornado Events

Personally I gotta disagree with the F5 rating for Rocksprings Hmmm idk about that conclusion. The reports of the damage in Rocksprinfs that I’ve read suggest an extremely violent tornado, with the worst damage occurring in residential areas of town. Apparently, some areas of neighborhoods...

talkweather.com

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

I wouldn't say they are rare there, just not well documented. Here, check this post out:

Significant Tornado Events

Personally I gotta disagree with the F5 rating for Rocksprings Hmmm idk about that conclusion. The reports of the damage in Rocksprinfs that I’ve read suggest an extremely violent tornado, with the worst damage occurring in residential areas of town. Apparently, some areas of neighborhoods...

talkweather.com

That's still outside the true Amazon Rainforest.

 

[speedbump305]

Intense long-tracked and large tornadoes are extremely rare in the Amazon Rainforest. Also, the 1985 Parker Dam PA tornado downed ~2,475,000 trees.

I’ve heard similar things to a tornado in Australia. It apparently downed over a million trees.

 

[Equus]

I'm a huge fan of documenting and mapping tornado swaths on Google Earth, it's very interesting comparing which tornadoes do and don't leave well defined swaths through forested areas. Wish I could find some of those South American beasts but such a big area to search.

 

[A Guy]

I’ve heard similar things to a tornado in Australia. It apparently downed over a million trees.

There's a small report on that tornado, at Bulahdelah NSW on the 1st of January 1970. Of course some rumour took off at some point - at least 20 years ago - about it maybe being an F4 or 5. It didn't hit anything substantial enough and is officially unrated. Nonetheless it's the only example I'm aware of here of a really wide, intense tornado comparable to those seen in the US, although there are a few other less impressive events on the record.

http://australiasevereweather.com/storm_news/1970/bulahdelah_tornado_report.pdf

 

[A Guy]

I'm a huge fan of documenting and mapping tornado swaths on Google Earth, it's very interesting comparing which tornadoes do and don't leave well defined swaths through forested areas. Wish I could find some of those South American beasts but such a big area to search.

Has anyone else used the LandSat viewer https://landlook.usgs.gov ? You can get some pretty decent tracks on it if you can find a cloud free image, fiddle with the settings, and overcome the annoying way it loads. More recent images generally show tracks better than older ones for some reason, and further South and more towards summer also show up better.

The satellite images that have been posted here of the Guin track are from the same satellite ERTS-A or ERTS-1, that was later renamed LandSat 1. I made a rough mosaic - one thing it shows is that the official starting point between Vernon and Sulligent is almost certainly correct, whereas it is still sometimes asserted as being closer to Columbus MS.

 

[Equus]

Oh nice, that shows up very well. Might play around with that.

 

[pohnpei]

This picture right before it hit Hackleburg was always so striking.(Make sure you view it in desktop mode to get full res) Whatever trees were left standing are so debarked you can see it from the air or are chewed down to the ground.

April 27, 2011 Tornado Damage | _MG_9769

To see these photos on a map visit http://tornado.sellersphoto.com

www.sellersphoto.com

One thing I notice is the treefall pattern before the tornado enter the Hackleburg


This level of highly symmetric treefall pattern was very rare to see for tornados moved at very fast speed. It need tremendous wind to do it. Imaging a tornado with rotational wind speed of 120mph and moving speed of 60 mph. This tornado have no ability to
do any kinds of highly symmetric treefall pattern because the winds in the stronger side of tornado far exceed winds in the weaker side of the tornado. (180 & 60 respectively)
Under such fast moving speed, the higher the rotational wind speed, the more symmetric the treefall pattern can be. So it can be a good implement to estimate intensity of the tornados in Dixie.

Also there was EF5 damage before tornado enter this forest which further verified the very high wind in this place. This feature also showed very strong radial wind inside the tornado as all the trees down towards the center of the tornado. The strongest radial wind usually occur under 10 or 15 menters of the tornado so DOW raraly can scan them.
recommand to read this paper which talk about this topic: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/wefo/28/2/waf-d-12-00046_1.xml
Some conclusion of this paper was interesting:

Comparisons of wind with damage suggest 3-s winds and the EF rating may be too low for the expected (EXP) value but show better consistency with the upper bound (UB).
The 3-s average wind used for the EF rating may be too long a period for some tornadoes.
Damage upwind of the sonic anemometer site was much greater in path width, exhibited greater extent of damage, and showed more symmetry in the damage, suggesting the vortex was stronger even though it produced the same DOD3 and DOD4 damage.
Tree damage indicated the tornado might have been weakening (i.e., diminishing percentage of trees damaged in the swath, less symmetry) when it hit the anemometer site, suggesting the winds recorded at the site might be considered to be a lower range of winds for this type of damage.

Some other highly symmetric treefall cases I notice in Dixie(moved at 50mph or fater):

Rainsville 2011 at peak intensity

Beauregard 2019 at peak intensity

Bassfield 2020 near peak intensity

 

[locomusic01]

Well, you certainly don't see that every day.

This is a section of the Illinois Central Railroad near the IL/WI border just southeast of Warren, IL. It was taken just after the Palm Sunday outbreak. Here's the original photo (with a watermark, unfortunately):

Officially, this tornado is registered as an F1 (F2 according to Grazulis). It produced a fair amount of damage at several points along its 27-mile path, but nothing particularly extreme:

And yet, in this one particular area around the railroad tracks, it reportedly produced some high-end vegetation damage and threw a tractor several hundred feet. The path appears to have been very narrow, so it makes me wonder whether this was just a localized burst in intensity or if the tornado was much stronger than its rating but its tiny little core simply didn't strike anything substantial enough.

 

[Equus]

Cool, actual photographic evidence of railroad damage is really hard to find.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Well, you certainly don't see that every day.

This is a section of the Illinois Central Railroad near the IL/WI border just southeast of Warren, IL. It was taken just after the Palm Sunday outbreak. Here's the original photo (with a watermark, unfortunately):

Officially, this tornado is registered as an F1 (F2 according to Grazulis). It produced a fair amount of damage at several points along its 27-mile path, but nothing particularly extreme:

And yet, in this one particular area around the railroad tracks, it reportedly produced some high-end vegetation damage and threw a tractor several hundred feet. The path appears to have been very narrow, so it makes me wonder whether this was just a localized burst in intensity or if the tornado was much stronger than its rating but its tiny little core simply didn't strike anything substantial enough.

So many older events (New Richmond, Fergus Falls, Sherman, Tri-State) are said to have ripped railroads from the ground but I've never been able to find photographs of this. This photo you've presented here looks a lot like Chapman, KS 2016 in terms of deforming rails instead of ripping them up. Are rails designed differently nowadays they can't be ripped up?

 

[locomusic01]

Cool, actual photographic evidence of railroad damage is really hard to find.

Back when I was researching the Enigma Outbreak years ago, I came across an account of a tornado (Rockingham, NC IIRC) having "swept away" a section of track, but not much more elaboration beyond that. Always stuck in my mind and I've been dying to know what that description actually meant.

 

[Marshal79344]

Not a lot of attention goes to the Arkansas Tornado that preceded the terrible death, destruction, and desolation that would be wrought by the 1965 Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak the next day. One supercell rooted itself in a rather messy storm mode environment, and dropped a photogenic, narrow, but violent tornado that tore the town of Conway, Arkansas to pieces.

Observed Sounding from Little Rock that day. Quite a thick instability profile for Arkansas in April. Favorable wind profiles are in place with a lot of streamwise vorticity. That dry air notch at the surface helped to boost storm intensity, increasing the lapse rates and making it conducive for supercell development. Arkansas was not located anywhere near to the extraordinary dynamic support that was in place for the next day, as evidenced by this sounding.



The parent supercell as it was producing the Conway Tornado on WSR-57 Radar (I love how NWS Little Rock does WSR-57 archive posts on Youtube)



The Conway Tornado itself. Notice how the tornado's high visibility likely is a result of that dry air inversion at the surface




Some damage photos I was able to find

 

[Marshal79344]

Back when I was researching the Enigma Outbreak years ago, I came across an account of a tornado (Rockingham, NC IIRC) having "swept away" a section of track, but not much more elaboration beyond that. Always stuck in my mind and I've been dying to know what that description actually meant.

Yeah I'm pretty sure it was Rockingham, due to that tornado's track right over a railroad as it headed for Philadelphia and Rockingham. However, it could have also been the one that hit the Cahaba Valley and Leeds area, as I found an account depicting the path crossing over a railroad for a long period of time, completely denuding and debarking trees in the area. Most of the other violent tornadoes that day were in quite rural areas, for example the northern Georgia Mountains and the Piedmont, AL area (another local major tornado magnet)

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Well, you certainly don't see that every day.

This is a section of the Illinois Central Railroad near the IL/WI border just southeast of Warren, IL. It was taken just after the Palm Sunday outbreak. Here's the original photo (with a watermark, unfortunately):

Officially, this tornado is registered as an F1 (F2 according to Grazulis). It produced a fair amount of damage at several points along its 27-mile path, but nothing particularly extreme:

And yet, in this one particular area around the railroad tracks, it reportedly produced some high-end vegetation damage and threw a tractor several hundred feet. The path appears to have been very narrow, so it makes me wonder whether this was just a localized burst in intensity or if the tornado was much stronger than its rating but its tiny little core simply didn't strike anything substantial enough.

I always found it weird how in the NCDC database the ratings from the Palm Sunday outbreak are very conservative. Usually the ratings from that era are liberal such as the 1966 Belmond “F5.” There are some tornadoes that are rated as an F2 in the official database that in reality did near-F4 damage during the outbreak.