Significant Tornado Events

[MNTornadoGuy]

Damage from the 1883 Rochester tornado likely the strongest tornado in MN history, only tied with the 1919 Fergus Falls tornado.

 

[speedbump305]

Damage from the 1883 Rochester tornado likely the strongest tornado in MN history, only tied with the 1919 Fergus Falls tornado.

The tree damage at left in the after image is really really intense. you can’t even tell if they are debarked because they were debarked so low

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

The Rochester tornado completely swept away entire farms and numerous homes, people were killed in cellars, a large steel railroad bridge was crumpled, significant debris granulation and wind-rowing occurred, grass was scoured from the ground in many places and sometimes the earth was scoured leaving potatoes exposed, trees were completely debarked, gravel ballast from a railroad was reportedly scooped out “cleaner than a man could do it," several cornfields were literally swept clean and shrubbery was completely stripped. The tornado reached a max width of 1.64 miles at one point.
TornadoTalk Article

 

[CheeselandSkies]

Some of the descriptions of that tornado (which, unfortunately, are all we have to go on) are among the most impressive I've ever read. 'Course, whether they're all true and accurate or not is another matter, but still. Also pretty significant that one man who had previously seen the aftermath in Grinnell, IA in 1882 (itself an extremely intense F5) said the damage in the Philadelphia Church/Rockingham area was even worse. If I could go back and survey any historical tornado, that would honestly be somewhere on my list.





Oof, don't get me started on the Palm Sunday ratings. There are a ton of them that I find really questionable. Not the least of which being, how in the world is Sunnyside anything other than an absolute no-doubt F5? At least Grazulis got it right. There are several others that would definitely have warranted consideration, but Sunnyside is just egregious.

That tornado that hit La Paz, IN got smacked with an F3 rating when, based on some pictures, it probably was at least F4 (and possibly F5) at some points. It's a mystery as to why 2 tornadoes of this day got downgraded from F5 to F4.

The fact that none of the tornadoes in the Palm Sunday event are officially documented F5s while silly cases like Vicksburg '53, Belmond '66, Wheelersburg '68, Valley Mills '73, Spiro '76, and Broken Bow '82 are is just more proof of how inconsistent everything about that entire period pre-1985 is in terms of ratings (and why Grazulis is usually a better source for ratings).

It's like the people who rated Vilonia 2014 went back in time to 1965 and re-rated that outbreak and only that outbreak.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Here is one of the worst under-ratings from the Palm Sunday Outbreak. It is officially given an F1 rating yet it did near-F4 damage.

 

[speedbump305]

View attachment 7264
Here is one of the worst under-ratings from the Palm Sunday Outbreak. It is officially given an F1 rating yet it did near-F4 damage.

That’s completely Utter Bull crap. An F1 does not produce near F4 damage

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

That’s completely Utter Bull crap. An F1 does not produce near F4 damage

There's a serious a candidate for the most underrated tornado of all time.

 

[warneagle]

The ratings from Palm Sunday 1965 make no sense to me. Some of the "F4s" from that date deserved an F5 rating way more than some of the questionable F5s in the late 1960s and 1970s.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

What was probably one of the most overrated tornadoes of all time is the 6/29/1961 Glendive MT “F4.” This is the only official F4 in MT history. In reality all that happened was a brief non-damaging touchdown in some empty farmfield. It should have been given an F0 or FU rating.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Pittsfield-Strongsville, Lebanon-Sheridan, Kokomo-Greentown and Coldwater Lake-Manitou Beach all have compelling cases as well, to varying degrees. Tbh we should probably just give Coldwater Lake an F5 purely on its monstrous appearance:

This is another picture showing how violent that day was. One of the earliest photographs of horizontal vortices I've been able to find.
I wonder what the earliest photograph of horizontal vortices is. Or the earliest eyewitness description of them?

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

The earliest description of horizontal vortices I could find was from the 1865 Viroqua WI tornado.

 

[speedbump305]

There's a serious a candidate for the most underrated tornado of all time.

Yep. Probably up there vilonia and the other four

 

[speedbump305]

Y’all, i have a new tornado vs tornado we could do. Parkersburg vs Joplin. They actually seemed to have produced similar damage, but i don’t know which would be stronger, what do y’all think?

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

What was probably one of the most overrated tornadoes of all time is the 6/29/1961 Glendive MT “F4.” This is the only official F4 in MT history. In reality all that happened was a brief non-damaging touchdown in some empty farmfield. It should have been given an F0 or FU rating.

An FU rating? Lol I'd dig it.

 

[A Guy]

I'm convinced that the the use of 'FU' on Wikipedia for unknown is someone's practical joke. Not least because it used to be 'F?'

 

[locomusic01]

View attachment 7264
Here is one of the worst under-ratings from the Palm Sunday Outbreak. It is officially given an F1 rating yet it did near-F4 damage.

Yeah, I'm no expert or anything, but that rating may have been slightly off.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

off.

I really wonder how this got an F1 rating.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

I really wonder how this got an F1 rating.

I'm wondering if it was a typo and due to bureaucratic incompetence/oversight never got changed.
Yeah, it's just a TAD off, not much. Lol.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

This might be an unpopular opinion but I consider the 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak was a Super Outbreak. The violence is nearly unprecedented in post-1950 history with the exception of the two Super Outbreaks of course.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

This might be an unpopular opinion but I consider the 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak was a Super Outbreak. The violence is nearly unprecedented in post-1950 history with the exception of the two Super Outbreaks of course.

I think it could be considered a Super Outbreak at a much smaller scale, similar to many historic Dixie outbreaks.