Significant Tornado Events

[pohnpei]

Several other damage pics of Washinton tornado that maybe noteworthy :
apartment damage
These apartments were hit directly by the tornado and suffered severe damge. At least one of them below was rated 180mph.


damage outside of the town:
Tornado swept away two story house outside of the town was rated 190mph.Grain bin full of grains remianed eract after the tornado. Debris likely cleaned in the second pic.



Very intense wind rowing and debris granulation feature from ground level

 

[pohnpei]

Several other damage pics of Rochelle tornado that maybe noteworthy :
The only real debarking along the tornado's path that I noticed. A farmstead nearby was rated 200mph. Tree damage there was rated EF4. These trees seem to be different species compared to trees in Washinton IL and I don't know whether it was very hard to debark or not.

One of the several 200mph rated house, vehicle were all moved around the houe.
aerial view:

ground view:

Another 200mph rating house, ground view shows mossing bolts.

some other pictures

 

[Marshal79344]

I managed to get access to some full-quality aerials from the Washington Tornado, and gosh they are quite impressive. In most cases, a violent tornado will produce EF4-worthy damage to a few homes if it moves through a subdivision, such as a tornado like Newnan, GA, but this one slabbed everything in its path along quite a wide swath. The intensity reached by this tornado in the part of Illinois that it occurred in was completely unprecedented.

 

[Marshal79344]

Rochelle tree damage, IL Trees refused to be naked
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That's because trees there are usually very thick, unusually thick hardwood trees that are quite difficult to debark.

 

[Marshal79344]

It's hard to believe that a year has passed since the Bassfield Tornado's occurrence. The tornado was spawned by the first of two discrete supercells to interact with the extremely potent warm sector. A very dynamic system was moving very quickly across the area, providing very strong directional kinematics, and allowing for lots of wind shear and streamwise vorticity to manifest across the warm sector. Although the storm mode for the most part wasn't discrete, the first of the two cells to become discrete was the one responsible for the Bassfield Tornado.

Forecast HRRR sounding for the affected area about an hour prior to the tornado. At this time, clearing was occurring in that part of the warm sector, which enabled the cap, which had been present there for nearly the whole day, to finally erode to a level weak enough to support discrete convection. Note how much streamwise vorticity is present in the lowest 2 kilometers of the atmosphere, and how strong the winds remain until right before the ground. The winds from 6 kilometers to 2 kilometers above the ground, as evidenced by the SR Wind with Height Graph do not change, which supports a semi-high precipitation storm mode. The only saving factor would be the extreme shear values, which partially vented the updraft free of precipitation. This is a textbook violent tornado environment.



The supercell thunderstorm responsible started out as a bunch of weak convection moving in from the New Orleans vicinity, which quickly organized into a supercell thunderstorm once the capping inversion broke, at around 21:00 UTC. The supercell produced the first tornado, also rated EF4, at 21:39. That was a large wedge tornado that completely swept away an anchored guest home with such force that the anchors were bent significantly as the home was slabbed, cracking part of the foundation. Trees nearby were debarked and wrapped tightly with hay bales that had been thrown onto them by the tornado and may have contributed somewhat to the home's destruction. The tornado killed two here and killed two more in rural areas when a mobile home was obliterated before it finally died in a wooded area at 21:05.

The first EF4 Tornado at peak intensity on radar, at around 21:50 UTC. The tornado had just produced EF4 damage at this stage and was still likely of that intensity.



The first large EF4 Tornado caught on camera at peak intensity, while or just after EF4 Damage had been produced



The supercell cycled, as convective interference associated with the first tornado caused it to occlude. I'll post some damage pictures from the first tornado in a later post, which exhibit classic signs of violent tornado damage. The supercell, which had by this time fully matured and cleared its inflow notch from any convection, developed a massive area of inflow, and an extraordinarily violent mesocyclone. The mesocyclone was so strong that the radar began to glitch and miss some of the particles. The next and most violent tornado touched down at 21:12. It quickly grew large and killed a person in a mobile home. The intensity and width rapidly increased, and EF4 tree damage began to occur east of the town. Due to the parent supercell having strengthened considerably since producing the first tornado, evidenced by the Echo Tops increasing to over 50,000 feet during the tornadogenesis of the Bassfield Tornado, it's likely that the tornado would have been obscured by precipitation, and further hampered by low cloud bases. It would've been nearly impossible to see coming until later when the supercell gradually weakened near Soso and Moss. The tornado impacted a Cafe, with four people inside. The cafe was unanchored and had no shelter, and all four inside perished. Trees nearby were debarked, and a trailer was found wrapped tightly around a tree.

Remains of the cafe and debarked trees nearby





The intensity continued to increase as the violent tornado moved further to the northeast when it approached a well-anchored log cabin. A car from the farmstead was tossed over 200 yards, and little was ever recovered from the log cabin. It was completely swept away. I find the tree damage puzzling, as it wasn't really intense, however, the intensity of the damage here suggests a narrow sub-vortex may have been responsible.



The worst damage occurred at a grove of trees along Willie Fortenberry Road. The trees were completely stripped and debarked. Debarking is usually done by debris, not by the actual tornado itself. There was only one structure nearby, a home that sustained solid EF3 damage. Yet, these trees were completely stripped. It was at this location that the NWS in Jackson stated that it was "the worst tree damage we have ever seen."




The monster widened significantly after this point and weakened a lot. However, the two-mile-wide monster was still easily strong enough to produce EF4 damage, which occurred to a few businesses along its track, and in the Moss area. The tornado finally weakened as the supercell began to interfere with nearby convection, and finally shrunk back into the clouds. However, the area was not out of danger yet, as a second supercell, trailing immediately northeast to the track of the first one, was able to drop an EF3 Tornado that lasted 84 miles, despite the effects of rain-cooled air in the wake of the first storm.

 

[speedbump305]

Marshall, possible ground scouring is noted in that first aerial photograph

 

[Marshal79344]

Here are some more images of the damage produced by the first tornado, which was rated EF4.

The guest home was swept completely away. Note how the trees in the background have sustained some debarking and have hay wrapped tightly around them.



The main of the two homes was also completely leveled. It was rated EF3 165.



Here's an image of fences wrapped tightly around trees that have been completely denuded. This was taken at a business just northeast of the two homes which sustained EF3-EF4 damage.



Debarked shrubs at an unknown location along the path of the tornado.



The gigantic wedge tornado tearing across Marion County, after EF4 damage had been produced. Note hail from the parent supercell can be seen in the foreground.





The tornado's track on satellite

 

[zvl5316]

A strange landspout hit Laishui, Hebei Province in China in 1981/5/15. This landspout is longlived by slow in motion: It has a track of 4km during its 51min lifespan. The strangest thing is the destruction of concrete-and-brick warehouses implies it might be F3+.

 

[speedbump305]

Pohnpei, the missing anchors are impressive, but on the damage survey, it said washers were missing from anchors so therefore it makes it less impressive so technically it was easy to rip out. Another thing why Washington was impressive was its forward speed. sometimes moving at 60-70 mph. so the damage was done extremely fast

 

[Marshal79344]

Pohnpei, the missing anchors are impressive, but on the damage survey, it said washers were missing from anchors so therefore it makes it less impressive so technically it was easy to rip out. Another thing why Washington was impressive was its forward speed. sometimes moving at 60-70 mph. so the damage was done extremely fast

Believe it or not, speed doesn't really matter or affect tornado intensity much. The thinking that Jarrell's damage was slightly enhanced by its slow movement is flawed. There have been countless examples of slow-moving, violent tornadoes, such as Bennington and Rozel, which failed to produce scouring remotely comparable to that generated by Jarrell. While it may have somewhat of an effect, it doesn't matter that much. If the winds are of that intensity, the winds will do damage representative of that intensity.

 

[zvl5316]

http://www.smallearth.org.np/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Report-on-Bara-Parsa-Tornado.pdf

This survey report provides some details in the rare tornado event in Nepal in 2019. There were actually two tornadoes: one in mountainous national park area and another in plain area. The one in plain area has a track of 43.6km and max width of 695m. The author suggested an intensity of EF3.

 

[speedbump305]

Believe it or not, speed doesn't really matter or affect tornado intensity much. The thinking that Jarrell's damage was slightly enhanced by its slow movement is flawed. There have been countless examples of slow-moving, violent tornadoes, such as Bennington and Rozel, which failed to produce scouring remotely comparable to that generated by Jarrell. While it may have somewhat of an effect, it doesn't matter that much. If the winds are of that intensity, the winds will do damage representative of that intensity.

True, but i still think the speed was impressive tho. not because of damage but it was moving so fast

 

[Marshal79344]

True, but i still think the speed was impressive tho. not because of damage but it was moving so fast

That's common with dynamic systems with strong kinematic support. There've been examples of tornadoes moving faster than Washington did, but it is very scary to see a tornado of that intensity moving at you with such speed.

 

[zvl5316]

This tornado recorded by video in South Korea might be among the most intensed ones ever hit there. Unlike neighbouring Japan, Korea Peninsula is rarely hit by tornadoes.

 

[CheeselandSkies]

That's common with dynamic systems with strong kinematic support. There've been examples of tornadoes moving faster than Washington did, but it is very scary to see a tornado of that intensity moving at you with such speed.

Storm speeds of that magnitude seem to be common with top-end violent outbreaks such as 4/27/11, 4/3/74, Palm Sunday 1965, and the Tri-State Tornado day.

 

[pohnpei]

Believe it or not, speed doesn't really matter or affect tornado intensity much. The thinking that Jarrell's damage was slightly enhanced by its slow movement is flawed. There have been countless examples of slow-moving, violent tornadoes, such as Bennington and Rozel, which failed to produce scouring remotely comparable to that generated by Jarrell. While it may have somewhat of an effect, it doesn't matter that much. If the winds are of that intensity, the winds will do damage representative of that intensity.

Let's push the assumption of this problem to extreme. If a 100 m / s tornado stays in a town for 10000 years and a tornado of the same strength stays the town for only 0.01 second, will the damage caused by them be different or not? I believe it will be different without a doubt.
Bennington or Razel or Coleridge didn't hit any subvision. Bennington and Coleridge actually didn't hit any house very directly at peak intensity. It makes a great difference in terms of the damage we seen. Bennington was a beast that often get overlooked. If this tornado can move a little faster, the wind measurement can top 280 or even 290 mph (264+~20-25mph)easily due to the transitional speed addition.Those winds was inside the main vortex, not in subvortex like El Reno 2013.
It seems that Tim Marshall and Grazulis all once said the duration of wind make a great difference in damage but they all unsure about the exact degree given a certain amount of time.
The example that can really compare with Jarrell was those violent tornados that had the exact same slow speed and hit a subvision or town at the same time. Those examples were very rare. In fact how slow Jarrell actually was very puzzling to me. I don't have its exact speed when it hit the subvision.

 

[pohnpei]

This tornado recorded by video in South Korea might be among the most intensed ones ever hit there. Unlike neighbouring Japan, Korea Peninsula is rarely hit by tornadoes.

Tornados in South Korea are especially rare and this one was one of only few tornado that I know occurred in that place.

 

[speedbump305]

Let's push the assumption of this problem to extreme. If a 100 m / s tornado stays in a town for 10000 years and a tornado of the same strength stays the town for only 0.01 second, will the damage caused by them be different or not? I believe it will be different without a doubt.
Bennington or Razel or Coleridge didn't hit any subvision. Bennington and Coleridge actually didn't hit any house very directly at peak intensity. It makes a great difference in terms of damage we seen.
It seems that Tim Marshall and Grazulis all once said the duration of wind make a great difference in damage but they all unsure about the exact degree given a certain amount of time.
At the very least if Jarrell moving 60mph it wouldn't produce such level scouring.
The example that can really compare with Jarrell was those violent tornados that had the exact same slow speed and hit a subvision or town at the same time. Those examples were very rare. In fact how slow Jarrell actually was very puzzling to me. I don't have its exact speed when it hit the subvision.

Coleridge was undoubtedly capable of EF5 damage

 

[pohnpei]

Pohnpei, the missing anchors are impressive, but on the damage survey, it said washers were missing from anchors so therefore it makes it less impressive so technically it was easy to rip out. Another thing why Washington was impressive was its forward speed. sometimes moving at 60-70 mph. so the damage was done extremely fast

For sure it is. But on the other side, speaking of the peak intensity of a tornado, I believe it is the extremity of the DIs , not the amount of DIs tornado hits matters. Tuscaloosa hit at least 5000 houses yet its intensity was very likely cann't rival to tornados like Chapman that only hit one or two houses directly at most.

 

[pohnpei]

It's hard to believe that a year has passed since the Bassfield Tornado's occurrence. The tornado was spawned by the first of two discrete supercells to interact with the extremely potent warm sector. A very dynamic system was moving very quickly across the area, providing very strong directional kinematics, and allowing for lots of wind shear and streamwise vorticity to manifest across the warm sector. Although the storm mode for the most part wasn't discrete, the first of the two cells to become discrete was the one responsible for the Bassfield Tornado.

Forecast HRRR sounding for the affected area about an hour prior to the tornado. At this time, clearing was occurring in that part of the warm sector, which enabled the cap, which had been present there for nearly the whole day, to finally erode to a level weak enough to support discrete convection. Note how much streamwise vorticity is present in the lowest 2 kilometers of the atmosphere, and how strong the winds remain until right before the ground. The winds from 6 kilometers to 2 kilometers above the ground, as evidenced by the SR Wind with Height Graph do not change, which supports a semi-high precipitation storm mode. The only saving factor would be the extreme shear values, which partially vented the updraft free of precipitation. This is a textbook violent tornado environment.

View attachment 8688

The supercell thunderstorm responsible started out as a bunch of weak convection moving in from the New Orleans vicinity, which quickly organized into a supercell thunderstorm once the capping inversion broke, at around 21:00 UTC. The supercell produced the first tornado, also rated EF4, at 21:39. That was a large wedge tornado that completely swept away an anchored guest home with such force that the anchors were bent significantly as the home was slabbed, cracking part of the foundation. Trees nearby were debarked and wrapped tightly with hay bales that had been thrown onto them by the tornado and may have contributed somewhat to the home's destruction. The tornado killed two here and killed two more in rural areas when a mobile home was obliterated before it finally died in a wooded area at 21:05.

The first EF4 Tornado at peak intensity on radar, at around 21:50 UTC. The tornado had just produced EF4 damage at this stage and was still likely of that intensity.

View attachment 8689

The first large EF4 Tornado caught on camera at peak intensity, while or just after EF4 Damage had been produced

View attachment 8690

The supercell cycled, as convective interference associated with the first tornado caused it to occlude. I'll post some damage pictures from the first tornado in a later post, which exhibit classic signs of violent tornado damage. The supercell, which had by this time fully matured and cleared its inflow notch from any convection, developed a massive area of inflow, and an extraordinarily violent mesocyclone. The mesocyclone was so strong that the radar began to glitch and miss some of the particles. The next and most violent tornado touched down at 21:12. It quickly grew large and killed a person in a mobile home. The intensity and width rapidly increased, and EF4 tree damage began to occur east of the town. Due to the parent supercell having strengthened considerably since producing the first tornado, evidenced by the Echo Tops increasing to over 50,000 feet during the tornadogenesis of the Bassfield Tornado, it's likely that the tornado would have been obscured by precipitation, and further hampered by low cloud bases. It would've been nearly impossible to see coming until later when the supercell gradually weakened near Soso and Moss. The tornado impacted a Cafe, with four people inside. The cafe was unanchored and had no shelter, and all four inside perished. Trees nearby were debarked, and a trailer was found wrapped tightly around a tree.

Remains of the cafe and debarked trees nearby

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The intensity continued to increase as the violent tornado moved further to the northeast when it approached a well-anchored log cabin. A car from the farmstead was tossed over 200 yards, and little was ever recovered from the log cabin. It was completely swept away. I find the tree damage puzzling, as it wasn't really intense, however, the intensity of the damage here suggests a narrow sub-vortex may have been responsible.

View attachment 8694

The worst damage occurred at a grove of trees along Willie Fortenberry Road. The trees were completely stripped and debarked. Debarking is usually done by debris, not by the actual tornado itself. There was only one structure nearby, a home that sustained solid EF3 damage. Yet, these trees were completely stripped. It was at this location that the NWS in Jackson stated that it was "the worst tree damage we have ever seen."

View attachment 8695
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The monster widened significantly after this point and weakened a lot. However, the two-mile-wide monster was still easily strong enough to produce EF4 damage, which occurred to a few businesses along its track, and in the Moss area. The tornado finally weakened as the supercell began to interfere with nearby convection, and finally shrunk back into the clouds. However, the area was not out of danger yet, as a second supercell, trailing immediately northeast to the track of the first one, was able to drop an EF3 Tornado that lasted 84 miles, despite the effects of rain-cooled air in the wake of the first storm.

Those tree damage near the cabin are not puzzling to me. Tree damage here was given EF4 rating and it was the right call for sure. These trees were on the upwind direction from the house so there was no debris at all, even no tree stand in the upwind direction, though some trees still get debarked If you choose the right angle. Those all large harwood trees and the damage was intense. Grass scoruing in the center line of the tornado was apparent, though not very remarkable.