Significant Tornado Events

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Yup. The gradient between F0-F1 and F4-F5 is like two or three houses in some places, which is pretty absurd.

This photo is a good demonstration of that:




A row of homes annihilated with homes literally right next to them completely untouched; also notice the row of homes in the lower center right next to the road and court in a wooded area with a home at the end of it; if the top half of this photo was cut out you wouldn't be able to tell anything had happened in the first place.

This aerial from Lordstown is another good example:



Intense wind-rowing in the field, the house on the lower right of the photo is sverely damaged but parts of it are still standing and a house right across the field is more or less untouched again. Not sure if this is from the core or a subvortex, ridiculous either way.

 

[locomusic01]

Yeah, first photo is Lantern Lane, where some of the most intense damage in Niles occurred. The home at the center of the damage swath there, part of the foundation was apparently dislodged. I came across a newspaper report but kinda dismissed it until I talked to one of the owners and they confirmed it. Did not expect that.

 

[TH2002]

Yeah, first photo is Lantern Lane, where some of the most intense damage in Niles occurred. The home at the center of the damage swath there, part of the foundation was apparently dislodged. I came across a newspaper report but kinda dismissed it until I talked to one of the owners and they confirmed it. Did not expect that.

Do you have any photos of home damage in Hermitage?

 

[locomusic01]

Do you have any photos of home damage in Hermitage?

I do, but I wanna have something left for my article lol. Actually someone reached out to me this afternoon who lived out toward Mercer and she said she and her parents somehow arranged to go up and take aerial photos of that area after the tornado. She hasn't sent them yet so I dunno how good they are, but I'm pretty excited.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Yeah, first photo is Lantern Lane, where some of the most intense damage in Niles occurred. The home at the center of the damage swath there, part of the foundation was apparently dislodged. I came across a newspaper report but kinda dismissed it until I talked to one of the owners and they confirmed it. Did not expect that.

Amazing how stuff like this gets lost to time. Lots of stuff like has been documented in more modern times (2011 in particular) but not so much older events; I'm sure parts of foundations being dislodged has occurred for quite a while but for whatever reason it's hard to find extreme instances of damage like this with pre-Internet era events.

 

[TH2002]

I do, but I wanna have something left for my article lol. Actually someone reached out to me this afternoon who lived out toward Mercer and she said she and her parents somehow arranged to go up and take aerial photos of that area after the tornado. She hasn't sent them yet so I dunno how good they are, but I'm pretty excited.

Well you don't have to post the pictures here but based on them would you say the tornado was still at F5 intensity in Hermitage (where Ron Alfredo's video was filmed)?

 

[locomusic01]

Well you don't have to post the pictures here but based on them would you say the tornado was still at F5 intensity in Hermitage (where Ron Alfredo's video was filmed)?

Probably not based on what I've found so far, but it's also hard to tell w/such a narrow core. Some of the contextual damage was definitely still impressive, and it seems to have fluctuated in intensity. The final fatality occurred very near the end of the path and it sounds like the damage was quite severe, but I'm still working on finding photos from that property.

 

[locomusic01]

Actually I forget exactly where Ron Alfredo's video was taken. I've got it marked on Google Earth but I'm in bed and don't feel like getting up lol. I'll check tomorrow and see what the damage was like in that area.

I'm hoping to talk to Ron soon. Chatted w/his son a bit a few days ago and he said he'd pass along my info. His reactions in that video are just hilarious.

 

[locomusic01]

Yeah, it touched down in the southeastern corner of the arsenal before crossing SR5 and Holcomb Rd. As far as I know the only damage done there was to trees.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Actually I forget exactly where Ron Alfredo's video was taken. I've got it marked on Google Earth but I'm in bed and don't feel like getting up lol. I'll check tomorrow and see what the damage was like in that area.

I'm hoping to talk to Ron soon. Chatted w/his son a bit a few days ago and he said he'd pass along my info. His reactions in that video are just hilarious.

"It's a ternaydo!"
"Get dahnstairs now!"
"Look at all dah papers!"

Pretty sure that's a lot more than paper.....

In all seriousness I'd probably be as dumbstruck as the guy taping that thing was, considering that:

1. It's a tornado in Pennsylvania
2. It's an F5 tornado in Pennsylvania
3. How close it came to wiping out his house

I'm pretty sure this is also the first audio of an F5 tornado as well. Even more impressive is that these two firsts are of an F5 in Pennsylvania (the only F5 in Pennsylvania state history, I might add) as opposed to being in a place like Kansas, Oklahoma, or the Deep South, where violent tornadoes like this are more commonly expected. What are the odds of all these firsts taking place at once? Ron made history here with his tape. Also excellent quality for a 1980s-era video recording.

 

[locomusic01]

I also got photos from a woman who lived further east toward Mercer - she and her husband thought it was coming toward their trailer so they grabbed their daughter and took off across a field toward their neighbor's basement (only to find out they didn't actually have one lol). Fortunately she had the presence of mind to grab her camera before she left and she got a series of shots, including as it started shrinking and lifting.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

I also got photos from a woman who lived further east toward Mercer - she and her husband thought it was coming toward their trailer so they grabbed their daughter and took off across a field toward their neighbor's basement (only to find out they didn't actually have one lol). Fortunately she had the presence of mind to grab her camera before she left and she got a series of shots, including as it started shrinking and lifting.

Awesome, can't wait to see if any of these photos make it onto the Internet!
Really looking forward to how this project turns out!

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

I've been trying to save everything for my article, but I can't help myself. One of the other tornadoes that caused notable vegetation damage (and one that I think was underrated) was the Beaver Falls F3. Same one I mentioned earlier re: debris transport. This is from one of the homes where a fatality occurred. The woman's nephew said that a number of trees on the property were stripped bare and some of the grass was torn up.

He said the family has photos somewhere, so I'm hoping he can locate them and/or I can find some better shots from this property. It actually caused pretty significant damage throughout much of its ~40-mile path.

From what I've read about this tornado it was definitely underrated. One notable interesting detail is that many people in the area reported pink insulation and sheet metal falling from the sky prior to the tornado. Crazy.

 

[locomusic01]

In several places, some of the huge hailstones that fell actually nucleated around tufts of insulation and scraps of paper/shingles/etc. Reminds me of the Plainfield tornado (which, incidentally, destroyed a subdivision named Wheatland Plains) where a lot of the hail was found to have formed around bits of corn stalks and such.

Or, if you prefer something more absurd, the Worcester tornado where frozen chunks of mattress were reported floating in the east end of Massachusetts Bay, over 50 miles from the tornado's path.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

In several places, some of the huge hailstones that fell actually nucleated around tufts of insulation and scraps of paper/shingles/etc. Reminds me of the Plainfield tornado (which, incidentally, destroyed a subdivision named Wheatland Plains) where a lot of the hail was found to have formed around bits of corn stalks and such.

Or, if you prefer something more absurd, the Worcester tornado where frozen chunks of mattress were reported floating in the east end of Massachusetts Bay, over 50 miles from the tornado's path.

Yeah the Worcester thing I read in your article on it, it's mentioned in many eyewitness accounts from that event. Worcester is also another notable instance of a freak tornado occurring up northeast.

 

[ARCC]

Finally found this video from a storm shelter in Mt Hope as the tornado passed by.

 

[locomusic01]

As many times as I've seen it and heard it and written about it, I still can't really imagine sitting in a storm shelter or basement or whatever and hearing something like that passing overhead. Good lord.

Also, when I first glanced at the screenshot for the video I thought that was a body lying there wearing some kind of tiger print outfit, which was unsettling for several reasons.

 

[locomusic01]

So, this is interesting. Multiple people now have told me that they saw a satellite tornado along with the main Niles-Wheatland tornado, and they were insistent that it was a fully separate funnel rather than any kind of subvortex. Three of them pinpointed the same general location where they remembered seeing it, and one of them said that they later checked out the area and there was a narrow path where trees were snapped/uprooted for a mile or two. I don't know if I'll add it to my map, but that seems pretty compelling.

What makes it more interesting to me is that they said it was north of the main tornado and that it formed a few miles northwest of Lordstown. That same area is where the tornado took a sudden wobble to the north as it approached Leavitt Rd, where it destroyed a few homes/farms and claimed its first victim.

I can't help but wonder whether there was some kind of interaction there that helped tug the main tornado further north. Sort of illustrates how capricious it all is - one little variable might be the difference between whether a given person lives or dies. Assuming there was indeed a satellite as described, the path (a very rough approximation obviously) sure seems suggestive:

I dunno if this kind of minutiae is actually of interest to anyone else, but I think it's pretty fascinating.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

One of the deadliest South African tornadoes of the 21st century is the 11/14/2008 Molweni tornado. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and 8 people were killed.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Another significant tornado from the Southern Hemisphere is the 5/24/2005 San Paulo tornado. This F3 tornado tossed railcars, destroyed industrial buildings, and damaged commercial buildings.