Significant Tornado Events

[locomusic01]

You may wanna give up with the stubborn types lol.
You could just update the article later on if you get new photos.
Yeah I'm eager to read the meteorology section, as the circumstances that led to this outbreak seem to have been exceptionally rare.

The problem is that I'm too stubborn to give up on stubborn people lol

Anyway, yeah the meteorology aspect of it is fascinating to me. I always feel a little wobbly trying to balance breaking things down in-depth vs making it accessible to non-wx folks, but I think I covered most of the important stuff. I was also able to talk a bit with some of the people who worked the event, which was really helpful. I can only imagine how stressful it must've been, especially for the NSSFC folks who went from downgrading the area to a Slight Risk to issuing a tornado watch for a developing outbreak in the span of like 50 minutes.

One thing I'd never realized before was that there were basically three different triggers, which is why there were three distinct lines of supercells. The Southern Ontario storms formed from the interaction of the cold front with lake-breeze fronts coming off of the Great Lakes, the first line of OH/PA supercells formed along the western edge of the cap via underrunning and the final wave was triggered by the cold front as it pushed through a bit later.

 

[locomusic01]

So for everyone on this thread, I've got a paid subscription to TornadoTalk (I finally bit the bullet) and it is definitely worth it. They have incredible articles on so many of the 4/27/11 tornadoes (and adding more) and they also have an exceptionally thorough article on the 1994 West Virginia Outbreak (at least as thoroughly as an outbreak like that can be documented) and their article on the Tuscaloosa tornado demonstrates just how violent this thing was between the namesake city and Birmingham. I really think a case can be made that it did EF5 damage in the remote forest and country areas between the two metropolises.
I can't wait for their future articles on 4/3/74, maybe that outbreak will finally be well documented.

I subscribed a while ago and I haven't had time to do much more than skim a couple of random articles so far, but it's 100% worth the price. They do great work.

 

[TH2002]

Keeping with my previous post about Hackleburg, the number of EF5 DI's aside it was still an extremely violent tornado (though that should go without saying).

Destroyed homes in Hackleburg, note the home in the background that was either leveled or slabbed (some cleanup has taken place)



The remains of Mountain View Baptist Church in Phil Campbell

Intense debarking

What appears to be the remains of another home



Roof timbers(?) embedded deeply into the ground, apparently from a home that was swept away along CR-38. Would love to find photos of the home itself one day

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Keeping with my previous post about Hackleburg, the number of EF5 DI's aside it was still an extremely violent tornado (though that should go without saying).

Destroyed homes in Hackleburg, note the home in the background that was either leveled or slabbed (some cleanup has taken place)



The remains of Mountain View Baptist Church in Phil Campbell

Intense debarking

What appears to be the remains of another home



Roof timbers(?) embedded deeply into the ground, apparently from a home that was swept away along CR-38. Would love to find photos of the home itself one day

Wasn't there another tree Hackleburg debarked that was completely white from top to bottom? I've been trying to find a pic of that.

 

[TH2002]

Wasn't there another tree Hackleburg debarked that was completely white from top to bottom? I've been trying to find a pic of that.

Maybe this is the photo you're talking about?

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

The 1958 Colfax tornado was an interesting event. Grazulis only gives this tornado an F4 rating and no clear examples of F5 damage can be found yet the contextual damage was very intense.

Damage from the Boyd-Longwood WI F4 of the same day:

 

[locomusic01]

Welcome back locomusic01, how is progress on the 5/30/1985 article going?

Speaking of 5/30/85, there actually was a mini-outbreak of sorts the day before the main show. Obviously much smaller in scale and lesser in intensity, but it was fueled by the same underrunning along the edge of the cap that happened on the OH/PA border:

It began with a deliberate slowness, as things often do in the American Southwest. The late-spring sun burned above the Llano Estacado, a muted sea of dirt and grass and scrub that slopes gradually into the stark canyonlands of the Pecos River Valley. Intense solar radiation cut through the lacquered blue of a perpetually cloudless sky, baking the desiccated landscape.

Through the final days of May 1985, the scorching sunshine cooked up triple-digit temperatures from northern Mexico to central Oklahoma. Roiling with thermal energy, the superheated air near the surface rose in great convective currents while cooler, denser air sank toward the ground. This slow and steady churning created a deep, stable, uniform airmass over the high mesa.

Further north, a progressive trough moved swiftly toward the Northern Plains, bringing with it a powerful 70-knot jet streak. At the surface, a low-pressure system developed in the lee of the Rockies and intensified as it moved into the Upper Midwest. In response, the well-mixed airmass over the Desert Southwest began to push eastward.

Reaching the lower elevations around the Mississippi Valley, this stable airmass overspread a vast pool of warm, humid air flooding in from the Gulf of Mexico. Acting like a lid on a pot, the resulting elevated mixed layer (EML) effectively suppressed convection beneath it, allowing tremendous energy and instability to build without boiling over.

——————

By Thursday afternoon, May 30, the deepening surface low had moved into western Minnesota. A warm front extended across the Great Lakes, while a strong cold front trailed south into Kansas and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the elevated mixed layer had continued spreading to the east and north, expanding in a broad arc from northern Iowa to central Kentucky.

As unstable, moisture-rich air pooled beneath this atmospheric lid, trouble began brewing along its edges. A line of storms formed near the cold front, producing baseball-sized hail in Missouri. Brief spin-ups throughout the evening caused moderate damage in parts of North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Minnesota.

At about 10:30 pm, a large supercell fired along the northern edge of the EML in northeastern Iowa. Feeding on the untapped supply of warm, moist air, it quickly strengthened and produced a tornado in rural Clayton County. The destructive twister struck entirely without warning, badly damaging about two dozen farms and causing several injuries.

As it passed north of Elkader, the tornado leveled the south wing of the Clayton County Care Facility. The collapse of the concrete structure killed two elderly residents and hurt several others. Crossing the Mississippi River into Wisconsin, the tornado leveled a large farmhouse near Bagley, seriously injuring a woman and her son. It continued for another 10 miles, tearing through nearly two dozen farms and producing significant damage across central Grant County.

The storm promptly reorganized as it moved across southern Wisconsin, producing subsequent tornadoes in Iowa and Dane counties. During the overnight hours, additional storms broke out over parts of Ohio, bringing small hail, gusty winds and torrential downpours to the eastern half of the state. Though no one could have known it at the time, the drenching rainfall only served to add fuel to the coming fire.

——————————————————————————————————

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Some damage photos and maps from the 2007 Pipestone MB F3:

 

[buckeye05]

The 1958 Colfax tornado was an interesting event. Grazulis only gives this tornado an F4 rating and no clear examples of F5 damage can be found yet the contextual damage was very intense.

View attachment 13582
View attachment 13583
View attachment 13585
View attachment 13586
View attachment 13587
View attachment 13588

Damage from the Boyd-Longwood WI F4 of the same day:
View attachment 13594

I find that Grazulis is strangely dismissive of some F5 events (Colfax, Hudsonville, and Ruskin Heights), while seemingly being easily convinced by other tornadoes with less impressive damage in my opinion (Charles City and Oelwein).

Also there are some crazy photos from this one of a car that was wrapped around the side of a collapsed bridge.

Edit: I see you posted the photo above. Missed it the first time I looked.

 

[locomusic01]

I found these photos a while back in a book (I think?) labeled as the Tionesta tornado. I was pretty positive that was wrong for several reasons (the landscape, the power lines, the structure of the supercell, etc) so I kinda forgot about them and forgot to positively ID them. It turns out they're shots of the Agra, KS F3 from 5/10/85, a day that featured several monster tornadoes in Kansas and Nebraska and seems to be something of a legendary event among old-school chasers.

 

[Mike S]

Today is the 12th anniversary of the long tracker that went through Yazoo City.

A nugget of Talkweather interest from this storm - the EF3 that went through Albertville took out our server at the time and we had to swtich to a backup in Arizona(I think that is where it was!).

Storm reports for Albertville and Yazoo City:

Tornado Data: April 24th, 2010

NWS Jackson, MS - April 24, 2010 Violent Long Track Tornado

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

This tornado has been talked about quite a bit on this thread already but one of the most interesting tornadoes of the 1940s in my opinion is the 1947 Leedey OK tornado. It was similar to Jarrell being a slow-moving F5 and produced similar contextual damage. Homes were totally swept away, vehicles were thrown hundreds of yards and mangled beyond recognition and several inches of topsoil was scoured. This event was one of the 5 violent tornadoes that occurred in an active period that lasted from May 29 to June 9. Violent tornadoes occurred from Colorado to Arkansas to Pennsylvania.

 

[Austin Dawg]

The overzealous application of EF5 damage points along the Hackleburg-Phil Campbell damage path is something I’ve brought up before. They really did overdo it. There were multiple areas of legit EF5 damage along the path (particularly in the Oak Grove and Mount Hope areas), but not as many as the DAT would suggest.

The video footage of that storm while it was going and the total amount and general footage and photos alone convince me that this was not only an F5 but one of the worst tornadoes ever... period.

What you can see starting around the 5 minute mark in this footage still defies the laws of nature to me.



Mom insists this is exactly what the Smithville F5 looked and sounded like as it went by just to her West that day. The words she used were dark, black, boiling she just said felt evil and death.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

I find that Grazulis is strangely dismissive of some F5 events (Colfax, Hudsonville, and Ruskin Heights), while seemingly being easily convinced by other tornadoes with less impressive damage in my opinion (Charles City and Oelwein).

Also there are some crazy photos from this one of a car that was wrapped around the side of a collapsed bridge.

Edit: I see you posted the photo above. Missed it the first time I looked.

Another angle of the car and bridge:

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

This tornado has been talked about quite a bit on this thread already but one of the most interesting tornadoes of the 1940s in my opinion is the 1947 Leedey OK tornado. It was similar to Jarrell being a slow-moving F5 and produced similar contextual damage. Homes were totally swept away, vehicles were thrown hundreds of yards and mangled beyond recognition and several inches of topsoil was scoured. This event was one of the 5 violent tornadoes that occurred in an active period that lasted from May 29 to June 9. Violent tornadoes occurred from Colorado to Arkansas to Pennsylvania.

My previous post on it, this thing was remarkably well-documented for the time period:

Significant Tornado Events

I work right over by where the Andover, KS tornado came through in 1991. So you work on base? Or just in the Andover/Wichita area? My dad's an Air Force veteran and he was stationed at McConnell around the time of the tornado, although I'm not sure if he was still on base on April 26, 1991.

talkweather.com

A lot of the scouring reminds me of Jarrell

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Maybe this is the photo you're talking about?
View attachment 13592

I think so, holy crap that is amazing. Several other trees look completely white the more I stare at the pic. Man, this thing and Smithville did incredible vegetation damage, possibly the most intense in Mississippi and Alabama history.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

I find that Grazulis is strangely dismissive of some F5 events (Colfax, Hudsonville, and Ruskin Heights), while seemingly being easily convinced by other tornadoes with less impressive damage in my opinion (Charles City and Oelwein).

Let's see what he does in the new book....perhaps he'll change his stance on some of his older ratings.
I'd love to find the other alleged video footage from Worcester that he scoffed at.

 

[eric11]

I found these photos a while back in a book (I think?) labeled as the Tionesta tornado. I was pretty positive that was wrong for several reasons (the landscape, the power lines, the structure of the supercell, etc) so I kinda forgot about them and forgot to positively ID them. It turns out they're shots of the Agra, KS F3 from 5/10/85, a day that featured several monster tornadoes in Kansas and Nebraska and seems to be something of a legendary event among old-school chasers.

This was the same day which a pair of pilger-like twins were documented but failed to find any photo of it.

 

[TH2002]

Apologies if this stuff has been posted before, but the incredible damage that Moore 2013 caused near the medical center will never not impress me. The totality of the destruction (scouring, debarking, vehicles, homes, etc.) is just astounding.

 

[buckeye05]

Apologies if this stuff has been posted before, but the incredible damage that Moore 2013 caused near the medical center will never not impress me. The totality of the destruction (scouring, debarking, vehicles, homes, etc.) is just astounding.
View attachment 13600
View attachment 13601

Jarrell-like, as I’ve said before.