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eric11

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Glad to see the May 23, 2008 outbreak getting some recognition, definitely one of the most impressive plains outbreaks in modern history in my opinion fortunately this part of Kansas is very rural. 69 tornadoes in a single state in one day is still remarkable.
View attachment 14050
Quinter actually had 3 rounds of tornadoes come through including the EF4 and massive wedge EF2.

View attachment 14051
Here’s some of the tornadoes that tracked near Cedar Bluff Reservoir that again remained in fairly rural areas. Wouldn’t be surprised if one of these was violent at some point. View attachment 14052
View attachment 14053
What was likely the strongest tornado of the outbreak was this 1.8 mile wide wedge that tracked near Clark State Lake. This tornado had one of the most incredible radar presentations I’ve ever seen. NWS Dodge City states this tornado was likely greater than EF3 strength it just remained in very rural areas, pretty much the theme of the day.
View attachment 14057
View attachment 14054
This lesser known massive EF3 was spawned by the same supercell that produced the Clark State wedge and tracked near Hopewell and Macksville debarking trees as well as destroying a few farms. This one also had an incredible velocity signature and was probably violent at some point.
View attachment 14055
View attachment 14056
Last one I’ll be covering out of the many significant and large tornadoes of the day this one was the only tornado to cause fatalities. A vehicle carrying a couple from colorado was lofted 580 yards off Highway 50 landing in a field. The car wasn’t discovered until the morning after and was completely mangled.
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View attachment 14060

Out of the 78 tornadoes that touched down on that day 69 were in Kansas alone, and at the time this set a National state record for tornadoes in one day. 13 of these were 1/2 mile wide or larger and there were likely several violent tornadoes that day.
Later that night there's a large wedge EF3 crossed the OK/KS stateline and passed near Buttermilk KS, I found the damage description was definitely incredible, do you have any info about it?
"In Kansas, the tornado reached EF3 strength, where several head of cattle were killed, an oil tank was found 2 miles away from where it originated, and several trees were sandblasted and completely debarked. Several antique vehicles were thrown long distances as well, a few of which were never located (likely dropped into isolated ravines in the area)."
 

MNTornadoGuy

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Damage from the 1999 Loyal Valley TX F4 tornado:
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eric11

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Nice! Some of these I don't think I've seen before. Based on satellite, it looks like the scouring/vegetation damage peaked at over 0.6 mile wide.

nyUoM23.png
I'm curious did the most significant damage occurred near the"loop area"? It seems that the extreme slow moving speed added to the severity of damage.
 

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I'm curious did the most significant damage occurred near the"loop area"? It seems that the extreme slow moving speed added to the severity of damage.
Doesn't look like there's really anything there structure-wise, but it certainly looks like the most pronounced vegetation damage. For reference, it's just south of Ranch Rd 152 (coordinates 30.645910, -98.993658).
 

locomusic01

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I really don't mean to fill up the whole damn thread with 5/31/85 stuff, buuuut.. I think I found another one lol

eMvElPh.png


W4S4F7u.png


This is immediately north of Liberty in McKean County, PA about six miles SSE of Port Allegany. I'm not 100% certain yet, but it didn't appear until after 5/31/85 and I'm not aware of any other tornadic activity in this part of the state anywhere near this timeframe (there were a few small tornadoes further west on 6/22). I'm hoping I can dig up something on it but I'm not optimistic.

Anyway, it looks like it's just under 5 miles long and ranges from about 150 to just over 600 yards wide. If it is from this outbreak, I'm curious whether it might've been produced by the same supercell as the Lamont F2 (which also produced Mesopotamia, Atlantic & Tionesta before that). Lamont moved roughly WSW to ENE and this track is more WNW to ESE, but you can see that same kind of deviant motion with other supercells over time, most notably Moshannon -> Elimsport.
 
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Nice! Some of these I don't think I've seen before. Based on satellite, it looks like the scouring/vegetation damage peaked at over 0.6 mile wide.

nyUoM23.png

This thing's like Jarrell in that the core of F4+ plus winds was extremely wide; over half a mile. Wonder what it is about Texas that allows for tornadoes like this to occur there?
 

locomusic01

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I swear to god every day it seems a new tornado pops up lol
I've seen like 3-4 other areas of interest as well, but they were small enough that I didn't really bother investigating. I wouldn't be surprised if they were brief spin-ups though; I recall seeing a study once that tried to analyze tornado reporting in outbreaks by decade, and even in the 80s and 90s I think they estimated like 20% or something went unreported. Mostly short/weak ones obviously.

Not sure some of these were necessarily weak, though.
 

locomusic01

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This thing's like Jarrell in that the core of F4+ plus winds was extremely wide; over half a mile. Wonder what it is about Texas that allows for tornadoes like this to occur there?
It's not necessarily just Texas, but with cases like these the recipe is usually extreme instability + relatively weak winds aloft + boundaries, gravity waves, etc. working some mesoscale magic.
 
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I've seen like 3-4 other areas of interest as well, but they were small enough that I didn't really bother investigating. I wouldn't be surprised if they were brief spin-ups though; I recall seeing a study once that tried to analyze tornado reporting in outbreaks by decade, and even in the 80s and 90s I think they estimated like 20% or something went unreported. Mostly short/weak ones obviously.

Not sure some of these were necessarily weak, though.
It's probably way more then 20%, lots of tornadoes hit rural isolated and don't hit much other than trees or maybe telephone poles/fence posts, so can't be rated all that high (assuming they hit anything at all); what's striking the further back with tornado outbreaks you go, the more and more F3+ tornadoes you see documented and less and less F0-F2's documented.
Also, I don't think any tornado can be considered "weak" but there is definitely a difference between "intense" and "moderate" ones.
 
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It's not necessarily just Texas, but with cases like these the recipe is usually extreme instability + relatively weak winds aloft + boundaries, gravity waves, etc. working some mesoscale magic.
Why did Loyal Valley and Jarrell have really wide cores, though? And why were they both slow moving?
 

buckeye05

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Why did Loyal Valley and Jarrell have really wide cores, though? And why were they both slow moving?
Both of those events had marginal kinematic support, so storm motions were anemic and sluggish. Not uncommon with high CAPE, low shear setups.

Setups like that can produce monsters. I think Coleridge, NE 2014 occurred on a day with that kind of setup too.
 
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locomusic01

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Why did Loyal Valley and Jarrell have really wide cores, though? And why were they both slow moving?
With weak(ish) winds aloft, storm motions are slow and they can just sort of drift along the boundary. I'd imagine that also has something to do with the wide damage swaths, giving winds further from the center of the vortex more time over a given area.
 
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With weak(ish) winds aloft, storm motions are slow and they can just sort of drift along the boundary. I'd imagine that also has something to do with the wide damage swaths, giving winds further from the center of the vortex more time over a given area.
Come to think of it, the few tornadoes I know of with wide instances of EF3+ were all slow-moving wedge; Jarrell, Loyal Valley, Joplin, and Marion, ND (aka the Noot Farm tornado).
 
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