Significant Tornado Events

[locomusic01]

Interesting how the toilet seat is still there....this happened with Grand Valley too.
Come to think of it, it's happened with lots of tornadoes.
Anyways, what I was getting at with core width and forward speed is that lots of fast-moving tornadoes (especially Dixie wedges) tend to have really skinny cores, whereas slow-movers like Bridge Creek-Moore, Noot Farm, Joplin, Jarrell and Loyal Valley have pretty wide ones. Probably something to do with duration of extreme winds but not sure.
The only other tornadoes I can think of with such a tiny core in relation to their circulation is Plainfield (10 yards at most) and Guin, based on some of the photographs I've been able to find of it.

Noot Farm is a really A+ name for a tornado. Or also for a farm I guess.

Re: a damage width/translation speed relationship, I'm curious whether any studies have looked at that specifically. Modeling shows that higher forward speeds create more asymmetric flow (higher velocities on the right/south side, lower on the left/north, as you'd expect) but I dunno to what extent that influences the width of extreme damage. I'd assume residence time is also a factor, like you mentioned. Probably the biggest thing is just the internal structure of the tornado though, which depends on a huge number of factors.

Also, it happened at least twice w/Grand Valley! In one instance a woman actually survived by wrapping herself around the toilet. The entire home was blown away but she only suffered cuts and bruises.

 

[Lake Martin EF4]

Noot Farm is a really A+ name for a tornado. Or also for a farm I guess.

Re: a damage width/translation speed relationship, I'm curious whether any studies have looked at that specifically. Modeling shows that higher forward speeds create more asymmetric flow (higher velocities on the right/south side, lower on the left/north, as you'd expect) but I dunno to what extent that influences the width of extreme damage. I'd assume residence time is also a factor, like you mentioned. Probably the biggest thing is just the internal structure of the tornado though, which depends on a huge number of factors.

Also, it happened at least twice w/Grand Valley! In one instance a woman actually survived by wrapping herself around the toilet. The entire home was blown away but she only suffered cuts and bruises.

I typically refer to Noot Farm as the "Marion Tornado".

Also that one Grand Valley story reminds me of a fatality during Greensburg I heard of on a Reddit post: one person tried to wrap themself (The Redditor wasn't sure whether the person was male or female) around a toilet and all that accomplished was the toilet seat nearly decapitating them.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Noot Farm is a really A+ name for a tornado. Or also for a farm I guess.

Re: a damage width/translation speed relationship, I'm curious whether any studies have looked at that specifically. Modeling shows that higher forward speeds create more asymmetric flow (higher velocities on the right/south side, lower on the left/north, as you'd expect) but I dunno to what extent that influences the width of extreme damage. I'd assume residence time is also a factor, like you mentioned. Probably the biggest thing is just the internal structure of the tornado though, which depends on a huge number of factors.

Also, it happened at least twice w/Grand Valley! In one instance a woman actually survived by wrapping herself around the toilet. The entire home was blown away but she only suffered cuts and bruises.

Lol my middle name is Noot. It goes back to the House of van der Noot, a Belgian noble family.
You can't even begin to handle the sophistication involved here. Lol.

 

[Lake Martin EF4]

Lol my middle name is Noot. It goes back to the House of van der Noot, a Belgian noble family.
You can't even begin to handle the sophistication involved here. Lol.

"She turned me into a Noot!"

"Well, I got better..."

 

[locomusic01]

Some real violent tree damage in the background here.

There was quite a bit of high-end tree damage in Kane and East Kane.

I really wish I could've found some photos from the Tionesta Scenic Area west of town. I talked to a former park ranger who said it was "the worst forest damage I've ever seen" (probably not an exact quote - it'll be in the article). From his descriptions, it sounds like there was a pretty pronounced backward convergence treefall pattern as well, which you typically only see with rather high-end tornadoes. Even just the satellite presentation is pretty impressive.

 

[locomusic01]

Near Cochranton (Atlantic F4) a whole family survived in this car that was involuntarily relocated a hundred yards or so out into a field.

On the right side of the ridge in the background the treeline just.. melts lol. I thought it was just some kind of artifact in the photo at first but that's right around where the path would've been so I dunno.

These were both taken just up over the other side of the ridge.

 

[locomusic01]

If you look really really close you can sorta make out a tornado track west of Atlantic lol (the town's smoldering near the top of the photo). The short little road beneath that is Pinedale Trailer Court where four people were killed (three in an obliterated frame home). You can also see a dark streak in the field to the south (right) of the big pond - I'm dying to know what that is. I've heard from several people that the tornado dug "trenches" near Atlantic, but I was skeptical because no one could seem to agree on where. If it actually did happen, that'd be a pretty good place for it.

I've also heard the same thing about Niles-Wheatland when it was near Lordstown, but I haven't seen any definitive proof there either. Anyway.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

On newspapers.com I encountered this stuff from the 1985 outbreak:

1. Not sure if this is of Niles-Wheatland or something else, the caption is confusing:




2. This is directly below the Hermitage picture. Apparently Moshannon's path was up to 3 miles wide, likely due to the inflow vortices/downbursts from the valleys then the tornadic circulation itself. One quote about how the "pictures of the thing are just incredible" makes me wonders if photographs of the tornado were taken, who knows. Of course, I wonder if the above photo might be of Moshannon but not sure (did it touch down near Hermitage? The photo is really confusing).




3. From Atlantic, apparently only one building was left standing. I figure Atlantic wasn't very big, but still. Wow.

 

[Lake Martin EF4]

(did it touch down near Hermitage?

Given Hermitage and Avis (the end of the Moshannon track) are over 160 miles apart if it DID touch down in Hermitage it definitely isn't Moshannon.

 

[locomusic01]

The tornado is Niles-Wheatland, it's one of a series taken from Bartholomew Rd about halfway between Hermitage and Mercer. The series actually captured it starting to rope out.

I think the 3 miles figure is probably counting some of the downbursts along the fringes of the path. They extend out pretty far in some areas but aren't directly related to the tornado. And yeah, for some reason most news reports insist only one building was left standing in Atlantic, which isn't even a little bit accurate. I dunno where it even comes from. It's about the only thing left standing within the actual path of the tornado, but the tornado only hit the north side of town.

I mean, that still only leaves a few buildings on the south side since Atlantic's so small, but y'know. If it'd been a few hundred yards further south it would've quite literally wiped the town off the map, though.

 

[locomusic01]

I don't wanna post all the good stuff prematurely, so here's a crappy little aerial shot from Atlantic. There was virtually nothing left on the north (right) side of town, but definitely more than one building left south of the path.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

The tornado is Niles-Wheatland, it's one of a series taken from Bartholomew Rd about halfway between Hermitage and Mercer. The series actually captured it starting to rope out.

I think the 3 miles figure is probably counting some of the downbursts along the fringes of the path. They extend out pretty far in some areas but aren't directly related to the tornado. And yeah, for some reason most news reports insist only one building was left standing in Atlantic, which isn't even a little bit accurate. I dunno where it even comes from. It's about the only thing left standing within the actual path of the tornado, but the tornado only hit the north side of town.

I mean, that still only leaves a few buildings on the south side since Atlantic's so small, but y'know. If it'd been a few hundred yards further south it would've quite literally wiped the town off the map, though.

The news reports insisting on only one building left standing is just good-old fashioned sensationalism (or someone was in a hurry to meet their deadline and hadn't gotten all the facts straight). Concerning Moshannon several articles on newspapers.com quote Forbes as saying the path of the tornado was 2.1 miles wide, which seems more reasonable for the circulation itself. Of course, it probably varied depending on how many hills and valleys it encountered, etc.
In terms of a newspaper article getting facts plain wrong, check this baby out:



Grain bins and Miles, Ohio. Lol.

 

[locomusic01]

Actually here's a short video that shows the path through Atlantic a lot better.

 

[locomusic01]

Grain bins and Miles, Ohio. Lol.

Ah, the infamous Miles-Wheatbin F5.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Ah, the infamous Miles-Wheatbin F5.

Don't forget the Bane F4 and Sprout/Most-Handsome State Forest F4.

 

[Lake Martin EF4]

Don't forget the Bane F4 and Sprout/Most-Handsome State Forest F4.

Or the Pacific F4!

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Found this little tidbit from the 1920 Aberdeen, MS/Waco, AL tornado that was more or less a carbon copy of Hackleburg/Phil Campbell in so many ways. Disclaimer for language:



21 people killed at a single plantation...that's gotta be some sort of record.
Also 500 hogs killed at a single ranch, holy crap.
It wouldn't surprise me if 500-700 people in total were killed in 4/20/1920 but the majority of injured weren't followed up on and of course African-Americans were often never included in death tolls, I'm sure you could easily double/triple most death tolls from Dixie tornado outbreaks prior to 1950 with black victims that weren't counted.

 

[TH2002]

This photo from Chandler is notable for several reasons, but the two main ones being it's the only photo I've seen that definitively shows a home with a poured concrete foundation as opposed to CMU; but also look in the background of the photo. Notice anything? Chandler may have just earned itself a spot in a very special club that also includes Brandenburg, Joplin and Hackleburg in terms of snapping poured concrete foundations.

Looks like another home was swept away here, can't infer anything about its construction though:

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

This photo from Chandler is notable for several reasons, but the two main ones being it's the only photo I've seen that definitively shows a home with a poured concrete foundation as opposed to CMU; but also look in the background of the photo. Notice anything? Chandler may have just earned itself a spot in a very special club that also includes Brandenburg, Joplin and Hackleburg in terms of snapping poured concrete foundations.

Looks like another home was swept away here, can't infer anything about its construction though:

I’m not sure if the poured concrete foundation entirely surrounds the house as there could be a walkout basement wall where the part that collapsed is located.

 

[TH2002]

I’m not sure if the poured concrete foundation entirely surrounds the house as there could be a walkout basement wall where the part that collapsed is located.

It is a likely possibility that the house had a walk-out basement wall similar to some of the homes in Parkersburg; but regardless, this is pretty impressive.