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locomusic01

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Also, that aerial from Niles is on par with Andover in terms of the severity of wind-rowing.
Niles-Wheatland was a wind-rowing machine lol.

Stillwagon Road (east of Niles Park Plaza):

aerial-stillwagon-rd-3-resize.jpg


Kermont Heights:

aerial-kermont-heights-4-colorized.jpg


It was basically one long, skinny, slithery streak of regurgitated debris (although this one's after a lot of cleanup had already taken place).

23_niles_aerial-2.jpg
 
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Niles-Wheatland was a wind-rowing machine lol.

Stillwagon Road (east of Niles Park Plaza):

aerial-stillwagon-rd-3-resize.jpg


Kermont Heights:

aerial-kermont-heights-4-colorized.jpg


It was basically one long, skinny, slithery streak of regurgitated debris (although this one's after a lot of cleanup had already taken place).

23_niles_aerial-2.jpg
The slithery streak from this tornado seems to be throughout almost all of its path from Niles onward.
After all your research, do you think this could be considered the most violent tornado of the 1980s (at least in North America)? I mean, Barrie was violent but Niles-Wheatland blows it away (pun partially intended) in so many ways.
 

locomusic01

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Suppose there's no point in trying to rush the article now. Take as much time as you actually need to finish it.

At this point you can take as much time as possible. Hell, don't waste too much time with proofreading paragraphs anymore; you can always come back and edit later.
Also, I'm eagerly awaiting to see the sheer amount of stuff you've uncovered!
The article itself is fully written now (although there's always more I'd like to add). I've just been sorting/cropping/uploading pictures, formatting everything, adding captions, etc. It doesn't sound like much, but when you have to do it for several hundreds of pictures.. blech. Anyway, I'll have it finished either tomorrow or Wednesday, just super super disappointed I couldn't manage it today.
 

TH2002

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La Plata in 2002 didn't help either (at least with the old scale). Several F4s in 2004 that should've been F5.
Look mommy, this tornado was slow moving, so I rated it F4.
Good job, sweetie! We avoided another La Plata, and tornadoes are being rated VERY appropriately.
Harper-F5-damage-home2.JPG
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Harper-F5-damage-vehicle.JPG
Yeah... sure.
 
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Look mommy, this tornado was slow moving, so I rated it F4.
Good job, sweetie! We avoided another La Plata, and tornadoes are being rated VERY appropriately.
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Yeah... sure.
With Harper, the slow movement likely was a factor but still. The surveyor apparently regrets it and wishes he could go back and rate it F5 now.
Also, the other one is of course Marion, ND.
 

TH2002

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With Harper, the slow movement likely was a factor but still. The surveyor apparently regrets it and wishes he could go back and rate it F5 now.
Also, the other one is of course Marion, ND.
Off-hand I can't confirm if this is true or not, but apparently in a more recent conversation with @Shakespeare 2016, Chance Hayes back-tracked on what he said previously, and reiterated that the slow movement meant the F4 rating is appropriate.

So, take it with a grain of salt for now, but would I be surprised? Not at all.
 
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Another underrated tornado is the June 12, 2004 Mulvane tornado. It's officially high F3 but I see no reason they shouldn't have gone F4, given a well-anchored frame house was leveled and vehicles were thrown and terribly mangled.
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Finally, I've been looking for pics from this thing! That vehicle damage looks F5-worthy to me (F4s don't just mangle vehicles like that) but everything else around points to F4. Still, weird it only got F3.
 

SouthFLwx

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Another underrated tornado is the June 12, 2004 Mulvane tornado. It's officially high F3 but I see no reason they shouldn't have gone F4, given a well-anchored frame house was leveled and vehicles were thrown and terribly mangled.
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Pretty sure this tornado was also one of the most photogenic tornado pictures ever, the one with a rainbow like right next to it.
 
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So, since we're on the topic of blatantly underrated tornadoes and shoulda-been EF5's, I'm gonna do a pic dump of Chickasha again. Sorry if these have been posted before.

Chickasha 8.jpg

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The ground scouring and vehicle damage from this thing is among the most impressive ever photographed:

Chickasha 10.png


Chickasha 11.jpg


Chickasha 12.jpg

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Chickasha 14.jpg

This was a pickup truck that was thrown around 300 yards and basically disintegrated:

Chickasha 15.jpg

More incredible scouring:

Chickasha 17.jpg

Chickasha 18.jpg
 

TH2002

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Finally, I've been looking for pics from this thing! That vehicle damage looks F5-worthy to me (F4s don't just mangle vehicles like that) but everything else around points to F4. Still, weird it only got F3.
I really could see an argument that Mulvane reached F5 intensity. Can't say it's clear cut F5 myself, but what it did to those vehicles is nothing short of unbelievable.

Damage from the 2003 Franklin tornado. This tornado is rumored to have produced F5-worthy structural damage though I haven't seen any photos of this.
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Only thing I've seen is this home in Franklin; if you look closely (and I mean VERY closely), you can see what appear to be anchor bolts on the foundation:
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TH2002

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So, since we're on the topic of blatantly underrated tornadoes and shoulda-been EF5's, I'm gonna do a pic dump of Chickasha again. Sorry if these have been posted before.

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The ground scouring and vehicle damage from this thing is among the most impressive ever photographed:

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This was a pickup truck that was thrown around 300 yards and basically disintegrated:

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More incredible scouring:

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While I'd always known Chickasha had caused its fair share of ground scouring, I never knew just HOW much scouring there was; it's literally comparable to Bridge Creek, and that's remarkable.
 
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While I'd always known Chickasha had caused its fair share of ground scouring, I never knew just HOW much scouring there was; it's literally comparable to Bridge Creek, and that's remarkable.
Some more:

This is a house that Tim Marshall MIGHT have labeled "EF5 candidate".

Chickasha 16.jpg


Before and after views of a concrete dome house that was designed to be tornado resistant (FYI the core of the tornado just missed it):


Chickasha 1.jpgChickasha 2.jpgChickasha 3.jpgChickasha 4.jpgChickasha 5.jpgChickasha 6.jpgChickasha 7.jpg
 

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locomusic01

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The slithery streak from this tornado seems to be throughout almost all of its path from Niles onward.
After all your research, do you think this could be considered the most violent tornado of the 1980s (at least in North America)? I mean, Barrie was violent but Niles-Wheatland blows it away (pun partially intended) in so many ways.
My brain is way too fried to even remember any other tornadoes from the 80s right now lol. But I don't think there's that much of a gap between Niles and Barrie tbh. Niles produced F4+ damage in multiple places across a lot of its path compared to basically a 3/4 mile streak in Barrie, but max intensity wise Barrie isn't too far behind.

On a not-especially-related note, one thing that's always stuck out to me about the Tionesta F4 is just how consistently it mowed down trees literally a couple feet above ground level. Pretty much an entire healthy, mature forest with almost nothing left above head height.

ub9MTzQ.jpg


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locomusic01

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It's a shame this one is so fuzzy. There's an island in the river where Tionesta crossed the Allegheny (a couple actually), and on the one closest to the center of the path, it apparently produced some rather severe ground scouring and debarking/denuding. You can kinda-sorta see it here but not very well.

xWmXcoY.jpg


This one's better but it's taken a little too far north.

xBB0kr1.jpg
 
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This exactly and that last word exactly too. It's as if they're not looking to assign a rating, but looking for any tiny reason to not assign one.

Cambridge Shore with the Mayfield tornado had swept-away homes properly anchor-bolted with many instances of wall plates being gone, which would imply that they were well-attached to the studs, but one group of those homes were lumped together and described as something like "not well constructed with end-nailed studs". And with Hackleburg there was the one "exceptionally well-built home" swept away. I'm given to understand it had extra strapping done in the wall and roof structure and extra anchor-bolting because it was custom-built as a new home after the owners previous home elsewhere was destroyed in a tornado and they didn't want that to happen again. And the poured-concrete walk-out basement wall of the house on the corner hill which was blown away, apparently without impact damage, adjacent to asphalt removal and severe ground scouring.

If you look long enough and hard enough, you can always find a reason to not do something, and if nobody has the authority to scrutinize your decisions there's a natural human tendency to allow personal beliefs and biases to enter into your decisions. EF-5's are now once-in-a-lifetime events if even that frequent, and will only be given where the destruction is so overwhelming that nobody would believe anything less.

Phil
aka, a bloody el-reno style tornado, either from 2011 or 2013, going straight through the heart of a major metropolitan area in texas, oklahoma, alabama, or kansas only ffs. or any other zone of an office who's not picky and quite generous. like nws Charleston. their work with the Pembroke tornado is of pure honesty and I don't have any problems with it's rating what so ever.
 
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