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locomusic01

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One building that was completely wiped out in downtown (which IIRC, along with some slider homes, were the initial reasoning for F5 by the surveyors)
Just out of curiosity since I think I missed the explanation earlier, are these meant to be your personal ratings, your view of what the ratings should've been, what the tornadoes were potentially capable of, etc?
 

TH2002

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Updated, now with years of the latest tornado of each rating!
View attachment 14787
EDIT: Aw, crud, I forgot most people on here use white background. Here's a photo with the black background so you can see all those dates off the East Coast.
View attachment 14788

EDIT 2: Annd....got Texas' last EF5 date wrong. It's not Odessa 2019 it's Happy 2021 (based off GTG).
Presuming your pick for ND is LaMoure County (Berlin) and your pick for NC is Askewville?

As for California I'm going to presume your EF3 pick is the Carr Fire tornado, which honestly makes more sense to me than any of the official F3 tornadoes in the NCDC database. I will point out that if you're going to consider fire tornadoes on your map you might even want to consider EF4 for some of them, namely the Carr Fire, Bootleg Fire and Eiler Fire. All produced extreme contextual damage including intense debarking and scouring of topsoil, and the Carr Firenado even tore apart a transmission tower and swept a home off its foundation (off hand I would presume the heat of the fire exacerbated the severity of the damage to some extent, but it's still extremely impressive).
 
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Presuming your pick for ND is LaMoure County (Berlin) and your pick for NC is Askewville?

As for California I'm going to presume your EF3 pick is the Carr Fire tornado, which honestly makes more sense to me than any of the official F3 tornadoes in the NCDC database. I will point out that if you're going to consider fire tornadoes on your map you might even want to consider EF4 for some of them, namely the Carr Fire, Bootleg Fire and Eiler Fire. All produced extreme contextual damage including intense debarking and scouring of topsoil, and the Carr Firenado even tore apart a transmission tower and swept a home off its foundation (off hand I would presume the heat of the fire exacerbated the severity of the damage to some extent, but it's still extremely impressive).
Correct on all three. Surprised you didn't notice Florida - that's because of the February 2, 1998 220+ mph Gate to Gate waterspout near Marathon.
 

TH2002

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Correct on all three. Surprised you didn't notice Florida - that's because of the February 2, 1998 220+ mph Gate to Gate waterspout near Marathon.
Oh, had to kinda limit my post otherwise it would have been 20 paragraphs long asking about every other state lol.

Something from the Kissimmee outbreak would have been my first guess though. Off hand I'm at least a little skeptical about handing out F5/EF5 ratings solely based on G2G measurements, though in some instances like that Florida waterspout that obviously didn't encounter any structures (or probably any manmade objects for that matter), I suppose it's all we have.
 

MNTornadoGuy

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Oh, had to kinda limit my post otherwise it would have been 20 paragraphs long asking about every other state lol.

Something from the Kissimmee outbreak would have been my first guess though. Off hand I'm at least a little skeptical about handing out F5/EF5 ratings solely based on G2G measurements, though in some instances like that Florida waterspout that obviously didn't encounter any structures (or probably any manmade objects for that matter), I suppose it's all we have.
GTG measurements from NEXRAD are not usually anywhere near the ground so I don’t think it should be used for rating tornadoes at all.
 

TH2002

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GTG measurements from NEXRAD are not usually anywhere near the ground so I don’t think it should be used for rating tornadoes at all.
I think in the case of a waterspout that stayed offshore, it's not unfair to say "yeah, that was probably a pretty intense waterspout" if a radar site recorded a couplet similar in intensity to those often observed with violent tornadoes. Whether or not that should be counted in any official database as an F5/EF5 tornado, or given a rating at all, is a different matter altogether.

I'm honestly in the same ballpark as you and agree that giving a tornado a rating solely based on G2G measurements is dubious at best, though it's always good to see other people's perspectives on how tornadoes should be rated.
 
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I was watching the Force of Fury Jarrell documentary on Youtube looking for a 3 second snippet of Lake Travis footage and
wacomaybe.jpg
I doubt this is Waco (apparently it was bloody massive and rainwrapped) but do you know what this could be?
 
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Presuming your pick for ND is LaMoure County (Berlin) and your pick for NC is Askewville?

As for California I'm going to presume your EF3 pick is the Carr Fire tornado, which honestly makes more sense to me than any of the official F3 tornadoes in the NCDC database. I will point out that if you're going to consider fire tornadoes on your map you might even want to consider EF4 for some of them, namely the Carr Fire, Bootleg Fire and Eiler Fire. All produced extreme contextual damage including intense debarking and scouring of topsoil, and the Carr Firenado even tore apart a transmission tower and swept a home off its foundation (off hand I would presume the heat of the fire exacerbated the severity of the damage to some extent, but it's still extremely impressive).
wat?
 

TH2002

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As I have said before, I have serious doubts that the 8/16/1973 and 2/9/1978 events were even tornadoes at all, let alone F3 tornadoes. However If one were to consider wildfire-induced tornadoes as true tornadoes, saying California has had an EF3 tornado actually makes sense, given the severity of the damage of the examples I provided.
 

CLP80

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Looking at these pictures, it’s hard to believe that wind did this. Looks more like something from a large bomb being dropped on the city.
I actually had said the same exact thing when I saw some before/after shots from the 2021 Mayfield Tornado.
 

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Western_KS_Wx

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I actually had said the same exact thing when I saw some before/after shots from the 2021 Mayfield Tornado.
Mayfield was extremely violent and in my opinion the most impressive single tornado in terms of sheer duration and length of EF4+ intensity we’ve seen since at least the 90’s. The Tri-State tornado probably still had a slightly longer path length but I’d say Mayfield wasn’t too far off and probably is in the top 3 for longest path lengths since that time, considering almost all the other events were tornado families. There were some areas I thought could’ve had EF5 potenital along the track, I was pretty impressed with the damage in downtown mayfield where some multistory well-constructed brick buildings completely collapsed and the damage in and around the candle factory was extreme. There was also a flooring store in Mayfield that was utterly obliterated. Cambridge Shores was another spot I thought had some EF5 potential as well and of course Bremen. 57430880-A44E-4961-88D1-56F555A20D14.png5DE441B3-4C45-44FB-B9C6-EB9D1B58E606.jpeg
784BC190-FEC2-4E71-B4D3-5DF0944039DD.jpeg7EB9636F-F496-4A32-83D1-74893C2EF619.jpegB996346D-BD92-4454-A403-416BA149572A.jpeg0D7D32C0-2F9C-4FF5-8F4A-3E51755A31DA.jpeg
 

SouthFLwx

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Mayfield was extremely violent and in my opinion the most impressive single tornado in terms of sheer duration and length of EF4+ intensity we’ve seen since at least the 90’s. The Tri-State tornado probably still had a slightly longer path length but I’d say Mayfield wasn’t too far off and probably is in the top 3 for longest path lengths since that time, considering almost all the other events were tornado families. There were some areas I thought could’ve had EF5 potenital along the track, I was pretty impressed with the damage in downtown mayfield where some multistory well-constructed brick buildings completely collapsed and the damage in and around the candle factory was extreme. There was also a flooring store in Mayfield that was utterly obliterated. Cambridge Shores was another spot I thought had some EF5 potential as well and of course Bremen. View attachment 14798View attachment 14799
View attachment 14800View attachment 14801View attachment 14802View attachment 14804
What about Princeton? The damage seemed very intense over there and imho, could have EF5 potential.
 

TH2002

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What's so crazy about Mayfield is that it could NOT have been more of a direct hit; it didn't even sweep away many homes in Mayfield proper (though there were many that were probably solid candidates for EF4) instead it literally unleashed its full force right on the downtown square and utterly obliterated multi story brick buildings. Can't say that happens very often.

Aside from the Pritchett and Cardinal Rd vicinity this is the only "clean sweep" home I was able to find in Mayfield. Honestly from street view doesn't seem like it was particularly well constructed, but possibly the best EF5 candidate house along this section of the path.
Mayfield-damage-home2.JPG

Not sure if the Mayfield Manor apartments have been mentioned yet, though it reminds me of the Chastain Manor apartments in Tuscaloosa:
Mayfield-damage-manor-apartments.JPG
 
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What's so crazy about Mayfield is that it could NOT have been more of a direct hit; it didn't even sweep away many homes in Mayfield proper (though there were many that were probably solid candidates for EF4) instead it literally unleashed its full force right on the downtown square and utterly obliterated multi story brick buildings. Can't say that happens very often.

Aside from the Pritchett and Cardinal Rd vicinity this is the only "clean sweep" home I was able to find in Mayfield. Honestly from street view doesn't seem like it was particularly well constructed, but possibly the best EF5 candidate house along this section of the path.
View attachment 14805

Not sure if the Mayfield Manor apartments have been mentioned yet, though it reminds me of the Chastain Manor apartments in Tuscaloosa:
View attachment 14806
Has there ever been documented F5/EF5 damage in a downtown area before?
 

TH2002

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I know Waco is rated F5, but the downtown area doesn't look like it.
Waco was impressive in its own right but I would call it F4 myself; Vicksburg is an even less convincing F5 (Grazulis rates it F4 but some people feel it didn't even deserve an F4 rating). All this in the same year as Worcester which got an F4 rating... consistency, right?
 

Western_KS_Wx

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What's so crazy about Mayfield is that it could NOT have been more of a direct hit; it didn't even sweep away many homes in Mayfield proper (though there were many that were probably solid candidates for EF4) instead it literally unleashed its full force right on the downtown square and utterly obliterated multi story brick buildings. Can't say that happens very often.

Aside from the Pritchett and Cardinal Rd vicinity this is the only "clean sweep" home I was able to find in Mayfield. Honestly from street view doesn't seem like it was particularly well constructed, but possibly the best EF5 candidate house along this section of the path.
View attachment 14805

Not sure if the Mayfield Manor apartments have been mentioned yet, though it reminds me of the Chastain Manor apartments in Tuscaloosa:
View attachment 14806

Yeah it’s a little eerie it’s almost as if it intentionally targeted downtown Mayfield to inflict the most damage possible. It actually underwent a failed occlusion phase and weakened quite a bit around I-69 before intensifying and widening extremely rapidly as it reached Pritchett Rd completely leveling homes along the road and producing some impressive tree debarking before going right through Mayfield.
425BBA7C-6DAA-45FB-89CF-8F17BA8CABCA.jpeg
This is a map I created based on aerial imagery showing the EF0 contour I’m working on the EF1-4 contours currently and am hoping to share with all you guys at some point.
 
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