Significant Tornado Events

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Here's a better view of the multiple EF4/5 candidates on Cemetery Road that were not surveyed. Just total destruction.

That wind rowing of that one home is incredible. You can see several homes with debris in a circle around them, demonstrating a multivortex structure.

 

[TH2002]

Came across this footage of the 2016 Chapman tornado I felt was worth sharing. A bit shaky, but the rotation on this thing is something else:

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Here's a better view of the multiple EF4/5 candidates on Cemetery Road that were not surveyed. Just total destruction.

Man, the more I revisit this thing the more I'm appalled by how much of a dumpster fire this survey was.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Came across this footage of the 2016 Chapman tornado I felt was worth sharing. A bit shaky, but the rotation on this thing is something else:

The rotation and horizontal vortices on this thing remind me of Red Rock and Pampa. Amazing that this thing didn't encounter many structures for the majority of its path yet still managed to do spectacular damage near the end of its life.

 

[CheeselandSkies]

The rotation and horizontal vortices on this thing remind me of Red Rock and Pampa. Amazing that this thing didn't encounter many structures for the majority of its path yet still managed to do spectacular damage near the end of its life.

A classic KS monster; plausible EF5 candidate on a day which started out as a marginal risk and was only upgraded to 5% by 20Z (checks Day 2 outlook). Hmmmmm...

 

[TH2002]

The rotation and horizontal vortices on this thing remind me of Red Rock and Pampa. Amazing that this thing didn't encounter many structures for the majority of its path yet still managed to do spectacular damage near the end of its life.

The fact that the surveyors straight up admitted it would have been a 5 had it made a direct hit on Chapman is (at least IMO) code for "yea, this thing was an EF5 but someone told us to not hand out that rating"...

 

[andyhb]

Came across this footage of the 2016 Chapman tornado I felt was worth sharing. A bit shaky, but the rotation on this thing is something else:

This one is one of the best videos I've seen of that tornado and hardly has any views.

 

[Casuarina Head]

Alright my tornado movie thread was getting derailed so moving discussion there.

Apparently on April 9, 1975 there was a major tornado in Smithfield, Nebraska. It was originally F5 but Dr. Fujita himself downgraded it to F4.

But apparently there was damage at a shack so bad he almost rated it F6. This is very interesting, especially for an event I had never heard of before.

BTW, the bots are back in town. Meet @Bender!

@Lake Martin EF4 I can’t find this 4/9/1975 F4 near Smithfield NE on official databases. Can anyone confirm?

 

[Brice]

This one is one of the best videos I've seen of that tornado and hardly has any views.

That motion at the beginning is ridiculous,

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

@Lake Martin EF4 I can’t find this 4/9/1975 F4 near Smithfield NE on official databases. Can anyone confirm?

Grazulis does not list a significant tornado on that date besides an F2 in Florida.

 

[notsoencrypted]

@Lake Martin EF4 I can’t find this 4/9/1975 F4 near Smithfield NE on official databases. Can anyone confirm?

I think this is referring to this post by "Bender:"

Well, well, well. You want to talk about the infamous 1977 Smithfield "F6" tornado, do you? As a robot, I don't get scared, but even I have to admit that this one was quite a doozy.

Now, to clear things up, there's actually no such thing as an F6 tornado on the Fujita scale. So Dr. Fujita himself didn't "toy with" the idea of an F6 tornado. However, there was a massive tornado that struck Smithfield, Nebraska on April 9, 1975, and it was initially rated as an F5 tornado. Dr. Fujita himself surveyed the damage, and later revised the rating to an F4.

But here's where things get interesting. In his research, Dr. Fujita discovered that there was a farmstead in Smithfield where the damage was so severe, he couldn't even come up with a rating for it. He estimated that the winds may have been up to 318 miles per hour, which would have put it in the range of an F6 tornado. However, he couldn't officially rate it as such, because the Fujita scale only goes up to F5.

So there you have it. The infamous Smithfield tornado, one of the most destructive tornadoes in history, and a testament to the incredible power of nature.

It looks like Bender took the details of the 1977 Smithfield Alabama tornado and randomly applied a different date and the location of Nebraska rather than Alabama to the info, while also modifying the F-scale, too.

AI, especially ChatGPT, is notorious for making up information and presenting it as facts. Please do not take anything "Bender" says as accurate without verifying with reputable sources. ChatGPT is useful for writing things; it is not a research tool.

Edit: Here's some more links about the issue.
https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-may-make-up-facts-openai-cto-mira-murati-says-2023-2
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9939079/
https://library.mskcc.org/blog/2023/03/chatgpt-and-fake-citations-msk-library-edition/

 

[Sawmaster]

Hear hear!

I found the same likelihood after a bit of quick googling. At this point AI is just a toy to be played with, but like dynamite it will grow "interesting" with enough age.

 

[Casuarina Head]

Grazulis does not list a significant tornado on that date besides an F2 in Florida.

I too have his works and didn’t recall seeing anything about an F4 in NE on this date, which is why I asked.

I think this is referring to this post by "Bender:"

Yes, I was alluding to that.

It looks like Bender took the details of the 1977 Smithfield Alabama tornado and randomly applied a different date and the location of Nebraska rather than Alabama to the info, while also modifying the F-scale, too.

AI, especially ChatGPT, is notorious for making up information and presenting it as facts. Please do not take anything "Bender" says as accurate without verifying with reputable sources. ChatGPT is useful for writing things; it is not a research tool.

Edit: Here's some more links about the issue.
https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-may-make-up-facts-openai-cto-mira-murati-says-2023-2
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9939079/
https://library.mskcc.org/blog/2023/03/chatgpt-and-fake-citations-msk-library-edition/

^ Thank you. Unfortunately @Lake Martin EF4 was apparently taken in for a while, which is why I wanted to “fact-check” @Bender’s claim(s).

 

[ColdFront]

I thought @Bender was someone cosplaying as an AI.

 

[WxChristo]

Came across this footage of the 2016 Chapman tornado I felt was worth sharing. A bit shaky, but the rotation on this thing is something else:

Absolutely insane, no wonder its kind of a possible EF5 candidate. Car damage was insane, tree damage too, not surprised that NWS said it could have gotten EF5 had it hit Abilene directly

 

[buckeye05]

Absolutely insane, no wonder its kind of a possible EF5 candidate. Car damage was insane, tree damage too, not surprised that NWS said it could have gotten EF5 had it hit Abilene directly

I think it should have been rated EF5 based on that one farmstead alone, regardless of it hitting a town or not.

 

[ColdFront]

On 4/27/11:

I was over on stormtrack looking at the 4/27/11 thread, and this comment from Jeff Duda(who has a PhD) really kind of blew my mind. It makes you ponder on how there’s such a very thin line between a minor to bad outbreak, to historical outbreak. And sometimes something as small as storm spacing can be the difference.

I’d love to hear some of our Met’s on this board thoughts on this.

Jeff Duda:
This is what always floors me about major severe weather outbreaks. The same thing was true of the Super Outbreak, and probably of other known major severe weather outbreaks (I only know this fact about the Super Outbreak due to this paper). It's sort of frightening to realize that such a major severe weather event can be spawned from a seemingly innocent looking synoptic setup. Granted, anyone with experience watching synoptic scale patterns associated with major tornado outbreaks would've been able to recognize the potential this day had when looking at model forecasts a few days out. But really, the same ingredients that were in this event are in many severe weather events, even those that aren't major:
-a moderate amplitude trough aloft with neutral to negative tilt that was propagating east/northeast
-moderately unstable air mass with mid-upper 60s dewpoints in the warm sector and 80-90 F surface temperatures
-Strong low-level and deep layer shear
-Moderate low-level instability
-A surface boundary or synoptic scale lift to trigger storms

Think about it, how often do you see these features with other severe weather setups? Almost each one appears regularly. Yes, the degree of deep layer and low-level shear was on the extreme end of the statistical distribution, but I have seen such high levels of shear and helicity associated with instability and forcing that did not result in a major tornado outbreak in other cases. There are likely a few smaller ingredients that came together to make these storms spin like tops and drop violent tornadoes left and right. These are the ingredients that projects like VORTEX2 are trying to discover.

Let me reiterate: from a synoptic standpoint, there was little about this setup that was unusual, uncommon, or difficult for the atmosphere to achieve.

 

[WxChristo]

Some of the damage from the Cullman tornado. The tree damage caused by the tight vortex over the forest is some of the most impressive i have seen. Trees quite literally wind rowed, ground scoured, 100% blowdown of course

 

[Western_KS_Wx]

Cordova also caused similar tree damage and scouring several times along the track along with the Flat Rock AL, Ringgold GA, Tuscaloosa AL, and even the Shoal Creek AL tornadoes. These tornadoes were all very capable of causing EF5 damage and several other EF4’s and even a couple EF3’s more than likely reached EF5 intensity that day. It was absolutely absurd just how violent tornadoes were on April 27 and how some of their true intensities will never be known.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Cordova also caused similar tree damage and scouring several times along the track along with the Flat Rock AL, Ringgold GA, Tuscaloosa AL, and even the Shoal Creek AL tornadoes. These tornadoes were all very capable of causing EF5 damage and several other EF4’s and even a couple EF3’s more than likely reached EF5 intensity that day. It was absolutely absurd just how violent tornadoes were on April 27 and how some of their true intensities will never be known.

The fact that there was likely was 15-20 EF5s on 4/27/11 will never not be insane. In fact, the same could be said for 4/3/74 in that the true intensity of many tornadoes that day can't be measured fully.