Significant Tornado Events (10 Viewers)

[Marshal79344]

I’ll get the GR3 files loaded and make a video loop of June 8th, 1995, but here are some damage pictures from the May 25, 1896 Oakwood-Ortonville-Thomas, MI EF5. They appear to show leveled homes and even debarked shrubs

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

I’ll get the GR3 files loaded and make a video loop of June 8th, 1995, but here are some damage pictures from the May 25, 1896 Oakwood-Ortonville-Thomas, MI EF5. They appear to show leveled homes and even debarked shrubs

Ah yes, the May 1896 outbreak sequence is one I'd love to get more photos of, especially Sherman; it seems to have been extraordinarily intense from the reports and few photographs available.

 

[Marshal79344]

Sherman was a very interesting tornado. From my research the funnel initially swept many homes away outside of town but contracted to 60 yards, and remained extraordinarily intense. Reports are that grass was scoured from lawns, an iron bridge was twisted into many pieces and some thrown deep into the ground, a brick building swept away with bricks found embedded into the ground some 700 meters away from the foundation, trees stripped of bark or even pulled out of the ground with their roots and transformed into huge flying missiles. Unfortunately I only know of 3 photographs. I was able to find these pictures of the May 17, 1896 Seneca-Reserve KS EF5 that reached 2 miles wide:

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

The tornado outbreak sequence also produced the killer St Louis F4 tornado. Even though the damage in St Louis itself wasn’t too impressive, it did produce near-F5 damage in East St Louis.

 

[andyhb]

I’ll get the GR3 files loaded and make a video loop of June 8th, 1995, but here are some damage pictures from the May 25, 1896 Oakwood-Ortonville-Thomas, MI EF5. They appear to show leveled homes and even debarked shrubs

Damn those are pretty impressive.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Sherman was a very interesting tornado. From my research the funnel initially swept many homes away outside of town but contracted to 60 yards, and remained extraordinarily intense. Reports are that grass was scoured from lawns, an iron bridge was twisted into many pieces and some thrown deep into the ground, a brick building swept away with bricks found embedded into the ground some 700 meters away from the foundation, trees stripped of bark or even pulled out of the ground with their roots and transformed into huge flying missiles. Unfortunately I only know of 3 photographs. I was able to find these pictures of the May 17, 1896 Seneca-Reserve KS EF5 that reached 2 miles wide:

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Those Seneca photos are pretty impressive. So, regarding Sherman this imgur collection is the best I've come across:

A few pictures of note:



If you look closely you can see what looks like debarked low-lying shrubs or trees, hard to tell for certain with the B&W quality.


I would love to find a picture of this bridge before the tornado for comparison, not quite sure how to assess the damage and sense of scale in this photograph.


I think there is severe ground scouring visible here in this third pic, again hard to tell with the low quality B&W photography.


Would love to find pictures of this 'beautiful grove' before the tornado for sense of scale and clearer reference as well.
I highly recommend browsing through the other photographs (close to a dozen) on this imgur link, as it's the best I've ever found of Sherman.

 

[AngelAndHisWx]

Alrighty, I have no idea how forums work so bear with me. This is a gif of Jarrell from the KWTX video. They were right next to the tornado as it started to transition.

Looks like I can't upload all 56 images sadly, so only eight images it is. They're originally from a 480i source (because 1997), but I upscaled and deinterlaced to 1080p.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Alrighty, I have no idea how forums work so bear with me. This is a gif of Jarrell from the KWTX video. They were right next to the tornado as it started to transition.
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Looks like I can't upload all 56 images sadly, so only eight images it is. They're originally from a 480i source (because 1997), but I upscaled and deinterlaced to 1080p.
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I guess you can't show a gif of the tornado going full multivortex? The gif here looks like the tornado practically disappeared and a new one took its place....real fascinating stuff.

 

[AngelAndHisWx]

I guess you can't show a gif of the tornado going full multivortex? The gif here looks like the tornado practically disappeared and a new one took its place....real fascinating stuff.

But here's the thing. The funnel aloft stayed and it even had a debris cloud in tow that can be seen going left of the billboard poll. It's like when Dodge City Number 1 did its multivortex deal and the bottom broke off and another vortex formed as the new bottom, leaving the old one orphaned and to spin itself out. And sadly I don't have the multivortex phase. There's a gap in the recording between rope disappearing and the full condensed cone phase.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

I looked at GR Level 3 data for the event, and the supercell responsible for the Pampa tornado seemed to be along a "boundary" of some sort, extremely similar to the Jarrell setup of 97. That may play a part in the tornado's erratic movement.

Interesting, Pampa's movement was also similar to Jarrell's, in how after touching down it moved at a slow to moderate pace, briefly sped up, became stationary for several minutes while sitting on a human structure (in this case Pampa's industrial park) then resumed moving forward for a couple more miles than abruptly dissipating.

Also, this is pretty crazy, an F3 tornado struck the Pampa Industrial Yard in 1982, exact same location as the 1995 storm: http://www.depts.ttu.edu/nwi/Pubs/ReportsJournals/ReportsJournals/D5-19-82-Tor-pampa.pdf

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Here's a combined video of Jarrell's transition, from multiple home videos, evidently some of this footage aired on TLC back in the day (when it was actually a learning channel). Not as good as the news footage almost certainly is, but still incredible:

 

[Austin Dawg]

Here's a combined video of Jarrell's transition, from multiple home videos, evidently some of this footage aired on TLC back in the day (when it was actually a learning channel). Not as good as the news footage almost certainly is, but still incredible:

That's a great video and it got me wondering...
Wouldn't it be cool if we could create a place on the site to start linking and sorting videos and photos from YouTube and wherever so we can view and discuss them?

I know that is a huge project but if we had a place to start and set up some rules I am sure those of us who like to research could expand it and work with it for us all to use. Maybe it would even be better to try to create a new linked site? Is it too much of a headache to try?

 

[Dissident Aggressor]

Been a while since I was last here, definitely have some catching up to do. Anyway, I've been working on re-uploading some old tornado videos that have been lost over time on YouTube (or in general). Namely the Cailyn Lloyd video of the Oakfield, WI tornado and various (but not new) clips of the Jarrell tornado.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Been a while since I was last here, definitely have some catching up to do. Anyway, I've been working on re-uploading some old tornado videos that have been lost over time on YouTube (or in general). Namely the Cailyn Lloyd video of the Oakfield, WI tornado and various (but not new) clips of the Jarrell tornado.

Looks like it is on YouTube but awful quality:

 

[Dissident Aggressor]

Looks like it is on YouTube but awful quality:

...Because that's my channel

 

[andyhb]

I believe there's been some suspicion before that this picture was from the Brandenburg tornado (or the Louisville one) on 4/3/74, but it actually appears to be the Kennard, IN F4 tornado from the same day based on this account from the Hancock County Historical Society. It tracked through parts of Hancock, Rush, and Henry counties east of Indianapolis.

 

[andyhb]

ERA5 got extended back to 1950 today so I figured I'd plot 300 hPa wind/height/divergence, 500 hPa wind/height/relative vorticity, 850 hPa wind/height, and 10 m winds for a selection of tornado outbreaks in the 1950-1978 time period. This is amazing data.

 

[Oakhurst_Wx]

Found a picture of the School Bus Oologah threw a long distance

 

[Oakhurst_Wx]

Speaking of Brandenburg, given that Louisville and Brandenburg came from the same supercell, that may explain why Brandenburg was significantly stronger, due to the winds being confined in a smaller funnel than that of the Louisville tornado, which may have had an effect on the conservation of angular momentum, resulting in higher winds being present in the funnel of Brandenburg than Louisville. The same thing explains why Parkersburg weakened so quickly when it expanded from an EF4-5 to an EF2, and why Bassfield weakened somewhat when it expanded from its 1 miles wide stage, where it was producing significant ground scouring and extreme debarking to around 2 miles wide, where the circulation became less defined and the tornado weakened a bit.

 

[Oakhurst_Wx]

Speaking of Brandenburg, given that Louisville and Brandenburg came from the same supercell, that may explain why Brandenburg was significantly stronger, due to the winds being confined in a smaller funnel than that of the Louisville tornado, which may have had an effect on the conservation of angular momentum, resulting in higher winds being present in the funnel of Brandenburg than Louisville. The same thing explains why Parkersburg weakened so quickly when it expanded from an EF4-5 to an EF2, and why Bassfield weakened somewhat when it expanded from its 1 miles wide stage, where it was producing significant ground scouring and extreme debarking to around 2 miles wide, where the circulation became less defined and the tornado weakened a bit.