Significant Tornado Events

[Marshal79344]

Not sure if you've ever seen this video of the Joplin tornado but it makes me think of the Tri-State storm in a few ways, the main thing thing to note here is how quickly the area goes from light as day to dark as midnight within mere minutes, also how the tornado is indistinguishable from rain and cloud. Now Joplin is obviously nowhere the Tri-State tornado in longevity, forward speed or intensity, but it was a rain-wrapped wedge that darkened the sky quickly. This trucker drives right into it as he (understandably) can't recognize the danger until it's too late (don't worry, the driver survived).

Yeah that will usually occur with any Dixie Alley low-based wedge tornado, the base of the tornadic mesocyclone is so close to the ground it blocks a lot of light from actually reaching under the mesocyclone, making tornadoes incredibly difficult to see. Also very heavy rain wrapping around the tornadic circulation can block out light, making these tornadoes very deadly to chase.

 

[Marshal79344]

Addendum: the erratic nature of the damage in Murphysboro may also be due to fire from ruptured gas lines that affected some rows of homes and buildings and not others.

Very good point. I pieced together that map from what I could discern from terrible aerial footage and aerial maps as well.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Other very interesting features I found associated with the particular Tri-State Supercell were how it was sunny at Murphysboro at 2:26 PM that day, while Gorham, which is less than 10 miles away, was getting swept away. About 5 minutes before the EF5 tornado arrived, the sky suddenly darkened. About 2 minutes prior to the tornado, the sky became very black and very dark, and then the tornado came. As soon as the tornado had left, the sky became sunny again, and people had to come to terms with the fact that the entire city, or a good portion of it, was gone. This indicates that the tornado was likely at a hook echo on the bottom of the supercell, and was positioned at the back end of the tornadic storm, in a manner that as soon as it moved away the sky would become sunny again.

The tornado itself appeared as a Hackleburg, and was a very close copy of it, except for the damage swath. The damage swath from the Tri-State-Tornado in Murphysboro was extremely erratic and the swath of EF4-EF5 damage was significantly bigger than that of the Hackleburg Tornado. You had rows of homes swept away, and there would be some homes intact in the middle of an entire row of slab foundations.

One particular mind-blowing fact that I have never seen repeated was at Princeton, IN, the final town to be hit by the deadly tornado. The tornado had definitely weakened somewhat by the time it arrived at Princeton but was still strong enough to level homes. The first warning of the tornadic storm was in broad daylight, when debris suddenly began to fall out of the sky, 15 minutes before the tornado arrived. The same sequence of events that occurred at Murphysboro occurred at Princeton, before the tornado moved away. I have NEVER heard of an indication where debris began falling out of the sky before the arrival of a tornado 15 minutes early. Some paper from Murphysboro was also reported to have been found in a city in Ohio, over 400 miles away from the point of origination

Damage Map I created of Murphysboro (Red = swept away, Orange = severely damaged, Yellow = Lightly damaged or not damaged)

Did Hackleburg not display much of an erratic multivortex nature? I thought it did, but I haven't done much digging. I figured like any wedge it would have had a fair amount of skinny ropes swirling about inside it.

 

[Marshal79344]

Did Hackleburg not display much of an erratic multivortex nature? I thought it did, but I haven't done much digging. I figured like any wedge it would have had a fair amount of skinny ropes swirling about inside it.

It must have but the damage contour was very consistent

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Yup you’re right. Wind-rowing, with maybe some debris impact scarring of the ground too. I guess it being in black and white kinda threw me.

In this gif right here you can see wind rowing done by Hackleburg that is virtually identical to that in the 1974 Tanner b&w photograph:

 

[buckeye05]

I just want to say that I love how international this forum has become in the past year. I’m learning a lot about significant tornadoes in Asia and South America because of their contributions.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Yeah, the one F4 in Tennessee did insane ground scouring and killed entire families. The whole outbreak of March 18, 1925 may have been been even more impressive then we realize, but sadly much of it will be forever lost to time.

An F4 (as rated by Grazulis) struck near Louisville, KY was extremely intense. The mile-wide tornado scoured the ground, debarked trees and swept away entire farm. An F3 that struck Kirkland, TN produced intense vegetation damage as "Every vestige of plant life was torn from the ground."

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

It must have but the damage contour was very consistent

I just want to say that I love how international this forum has become in the past year. I’m learning a lot about significant tornadoes in Asia and South America because of their contributions.

So as far as international tornadoes, this link is a good start:

Powerful Tornadoes Outside the United States – Violent Tornadoes in France, Russia, South Africa, Poland, Canada and Japan

□ The United States experiences more violent tornadoes than the rest of the world combined. In spite of this, the atmospheric ingredients needed to form rotating thunderstorms are present across th…

extremeplanet.wordpress.com

This PDF file on the Russian outbreak of 1984 is pretty good, has satellite imagery of that day: https://ejssm.org/ojs/index.php/ejssm/article/view/98/82

This imgur collection has a ton of photographs from the event, one of them is in color & shows some impressive tree damage for outside North America:

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

So as far as international tornadoes, this link is a good start:

Powerful Tornadoes Outside the United States – Violent Tornadoes in France, Russia, South Africa, Poland, Canada and Japan

□ The United States experiences more violent tornadoes than the rest of the world combined. In spite of this, the atmospheric ingredients needed to form rotating thunderstorms are present across th…

extremeplanet.wordpress.com

This PDF file on the Russian outbreak of 1984 is pretty good, has satellite imagery of that day: https://ejssm.org/ojs/index.php/ejssm/article/view/98/82

This imgur collection has a ton of photographs from the event, one of them is in color & shows some impressive tree damage for outside North America:

There are many unknowns about that outbreak such as if any of the tornadoes really reached F5 intensity. Most of the rumors of extreme damage like swept away concrete structures appear to be false.

 

[Marshal79344]

There are many unknowns about that outbreak such as if any of the tornadoes really reached F5 intensity. Most of the rumors of extreme damage like swept away concrete structures appear to be false.

Yea the damage doesn't look too impressive, but definitely strong. Reports were likely overexagerrated.

 

[pohnpei]

Satellite-Based Study and Numerical Forecasting of Two Tornado Outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017

Strong tornadoes are common for the European part of Russia but happen rather rare east of the Urals. June 2017 became an exceptional month when two tornado outbreaks occurred in the Ural region of Russia, yielded $3 million damage, and resulted in 1 fatality and 14 injuries. In this study, we...

www.mdpi.com

This article recently published on Atmosphere definitely worth a reading. The method it used similar to this article on Sciencedirect:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169809517311158?via=ihub
It analyzed two large tornado outbreaks in the Ural Region in June 2017 and one of these tornados used been rated F3/T7 in ESDB now had been rated F4 due to the reason showed below. It also makes it the strongest tornado in Russia since 1984.

the near complete destruction of log houses can be considered as an indicator of IF4 damage since the sturdiness of such houses is somewhat equal to sturdiness of ‘strong framehouses’ (Thilo Kühne, personal communication). The violent character of this tornado is also supported by two other intensity estimates. Particularly, the tornado has the EF5 intensity level according to the method [66] (up to 100% of trees were blown down or snapped in 100 m × 100 m forest areas). Given tornado path length (20.3 km) and maximum width (1750 m, the widest for both outbreaks), the minimal tornado intensity was estimated as F3 with 90% probability. Consequently, our estimates confirm the formation of the first IF4 tornado in Russia in the 21st century (after the previous one in 1984 [10]) and the first-ever IF4 tornado reported beyond the Urals.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

In June 2017, an outbreak of tornadoes occurred in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (8 tornadoes were confirmed).
Images of the damage in the rural part of the cities of Maratá and Caxias do Sul, where the strongest tornadoes of this event took place.

Maratá, Rio Grande do Sul

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Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul

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What is the strongest most impressive damage you’ve seen produced by a Brazilian tornado?

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

All quotes and photographs from extremeplanet.wordpress.com

The Saroma, Hokkaido, Japan tornado of 2006:

This thing is a good example of a 'drillbit' tornado:

1. "The tornado left a narrow streak of damage through a strip of buildings lining a highway. All nine deaths occurred in the destruction of a large pre-fabricated apartment building (visible at bottom left)".



One of two known photographs of the tornado:



Damage surveys indicated this thing was borderline F2/F3 intensity but I think an argument could be made it was low-end F4 in places.

 

[Marshal79344]

The Saroma, Hokkaido, Japan tornado of 2006:

This thing is a good example of a 'drillbit' tornado:

1. The tornado left a narrow streak of damage through a strip of buildings lining a highway. All nine deaths occurred in the destruction of a large pre-fabricated apartment building (visible at bottom left).

View attachment 5223View attachment 5224View attachment 5226

One of two known photographs of the tornado:

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Damage surveys indicated this thing was borderline F2/F3 intensity but I think an argument could be made it was low-end F4 in places.

Did some more digging on this event, I'm half-Japanese so I feel kinda dumb for not knowing much about this one.

Building that was swept away, with 9 fatalities


Aerial


More views of the Building with 2 fatalities

 

[Marshal79344]

Did some more digging on this event, I'm half-Japanese so I feel kinda dumb for not knowing much about this one.

Building that was swept away, with 9 fatalities
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Aerial
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More views of the Building with 2 fatalities
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Based off of these photos it's likely that the tornado was an EF4, an EF3 just can't grind a building with that intensity. The tornado had a very multiple-vortex swath to it.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

I haven't found any photographs of F5 damage on any of the supposed European F5 tornadoes.

 

[pohnpei]

I haven't found any photographs of F5 damage on any of the supposed European F5 tornadoes.

It seems that the rating they given for the tornados in the past was extremely liberal.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

The 1970 Bulahdelah Tornado is reportedly one of the strongest tornadoes in Australian history. Some sources list it as an F5 though I find this unlikely and it was more likely an F4. According to the report on the tornado over 1 million trees were "totally destroyed" or denuded. A 2,000-pound tractor was flipped.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Speaking of Austalia, here are some very intense tornadoes that have occurred in Australia recently:

Jan 4, 2004 Grampians National Park Tornado
This tornado went unrecorded by the Australian Meteorological Bureau but produced some very intense vegetation damage. A large swath of forest was downed with many trees being stripped of branches. One 8 to 10-hectare area was completely stripped of all vegetation with even the undergrowth being torn out.


Mar 1, 2007 Kakadu National Park Tornado
The Australian Meteorological Bureau rated this tornado as an F2-F3. This powerful tornado debarked eucalyptus trees and uprooted thousands of trees. Two caravans were destroyed.




Mar 21, 2013 Cobram Tornado
This is the strongest officially rated tornado to occur in Australia since 2000 as it was rated as an EF4 by the BOM. Homes were leveled, trees debarked, farm machinery mangled and the ground was scoured.

 

[MNTornadoGuy]

Speaking of Austalia, here are some very intense tornadoes that have occurred in Australia recently:

Jan 4, 2004 Grampians National Park Tornado
This tornado went unrecorded by the Australian Meteorological Bureau but produced some very intense vegetation damage. A large swath of forest was downed with many trees being stripped of branches. One 8 to 10-hectare area was completely stripped of all vegetation with even the undergrowth being torn out.
View attachment 5231

Mar 1, 2007 Kakadu National Park Tornado
The Australian Meteorological Bureau rated this tornado as an F2-F3. This powerful tornado debarked eucalyptus trees and uprooted thousands of trees. Two caravans were destroyed.
View attachment 5232

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Mar 21, 2013 Cobram Tornado
This is the strongest officially rated tornado to occur in Australia since 2000 as it was rated as an EF4 by the BOM. Homes were leveled, trees debarked, farm machinery mangled and the ground was scoured.
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More damage photographs from the 2013 Cobram tornado: