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Significant Tornado Events

NewFoundWeatherNerd said:
I am BEYOND delighted to see someone so dedicated over this outbreak (5/31/85). The Moshannon PA tornado is a personal fixation of mine; same for a lot of the PA F4's that day.
I really do wish you luck; have you investigated newspaper archives around the area? Or historical societies, or libraries there? That might be of help, although looking at your work, I bet you have! Ive got a friend around Barrie, (His name is Ethan Bolzicco! fellow weather nerd) if it would help, I can ask him if he knows anything about that area.

Doing a little skim; I did find this rare book surrounding the 5/31/85 outbreak, unsure if it has anything on Barrie; but it may be a lead!
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I used to have a lot of doctor's appointments as a kid (in the early-mid '90s) and I would often read the Reader's Digest magazines in the waiting room. Then at one point I found a bunch of back issues (they were subscribers) at my maternal grandparents' house. My childhood interest in tornadoes was fed in part by finding the May 1987 issue with an excerpt from this book under the title "Day of The Killer Tornadoes" (and another issue with an article about Plainfield titled "Winds of Terror"). Then eventually as an adult I read the book itself. It's great.
 
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NewFoundWeatherNerd said:
I am BEYOND delighted to see someone so dedicated over this outbreak (5/31/85). The Moshannon PA tornado is a personal fixation of mine; same for a lot of the PA F4's that day.
I really do wish you luck; have you investigated newspaper archives around the area? Or historical societies, or libraries there? That might be of help, although looking at your work, I bet you have! Ive got a friend around Barrie, (His name is Ethan Bolzicco! fellow weather nerd) if it would help, I can ask him if he knows anything about that area.

Doing a little skim; I did find this rare book surrounding the 5/31/85 outbreak, unsure if it has anything on Barrie; but it may be a lead!
View attachment 43093View attachment 43094
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Yes I have been looking through old newspapers and for the most part they focus on the areas near Innisfil street and the Barrie Raceway. I can only find spotty damage reports from Ardagh Road but I am still searching. If you could ask your friend if he knows anything from the area that would be amazing!
 
locomusic01 said:
Oh yeah, even today if you talk to survivors/witnesses who aren't WX nerds a lot of them are more drawn to partially destroyed structures than ones that are totally obliterated. I kinda get it - it's easier to make sense of a house with its exterior walls collapsed or a multi-story building with the top floors blown off, and it's more visually striking to the average person than a field full of rubble. That's also part of why you see so many reports in the immediate aftermath of a tornado about houses "leveled" or "blown away" that turn out to be like.. EF2 or EF3.
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IMO you have to mentally reduce the ratings of many stronger older tornadoes by a 'half' or whole F-scale step. It's clear many before the mid-70s rated off newspaper reports were overrated. And though Grazulis was a little more conservative, that still applies pre-1950. I believe stronger modern tornadoes are often underrated (add 'half' a step) and that the normal number of tornadoes doing violent damage is more like 5-12 a year than the 1-6 that actually get rated EF4+. But I still don't believe there was, for example, 19 F4 tornadoes in 1949. In fact where pictures do exist I often find them surprisingly unimpressive, especially considering construction quality.
 
A Guy said:
Maybe they had more detail in their paid summary, but what I've read elsewhere about the alleged start near Columbus sounded more like a guess there might have been a tornado than anything really convincing.

For the 1971 outbreak Tornado Talk partly used close aerial photography that was taken two days afterwards, which Grazulis wouldn't have had. Even then the path is faint or not apparent in places. That'll be partly because I mainly looked at previews and only downloaded a few full res pics - whoever at Tornado Talk wrestled with the Earth Explorer had the patience of a saint. But it also partly due to the ground conditions - cleared, a lot of bare ground, and standing water showing rain may have removed soil disturbances. The Rolling Fork tornado was only little more obvious on Sentinel. I do wonder how they determined the path width in some places and as always they're bold with the damage contours. I can see how someone might conclude differently, especially if they didn't have those aerials and had to rely on reports.

With respect to less well documented ones like the Wilson tornado (which there isn't good imagery for) I think a more conservative approach is right most times. You'd know from your examination of the Brandon tornado from the same outbreak. We even have much more recent events (Yazoo City, Hackleburg, Holly Springs) with spurious joins.

The Tornado Talk summaries (I was scouring their Facebook for photos when I wrote my original post) have some other interesting bits - both the Cullman and Trenton 4/27 tornadoes have gaps. The Trenton one is especially interesting, intense tree damage stops abruptly and then resumes initially from a different direction. Can tornadoes skip now? When I've seen authorities say they don't? Should it be considered a new tornado? Not a question likely to be answered with the available radar data or lack of footage.

I'd also be interested in seeing different parties' interpretation of the same events and data, especially from the guys who can find info where I wouldn't even know where to start. For example, the twitter poster who you included showing the gaps in the Yazoo City path has produced a reconstruction of Udall unlike any other I've seen and another showing the Charles City path as being less than ten miles. Be interesting to someone else's takes on the same events.

(do you have info about my question about Cordova and Uniontown?)
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Late but on topic because I decided to revisit Brandon today.

First - no, I don't have info on the Enterprise length thing. Might want to forward that to @MNTornadoGuy, @Juliett Bravo Kilo (where did he go?) or one of many others.

Second - I think the most suspicious long tracks are the ones with random jarring path changes. Brandon is one - it takes all these sharp angles and zigzags, and I have confirmed it was not a single tornado. In fact, not only did I split it into 7-9 tornadoes (there's 2 I'm unsure are tornadoes), but I concluded that the tornadoes from the Ethel area onward were likely produced by an entirely different supercell. Whoops.

When the track is basically straight arrow NE with little direction changes, then the likelihood of being legit increases. Hazelhurst 1969, the 1971 MS Delta tornadoes, Guin 1974 and Wilson 1992 are ones I'd bet on being continuous (or at least over 100 miles), though this doesn't always mean it was continuous (Albion 1990).

If I had to list some high confidence (IMO) VLTs, they would be:

Tri-State 1925 (for the full 200+ miles, not counting the weak tornadoes that bookended it)
Hazlehurst 1969
Delhi-Inverness 1971
Cary-Pugh City 1971 (the 114 mile track, not the 202.1 mile track)
Guin 1974 (I trust Tornado Talk for path lengths on old events such as this)
Jasper 1974
Wilson 1992 (Surveyors aren't always right but I trust them somewhat on an event this recent, coupled with no obvious discrepancies in the official track)
Every 100 miler after 2008

I'd like some input on other notable VLTs I'm unsure of like Primrose, btw.
 
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locomusic01 said:
So, I've mentioned that I'm working on my next big article for my blog, but I've had a lot going on that's made the process even slower than usual. I still intend to finish it as soon as I can, but I'd really like to be able to put out something in the meantime. With that in mind, what kinda stuff would you guys be interested in? A few ideas I've been thinking about:

- Broad, high-level overviews of major outbreaks

- Random violent tornadoes that are more obscure/poorly documented

- High-end tornadoes that got overshadowed in larger outbreaks

- Overviews of "tornado towns" like OKC/Moore, St. Louis, Birmingham, etc.

I dunno - I'm not convinced I can do shorter articles without going overboard, but lemme know if y'all have any ideas.
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Lake Martin EF4 said:
Late but on topic because I decided to revisit Brandon today.

First - no, I don't have info on the Enterprise length thing. Might want to forward that to @MNTornadoGuy, @Juliett Bravo Kilo (where did he go?) or one of many others.

Second - I think the most suspicious long tracks are the ones with random jarring path changes. Brandon is one - it takes all these sharp angles and zigzags, and I have confirmed it was not a single tornado. In fact, not only did I split it into 7-9 tornadoes (there's 2 I'm unsure are tornadoes), but I concluded that the tornadoes from the Ethel area onward were likely produced by an entirely different supercell. Whoops.

When the track is basically straight arrow NE with little direction changes, then the likelihood of being legit increases. Hazelhurst 1969, the 1971 MS Delta tornadoes, Guin 1974 and Wilson 1992 are ones I'd bet on being continuous (or at least over 100 miles), though this doesn't always mean it was continuous (Albion 1990).

If I had to list some high confidence (IMO) VLTs, they would be:

Tri-State 1925 (for the full 200+ miles, not counting the weak tornadoes that bookended it)
Hazlehurst 1969
Delhi-Inverness 1971
Cary-Pugh City 1971 (the 114 mile track, not the 202.1 mile track)
Guin 1974 (I trust Tornado Talk for path lengths on old events such as this)
Jasper 1974
Wilson 1992 (Surveyors aren't always right but I trust them somewhat on an event this recent, coupled with no obvious discrepancies in the official track)
Every 100 miler after 2008

I'd like some input on other notable VLTs I'm unsure of like Primrose, btw.
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Primrose was a family of 5-6 tornadoes.
 
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Nightking2021 said:
Still very sad.
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if i am correct it killed 23 while one was in critical condition until this persons death in October of that year.

i also remember seeing a study for 3 tornadoes (moore 2013 and el reno 2013 were 2 of them) and it was about the age , gender , location of the deaths
moore 2013: mostly killed little girls who were taken shelter inside buildings (7 of them i think were from one school alone)
el reno 2013: mostly killed adult men who were in there vehicles (50% of them were storm chasers)
i forget what the other third tornado was but im pretty sure it was the Shawnee tornado, and i forget what the death locations were at if there were any.
 
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A Guy said:
IMO you have to mentally reduce the ratings of many stronger older tornadoes by a 'half' or whole F-scale step. It's clear many before the mid-70s rated off newspaper reports were overrated. And though Grazulis was a little more conservative, that still applies pre-1950. I believe stronger modern tornadoes are often underrated (add 'half' a step) and that the normal number of tornadoes doing violent damage is more like 5-12 a year than the 1-6 that actually get rated EF4+. But I still don't believe there was, for example, 19 F4 tornadoes in 1949. In fact where pictures do exist I often find them surprisingly unimpressive, especially considering construction quality.
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it is to also note the EF scale wind speed was changed for some F rating (that is after the main corrected wind speed)
EF0 and EF1 are the same
EF2 and EF5 got a 1 mph more strictness
EF3 and EF4 got a 2 mph less strictness
1748017069279.png
Derived EF scale as you see here is how the EF scale would be if it were to match the F scale.
pretty much EF2 and EF5 have to fight both this 1 mph difference plus the new strictness that started mid 2013.
 
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For what it's worth with the talk of the Appalachian 1944 Outbreak, here is aftermath video of the F4 that tracked through the Southern suburbs of Pittsburgh. If the sight lines were clear enough, someone at the top of the Gulf Tower could have likely seen this from Downtown Pittsburgh.

A second F4 started in Wellsburg, WV, and completely decimated the small town of Chartiers, PA. It may have been a family. It tracked south of Uniontown, PA and into WV/MD.

Obviously the Shinniston, WV F4 with 100+ deaths greatly overshadows these two. Much like how we talk about how Chickasha and Goldsby, a few miles is the difference between the 1944 Pittsburgh Metro F4 or the 1944 Fayette Coalfields F4 (SW PA was loaded with coal patch towns then) per-se...

 
AJS said:
Excluding the Tri State Tornado, which tornado has actually been documented to have the longest path length in miles traveled?
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Likely Mayfield. Cary was split, Woodward was split, the two F2s longer than Tri-State are FAR too suspect to be accurate, Candlestick Park has also been claimed to be several but is otherwise the strongest non-Tri-State candidate, although that is only by comparison. The FL/GA F2 and OK F2 also were likely families. The 176 mile F1 from 1965 has been described by @A Guy as "utter nonsense", and Grazulis splits the 1973 Kansas F3.
 
Lake Martin EF4 said:
Likely Mayfield. Cary was split, Woodward was split, the two F2s longer than Tri-State are FAR too suspect to be accurate, Candlestick Park has also been claimed to be several but is otherwise the strongest non-Tri-State candidate, although that is only by comparison. The FL/GA F2 and OK F2 also were likely families. The 176 mile F1 from 1965 has been described by @A Guy as "utter nonsense", and Grazulis splits the 1973 Kansas F3.
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OG tri state tornado is probably also a family
 
N0mz said:
OG tri state tornado is probably also a family
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I think not. There really is only one notable possible break point, in MO, and I am inclined to believe it was a single tornado due to the consistent heading. I'd also bump up the path length to 222 miles in accordance with @locomusic01's findings.

BTW, that article Juliett posted about the Tri-State Tornado reveals that the official death toll is over 100 people too low. The actual death toll, as shown in the article: 798.
 
Lake Martin EF4 said:
I think not. There really is only one notable possible break point, in MO, and I am inclined to believe it was a single tornado due to the consistent heading. I'd also bump up the path length to 222 miles in accordance with @locomusic01's findings.
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I'm not sure about 222 miles but maybe 210 or so, I think the Shannon County, MO funnel was a separate tornado and the main tornado begins in Reynolds County, MO (right next door) a few minutes later. Either way, Tri-State's likely one of the few very long track events that is likely a single tornado for most of the path, pretty remarkable.
 
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