Significant Tornado Events

[ColdFront]

Richmond, KY F4
4/3/74

Photos taken from the EKU photos archive, honestly not much (comparatively to some other 4/3 tornadoes) out there on this one outside of some Facebook posts and images of the tornado itself, at least from what I could find, definitely violent however View attachment 45664View attachment 45665View attachment 45666View attachment 45667View attachment 45668View attachment 45669View attachment 45670

Being from this area, it thankfully skirted and missed downtown Richmond and hugged to the western parts of Madison County, which were at the time pretty rural. It’s a pretty decently sized college town, so damage potential would’ve been very high had it tracked through it. A student got some wicked photos of it from the top of a dormitory as it moved away from the city.

The parent storm actually originated a little northwest of Nashville and dropped the Mannsville F4 as well.

 

[NewFoundWeatherNerd]

The 7/5/2000 Dailey CO F3 is supremely underrated; with this being a very rare nocturnal CO tornado, and a strong one at that.
No photos of it exist to my knowledge, with the "photo" of it being truly from a storm on 7/8/2000; not from Dailey.
This tornado destroyed a farmstead owned by the Gordon family, who all survived with minor injuries; with one family member surviving by having a couch fall on top of them, sheltering them from flying debris.
Here's a few photos from a Colorado history Blog I have archived: (there's more but they're in a file type not accepted by the forum)
Plus, one by a Summer 2001 Colorado Climate magazine:
This tornado was a very rare Colorado wedge too, at 1,320 Yards wide

I got around to converting my other files! I do truly believe this tornado was violent; such as a mid range F4.
You can observe pretty extensive tree damage here in these; plus the near complete destruction of the Gordon Farm

 

[Central Ohio Wx]

Also, unrelated to the image itself, I have zero doubt in my mind the Sawyerville tornado was violent in intensity. In my research while writing the article (which has since been published btw), I found that the tornado had 123 terajoules of kinetic energy at one point - twice as many as the Hiroshima nuclear bombing. It also had more TJs of energy than the Hackleburg EF5, Moore EF5, Ohatchee EF4 and Smithville EF5 (which is considered one of the strongest in world history).

 

[Union]

Being from this area, it thankfully skirted and missed downtown Richmond and hugged to the western parts of Madison County, which were at the time pretty rural. It’s a pretty decently sized college town, so damage potential would’ve been very high had it tracked through it. A student got some wicked photos of it from the top of a dormitory as it moved away from the city.

The parent storm actually originated a little northwest of Nashville and dropped the Mannsville F4 as well.

View attachment 45679
View attachment 45680

Mannsville is another one that is pretty underrated, really wish there were more photos of the Chevy Impala it twisted up like a pretzel, the image is even crazier when you realize it's not even removed from its chassis, the whole intact car is just mangled that badly, those things are heavy as hell and sturdy, it's engine was embedded in a tree nearby but no images of that from what I know, I can't really pick a 2nd strongest Kentucky tornado from that day but both Richmond and Mannsville are up there for it.