Significant Tornado Events

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Saragosa was another classic case of terrible timing. There have been several instances of tornadoes barely missing graduation ceremonies, such as the June 5, 2010, Millbury, OH EF4, and the Joplin Tornado. However, even though this tornado lasted for less than 5 miles, it just so happened to be that Saragosa was right in the path. This too, was another classic case of a rather weak surface low interacting with a highly unstable atmosphere, influencing favorable wind profiles for tornadoes and initiation. 0000 UTC observations from Del Rio shows a very unstable, healthy, and thick updraft profile. The wind profiles definitely favor violent tornado activity, but the hodograph and critical angle makes me think that some sort of boundary interaction with the parent supercell helped to steady out the main updraft and hold out long enough to allow a tornado to come out of the updraft before the supercell would cycle again. The exact same thing happened with the EF2 Tornado in the Black Hills Forest on July 6, 2020.

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The tornado initially formed as a small, weak condensation funnel before a second, much larger funnel formed just to its right. The two funnels can be seen below.

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The two funnels had merged into one large tornado, which grew into an extremely large and violent F4 by the time it entered the southern side of town. It leveled several homes along a very wide swath. Two lives were taken here before the tornado moved right towards the church, where the preschool graduation was taking place. One man who was inside the church yelled, "There's a tornado coming!" Right before the building was struck and swept away by the tornado, which likely saved many lives. Every single part of the building, save for a portion of the back wall and foundation, was completely obliterated and swept away. Most of the fatalities occurred when parents were struck by debris trying to protect their children.

Photo of the remains of the schoolhouse:

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The tornado continued its devastating course through town, striking another subdivision to the north, killing a family of 3 in a home before it exited the town. As the tornado exited the town, it killed a teenage girl who was trying to escape the tornado in her car. The tornado lasted no more than 5 miles after leaving the town, and the parent supercell never produced again. Several trees sustained debarking throughout the town and the ground was scoured. This tornado would definitely be awarded an EF4 rating today.

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Warren Faidley has a book with several photographs he took after visiting Saragosa the day after the tornado went through, some of them I still can't find on the Internet to this day. Anyways, here's a couple photographs.

The first is a better quality pic of the two funnels:




Second is of a fork impaled into a tree:



Warren Faidley recounts that the entrance sign of the town was torn in two and that the "Sara" half was found in the city limits and the "Gosa" half was found covered in dirt half a mile outside the city limits. Wish I could find a picture of that.

 

[J-Rab]

Other pics from Joplin:

A chair impaled into a wall:

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Wood impaled through concrete:



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Garden hose impaled through a tree:

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Mangled Jeep Cherokee thrown from the hospital parking lot:

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Ground scouring that took place near the Pepsi distribution center:


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Before and after of the nursing home & surrounding areas:

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I have never seen that pic of the board through the concrete curb of the hose through the tree. That’s pretty incredible.

The curb shows just how violent the ground Level winds are. Good grief.

 

[locomusic01]

Yeah, here is a gif that I found some time ago on the Jarrell storms that shows the interaction between the cold front (blue line) the dry line (yellow) and the gravity waves (orange) from storms in Arkansas the previous night.

Right as the cold front catches up to the dry line from the West, the gravity waves also reach the dry line approaching from the Northeast. You can see that the storms explode along the dry line just as the gravity waves arrive. The gravity waves provided just enough lift to rupture the cap and let the highly unstable air rush upwards.

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EDIT: apparently, I can’t post a gif with it still animated, which is a shame because it shows exactly how this unfolded.

Yeah, that's the one I made for my blog.

Here's the (hopefully) animated version:

(And by "made" I mean "drew some very artistic squiggly lines.")

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

I have never seen that pic of the board through the concrete curb of the hose through the tree. That’s pretty incredible.

The curb shows just how violent the ground Level winds are. Good grief.

Check out the stormstalker and extremeplanet articles on it. This thing also ripped manhole covers in excess of 100 pounds straight from the ground.

May 22, 2011 — The Joplin Tornado

[Note: Click photos to see larger versions.] “Get the sirens going, get the sirens going, I’m telling you!” The sense of urgency, bordering on panic, was palpable. The brilliant blue springti…

stormstalker.wordpress.com

Images Detailing EF5 Damage from the Joplin Tornado

□ Despite being the deadliest and most destructive tornado in recent history, the Joplin tornado’s awesome strength is sometimes overlooked. A google search of “Joplin tornado damage&#8…

extremeplanet.wordpress.com

 

[J-Rab]

Yeah, that's the one I made for my blog.

Here's the (hopefully) animated version:

(And by "made" I mean "drew some very artistic squiggly lines.")

Haha, well good Job! I’ve had that thing on my Hard drive for a while. It shows what happened perfectly.

How quickly those storms explode when the gravity wave hits it is incredible to see.

Thank you!

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Absolute insanity. The fact that anyone could think Joplin deserves a rating lower than EF5 is absurd.

Another crazy photo from Joplin:



If you look near the bottom center of the picture you can see what looks like sawdust scattered all over the ground, it's an incredible example of debris granulation:

Source:

Joplin Damage Documentation (WARNING - LOTS OF IMAGES IN THIS THREAD! SLOW LOADING!)

I thought about posting these to the Joplin thread, but realized that a lot of people wouldn't appreciate this many photos suddenly having to load (and re-load, every time someone quoted them). So I'm putting them here. If the mods have a better place for them, let me know. These images were...

stormtrack.org

 

[TH2002]

Another crazy photo from Joplin:

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If you look near the bottom center of the picture you can see what looks like sawdust scattered all over the ground, it's an incredible example of debris granulation:

Source:

Joplin Damage Documentation (WARNING - LOTS OF IMAGES IN THIS THREAD! SLOW LOADING!)

I thought about posting these to the Joplin thread, but realized that a lot of people wouldn't appreciate this many photos suddenly having to load (and re-load, every time someone quoted them). So I'm putting them here. If the mods have a better place for them, let me know. These images were...

stormtrack.org

Good Lord. That debris granulation is on par with Smithville from what I've seen.

I already believed that Joplin was one of the most violent tornadoes in history though after seeing all this... words simply cannot describe this. I still pray for those who lost their loved ones in this horrible tragedy.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Good Lord. That debris granulation is on par with Smithville from what I've seen.
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I already believed that Joplin was one of the most violent tornadoes in history though after seeing all this... words simply cannot describe this. I still pray for those who lost their loved ones in this horrible tragedy.

Good Lord. That debris granulation is on par with Smithville from what I've seen.
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I already believed that Joplin was one of the most violent tornadoes in history though after seeing all this... words simply cannot describe this. I still pray for those who lost their loved ones in this horrible tragedy.

I don't think Joplin was able to granulate brick and concrete like Smithville did, it also didn't cause massive ground scouring to the degree that Smtihville did either. That said, Joplin is probably the most violent tornado to strike a large city in the 21st century.

 

[TH2002]

I don't think Joplin was able to granulate brick and concrete like Smithville did, it also didn't cause massive ground scouring to the degree that Smtihville did either. That said, Joplin is probably the most violent tornado to strike a large city in the 21st century.

True, I still believe Smithville was definitely the stronger of the two tornadoes, though Joplin was undoutedbly extremely violent and not just your "typical" EF5.

I have to wonder if there has been any "Joplin vs Guin" discussion in this thread?

 

[pohnpei]

I don't think Joplin was able to granulate brick and concrete like Smithville did, it also didn't cause massive ground scouring to the degree that Smtihville did either. That said, Joplin is probably the most violent tornado to strike a large city in the 21st century.

The most incredible thing of Smithville was it can did all these damages in several seconds due to its high speed and tight core. Joplin was not that fast moving but the peak speed inside Joplin was about 15m/s, still relatively fast speed compared to most of Plain tornados. If Moore was considered a "big city", I would say it did even more incredible damage than Joplin with slightly lower speed.

 

[locomusic01]

There were a number of tornadoes during the Tupelo-Gainesville outbreak, obviously, but they basically get no attention. As it turns out, several of them were extremely intense. In fact, I'm pretty confident that at least one of them probably rivaled Tupelo in intensity (which is saying something, because that thing was a monster).

Anyway, I searched absolutely everywhere to try and find some photos from that other tornado. I never had any luck.. until maybe a year or so ago. They're very poor-quality photos, but I'm just thrilled to have something from the area, so I figured I'd share one of them:



This is a property in southern Tennessee that was demolished by the tornado. One eyewitness said that the grass in the area had been scoured "like a lawn mower had run over it." There were several homes in the community, most of which had essentially disappeared save for the foundations. At another home nearby, the family's Model A was thrown hundreds of yards and wrapped so tightly around the gnarled trunk of a tree that the front and rear touched. A huge steam shovel a few miles to the northeast was even (allegedly) "dragged away and torn apart."

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

True, I still believe Smithville was definitely the stronger of the two tornadoes, though Joplin was undoutedbly extremely violent and not just your "typical" EF5.

I have to wonder if there has been any "Joplin vs Guin" discussion in this thread?

Lol no, there hasn't been a debate between those two, as Guin is rather poorly-documented. A more appropriate debate would be Joplin vs. Jarrell given that they were both slow movers or Joplin vs. Moore given they both impacted highly urbanized areas.

 

[TH2002]

Lol no, there hasn't been a debate between those two, as Guin is rather poorly-documented. A more appropriate debate would be Joplin vs. Jarrell given that they were both slow movers or Joplin vs. Moore given they both impacted highly urbanized areas.

Joplin vs. Moore seems like a more fair debate to me, as violent as Joplin was that event STILL doesn't hold a candle to Jarrell in terms of the damage intensity, which really makes you respect the destructive potential of tornadoes in general. IMO I believe Moore 2013 was more of a "typical" EF5 though like Joplin undoutedbly had some incredible damage instances along its path.

 

[TH2002]

On a bit of an unrelated note, do I have any fellow hoarders of tornado videos? Here are the stats of my collection so far; keep in mind that the first picture isn't even CLOSE to the total number of videos in the archive.

 

[pohnpei]

Lol no, there hasn't been a debate between those two, as Guin is rather poorly-documented. A more appropriate debate would be Joplin vs. Jarrell given that they were both slow movers or Joplin vs. Moore given they both impacted highly urbanized areas.

Joplin was actually far from the definition of a "slow mover". Moving at 30mph or greater inside Joplin made it faster than a large proportion of Plain's violent tornados.There was a huge difference in terms of damage between speend of 30mph and 5-10mph.
A much closer comparison for Jarrell was Loyal Valley which moved at 10mph and Harper 2004 tornado .

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Joplin was actually far from the definition of a "slow mover". Moving at 30mph or greater inside Joplin made it faster than a large proportion of Plain's violent tornados.

I was pretty sure Joplin was moving 20-25 mph, 30mph is still on par with many Plains events, really.
Of course, if I'm wrong just show me the source for its forward speed.
While I'm at it, how fast was Moore 2013 moving?

 

[eric11]

Yeah, that's the one I made for my blog.

Here's the (hopefully) animated version:

(And by "made" I mean "drew some very artistic squiggly lines.")

So this article was written by you? really impressive work, the “'Zipper effect”was really visual

Highly Deviant Supercell Motion – Tornado Talk

www.tornadotalk.com

I am curious about whether there are any damage photos of Lake Whitney TX F3, hearing that this tor was capable of reaching F4 strength

 

[pohnpei]

I was pretty sure Joplin was moving 20-25 mph, 30mph is still on par with many Plains events, really.
Of course, if I'm wrong just show me the source for its forward speed.
While I'm at it, how fast was Moore 2013 moving?

Analysis of Tornado-Induced Tree Fall Using Aerial Photography from the Joplin, Missouri, and Tuscaloosa–Birmingham, Alabama, Tornadoes of 2011

Abstract In this study, aerial imagery of tornado damage is used to digitize the falling direction of trees (i.e., tree fall) along the 22 May 2011 Joplin, Missouri, and 27 April 2011 Tuscaloosa–Birmingham, Alabama, tornado tracks. Normalized mean patterns of observed tree fall from each...

journals.ametsoc.org

locomusic01 once put this article in this site. It mentioned that Joplin's transitional speed inside the town was between 11-15m/s, though I really can't agree with the calculation process present in this article.It is impossible for EF4/5 tornado with only36-43m/s tangential speed and much higher radial speed.

 

[pohnpei]

I was pretty sure Joplin was moving 20-25 mph, 30mph is still on par with many Plains events, really.
Of course, if I'm wrong just show me the source for its forward speed.
While I'm at it, how fast was Moore 2013 moving?

Moore 2013 tornado moved at 15-20mph at its damage peak. The scouring it made even on par with Jarrell in some places.

 

[Marshal79344]

On a bit of an unrelated note, do I have any fellow hoarders of tornado videos? Here are the stats of my collection so far; keep in mind that the first picture isn't even CLOSE to the total number of videos in the archive.

No, but I have over 4,000 tornado damage photos on standby