The tornado itself was rated F4 and was apart of the 1974 Super Outbreak. He classified the damage to the forest and trees as F5 but officially rated the tornado as an F4. Pretty curious if there’s more information on that one, it’s an interesting case.
I guess I wouldn't be too surprised but nowadays it seems hard enough to get a tornado that does that to the ground an EF4 rating.
The document also features some rare photos of the December 11, 1990 Mobara, Japan tornado
This should be listed as Murphy, North Carolina. Tornado #121 on the Fujita map of the outbreak.
Another thing: why does the Missouri portion of the path have such a low fatality count (11-13) compared to the other states? Was the area that sparsely populated even back then or was the remote, rural nature of the area conducive to poor documentation? Or other reasons?
It was 1974, early in Fujita's career and the establishment of a scale for ranking tornadoes. They were way more lenient about what constituted F4-F5 damage back then compared to nowadays.
Interesting, the PDF said it was South Carolina. I'll go back and double check.
Sure. I tried at the time but I get told to await clearance from an admin — though that never happens.
I've actually got 14 deaths so far (and a few others that I haven't been able to confirm yet):
There is another photo from the same series (Facebook user Ipper Collens) which also shows a similar - though smaller - dark colored mark in an open field. I could be scouring from debris or from the tornado itself.If you look really really close you can sorta make out a tornado track west of Atlantic lol (the town's smoldering near the top of the photo). The short little road beneath that is Pinedale Trailer Court where four people were killed (three in an obliterated frame home). You can also see a dark streak in the field to the south (right) of the big pond - I'm dying to know what that is. I've heard from several people that the tornado dug "trenches" near Atlantic, but I was skeptical because no one could seem to agree on where. If it actually did happen, that'd be a pretty good place for it.
I've also heard the same thing about Niles-Wheatland when it was near Lordstown, but I haven't seen any definitive proof there either. Anyway.
Perhaps many with severe injuries succumbed to them later but were never followed up on? Happened a lot with older events.I've actually got 14 deaths so far (and a few others that I haven't been able to confirm yet):
But yeah, you can even see on the map that the majority of the track in Missouri is through very sparsely populated mountainous/forested terrain. The biggest "town" in the path was probably Annapolis, which only had a few hundred residents, and most of them were underground working in the Leadanna mines at the time. There were still quite a few serious injuries despite the relatively low number of people who were directly impacted, though.
Probably not a huge number since this event received pretty thorough coverage, but no doubt there were some. Two of the deaths I mapped in Missouri were seriously injured people who died weeks later (nearly three months later in one case) but don't seem to have been officially counted. Occasionally there are also people who are counted who shouldn't be, like the woman who died of a heart attack near Alliance, MO despite the tornado missing her house by almost half a mile. Overall though, the death toll is probably somewhat higher than reported.
It's quite interesting that speaking of path length and longevity, these two tornados were in there own league and probably far exceed any other tornados in history.A few contenders were all proved to be families. 1971 Cary tornado was over 200 miles in spc database but was found to be near 114miles by tornadotalk. Yazoo City was near 150miles in nws survey but was probably near 105miles based on satellite and radar analysis. Candlestick F5 was also probably made up by two or more tornados with longest one near 100miles,etc.