• Welcome to TalkWeather!
    We see you lurking around TalkWeather! Take the extra step and join us today to view attachments, see less ads and maybe even join the discussion.
    CLICK TO JOIN TALKWEATHER

Significant Tornado Events

KFOR coverage from 5/24/11 is pretty scarce but I'm unsure if any proper full footage exists. I did stumble upon this 14 minute video of the El Reno-Piedmont EF5 as it was covering. A telephone pole is directly lifted over David Payne's car as he literally intercepted the outer circulation of the tornado itself. It's honestly one of the craziest shots I've ever seen, regardless of what that station has shown on air regarding tornadoes in the OKC metro. The tremendous motion of this tornado was truly absurd, and i will be forever convinced it was up there with Bridge Creek + Moore 2013 and a few others.

 
Should have shared this for the 20th anniversary last August, but I had largely forgotten about it. This is a Wayback Machine snapshot of the webpage I wrote about the 2005 Stoughton tornado shortly after it happened. I made a brief foray into website building/HTML coding when I was in college, but the hosting service I used was hacked and permanently taken offline in the fall of 2007, and anyway at that point the Internet was starting to transition into the social-media landscape way of doing things.


Yes, the AIM chat transcript is with the same Alex Lamers who is now the Branch Chief of Forecast Operations at the Weather Prediction Center.
 
WeathermanLeprechaun said:
KFOR coverage from 5/24/11 is pretty scarce but I'm unsure if any proper full footage exists. I did stumble upon this 14 minute video of the El Reno-Piedmont EF5 as it was covering. A telephone pole is directly lifted over David Payne's car as he literally intercepted the outer circulation of the tornado itself. It's honestly one of the craziest shots I've ever seen, regardless of what that station has shown on air regarding tornadoes in the OKC metro. The tremendous motion of this tornado was truly absurd, and i will be forever convinced it was up there with Bridge Creek + Moore 2013 and a few others.

Click to expand...

Oh definitely. There was extreme damage, a house had concrete trenched and the trees turned shiny from the debarking. It had radar scans of 295.5 MPH too, which is extremely upper level. Kind of late to this, but my houses furnace died the day after the foot of snow when temperatures fell to the negatives in my area, which was not fun. But it got fixed really fast, which was great.
 
I am wondering about EXTREME cyclodials marks from all of the below:
Bridge Creek-Moore 1999
Tri-State 1925
Red Rock 1991
Chapman 2016
All Pilgers (besides the one that hit Pilger directly) + Coleridge 2014
Any Super Outbreak tornadoes
Western Kentucky + Monette-Samburg 2021
 
tornadowatch211 said:
I am wondering about EXTREME cyclodials marks from all of the below:
Bridge Creek-Moore 1999
Tri-State 1925
Red Rock 1991
Chapman 2016
All Pilgers (besides the one that hit Pilger directly) + Coleridge 2014
Any Super Outbreak tornadoes
Western Kentucky + Monette-Samburg 2021
Click to expand...
BCM:
1770057482678.png
Due to debris-loading, the vast majority of tornadoes that spend most of their lives in urban areas do not produce marks.
 
I've been looking through damage photos from the 1957 Sunfield, IL tornado and from what I've seen I'm actually not sure why it got an F5 rating. The worst damage I've been able to find is a few flattened houses and what might be a small streak of grass scouring on the left side of the second photo. It's possible I'm missing something but unless I'm missing something here I would say it looks like a low-end F4 at most.
1770958753859.png1770958786668.png
 
So far as I know the ratings of pre-early 70s tornadoes were done by Fujita's students, I think for work commissioned by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to establish a climatology for power plant safety. They were done off newspaper reports - which back then would have meant going to libraries etc. They're pretty rough as a result, but were good enough for their purpose without spending years getting into the weeds.

I don't think they were ever intended to be treated as the set-in-stone figures that they are in the current databases (together with all the other inaccuracies like wrong locations and path widths).
 
Last edited:
Central Ohio Wx said:
For all you fellow 4/27 nerds, y'all may be interested - I've found 3 (possibly 4) undocumented tornado scars within the limits of the Black Warrior Wildlife Management Area in Lawrence County. The scars showed up sometime between 2006 and September of 2011, but the rapid cyclic pattern of the two big tornadoes leads me to believe this was on 4/27. The largest one is likely in the EF2+ range, and the other 2/3 are non-significant. One of the three is a satellite. I have a graphic at home made; I'll post it when I'm back on my main PC.
View attachment 50037
I'm going to reach out to NWS Huntsville (emailed) to see if they can evaluate/potentially confirm these tornadoes. With the recent confirmation of the EF2 near Forkland by BMX I have no doubt they'll add these to the database.

I'm still evaluating radar to see exactly which day these happened, but I'm sure they'll figure it out. The rightmost one is possibly an EF1 that occurred on April 20, 2011, but that track is only 3 miles long, is in a northeast direction, and starts significantly east of where the big one first touched down.

Upon further research I am almost 100% confident that all of these tornadoes took place during a QLCS event on April 20, 2011 (which explains the quick cyclic pattern), with the rightmost one being documented as an EF1. The other 2-3 are completely undocumented, however. The longest-tracked tornado is likely in the high-end EF1 to low-end EF2 range based on treefall and the rest are very weak. I'm not surprised the other 2-3 were missed, as none crossed any roads.
Click to expand...
HUN finally got back about this! They are going to do a 4/20-4/27-timeframe re-review later this year and they said they’ll use the email to possibly document these during the re-analysis.

So not only is this confirmation that we’ll be getting at least one new 2011 tornado this year, it also hints at the fact that they may be re-evaluating 4/27 as a whole. Many of the high-end EF4s that day (Flat Rock, Cullman, iirc Cordova) are partially or fully within their WFO.
 
Last edited:
VultureDirge89 said:
I've been looking through damage photos from the 1957 Sunfield, IL tornado and from what I've seen I'm actually not sure why it got an F5 rating. The worst damage I've been able to find is a few flattened houses and what might be a small streak of grass scouring on the left side of the second photo. It's possible I'm missing something but unless I'm missing something here I would say it looks like a low-end F4 at most.
View attachment 50572View attachment 50573
Click to expand...

Not a lot of available information on that tornado.

From Wikipedia:

*The east-northeastward moving tornado struck Sunfield at the junction of U.S. Route 51 and Illinois Route 154, also called the Sunfield Y or Wye on account of the branching shape of the intersection.[78][80][76] The United States Weather Bureau documented "very heavy destruction", albeit in a small area, and referred to the Sunfield Y as having been "wiped out".[78] Tornado expert Thomas P. Grazulis stated that the “entire community literally vanished.”[82] Several people survived the tornado by taking cover in buildings, including some which were destroyed.[78] A man who remained outside was killed,[78] later found in a drainage ditch by the road.[76] In total, the tornado killed three people,[76] injured six others, and caused between $250,000 to $500,000 (1957 USD) in damage.[78][77][82]*

Well, that really doesn't say much, does it?
 
Aaron Rider said:
Not a lot of available information on that tornado.

From Wikipedia:

*The east-northeastward moving tornado struck Sunfield at the junction of U.S. Route 51 and Illinois Route 154, also called the Sunfield Y or Wye on account of the branching shape of the intersection.[78][80][76] The United States Weather Bureau documented "very heavy destruction", albeit in a small area, and referred to the Sunfield Y as having been "wiped out".[78] Tornado expert Thomas P. Grazulis stated that the “entire community literally vanished.”[82] Several people survived the tornado by taking cover in buildings, including some which were destroyed.[78] A man who remained outside was killed,[78] later found in a drainage ditch by the road.[76] In total, the tornado killed three people,[76] injured six others, and caused between $250,000 to $500,000 (1957 USD) in damage.[78][77][82]*

Well, that really doesn't say much, does it?
Click to expand...
IMG_2672.jpegGrazulis has like nothing on this. He rates it F5, but this is one of the shortest descriptions of a violent tornado in the book.IMG_2673.jpegAdditionally, there was a tornado near Lubbock on April 21 of the same year, and grazulis rates it “may have been at F5 intensity”. any thoughts on this one?
 
Central Ohio Wx said:
HUN finally got back about this! They are going to do a 4/20-4/27-timeframe re-review later this year and they said they’ll use the email to possibly document these during the re-analysis.

So not only is this confirmation that we’ll be getting at least one new 2011 tornado this year, it also hints at the fact that they may be re-evaluating 4/27 as a whole. Many of the high-end EF4s that day (Flat Rock, Cullman, iirc Cordova) are partially or fully within their WFO.
Click to expand...
This could get interesting with Flat Rock and possibly Tuscaloosa if they want to really get into it.
 
Central Ohio Wx said:
Does this look like two distinct mesocyclones (one to the SW) to y'all? I've already sent BMX the report of the two undocumented funnels captured on Coleman's video as I've found damage likely associated with them (directly E of Aldridge; probably not associated with the morning EF3 although it can't be ruled out), but just double-checking. The main reason these weren't able to be sent in prior to yesterday is that no attempt was made to geolocate Peters/Coleman's video and line up the time they showed up on video with the NWS-made path; lining everything up put them just east of Aldridge, which is where I found damage.
Click to expand...
BMX is actively looking into these; the DI tweaking was apparently part of an unrelated investigation.
 
ColdFront said:
Isn’t Darden (former Huntsville MIC during 4/27/11) now the MIC at NWS BMX? I think he’d give it its due diligence if they give it a second look. Hopefully BMX follows suit.
Click to expand...
I’m not sure, but if that’s true, it does bode well. Darden is big on using contextual evidence to ascertain high-end ratings and was a big part of upgrading Rainsville to EF5. Considering that the Hurricane Creek railroad bridge is probably the best bet for EF5 in Tuscaloosa given the study that calculated winds of around 220 MPH at that location, and considering the precedent that Enderlin set, has anyone considered reaching out to Darden about possible reanalysis? The fact that we already have a calculation of the windspeed needed to destroy bridge makes for a compelling case.

I’ve also wondered if anyone has considered reaching out to NWS Paducah about the Presbyterian Church? They said in their video presentation on Mayfield that they’d be open to taking another look at the rating if new evidence or rating methodologies are in play. With the IF scale in place, I’ve always thought it would be a good idea for NWS Paducah to get in touch with the ESSL given their method of ascertaining IF5 intensity using brick masonry construction. The Presbyterian Church seems like a prime candidate for IF scale analysis.

Also still hoping we can get a calculation on the Vilonia fertilizer tank so it can be maybe be given to NWS Little Rock.
 
I hate being “that guy” who reaches out the NWS with potential pathways for EF5 upgrades, but I’ve been thinking, if we really want to see changes, the public may have to be proactive and provide real compelling evidence for reanalysis for Tuscaloosa, Vilonia, and Mayfield. Those are the only three I can see in terms of there being enough evidence for the NWS actually considering them for an upgrade. The problem is I don’t know if just sending basic emails to WFOs saying “hey look at this” would work, or even result in a reply. I am so passionate about this that I’d be willing to work with other users and more knowledgeable people than myself to build a compelling case and find a way to get in touch with the right people. It may take a collaborative effort to really put something together that gets the attention of people at the NWS without coming off as annoying amateur EF scale dweebs, but I’m serious about this. Maybe someone like Jim LaDue would take interest? Does anyone think this is viable? If it is, I’d love to discuss further.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top