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Significant Tornado Events

Cullman was three, with a short-lived undocumented tornado near Crane Hill shortly before (I actually have a photo of the parent wall cloud) and a third tornado just after the Tennessee River. Joshoct16 has a really good writeup on it somewhere. The vast majority of the track was one tornado, so don’t be fooled.
Ah. Makes sense.

Cue the question on if you can share that image of the undocumented one's wall cloud.
 
Ah. Makes sense.

Cue the question on if you can share that image of the undocumented one's wall cloud.
Of course!
IMG_2578.jpeg
This is iirc around the time it briefly caused tree damage near the Trade, AL area.
 
Also, I want to second the request to elaborate further on Jarrell.
I’ll do a little write-up tomorrow; it’s late here. ThatGuy is right that the rope and wedge portions are multiple different tornadoes. Really hard to explain but I’ll get to it tmrw.
 
Nope, it cycled multiple times on radar with clear associated gaps on satellite; classic example of a rapid-cyclic supercell. 4/27 had multiple, including Smithville. When evaluating the track length TornadoTalk never indicates that they factored in the possibility of a cycle, which is evident by their (probably-wrong) non-stop length.
What's your source for this?
I'm curious why you're so confident that TornadoTalk is wrong, given how accurate and painstaking the work they do is.
 
I’ll do a little write-up tomorrow; it’s late here. ThatGuy is right that the rope and wedge portions are multiple different tornadoes. Really hard to explain but I’ll get to it tmrw.
Sorry for not getting back; I've been working on that 45-minute presentation I mentioned a few weeks ago (and am presenting it tonight). I'll respond tomorrow as today I am quite busy. Today we'll see how many people really know what a "tornado emergency" is and whether my suspicions that the general public is not made aware of them in education is true...
 
Sorry for not getting back; I've been working on that 45-minute presentation I mentioned a few weeks ago (and am presenting it tonight). I'll respond tomorrow as today I am quite busy. Today we'll see how many people really know what a "tornado emergency" is and whether my suspicions that the general public is not made aware of them in education is true...
Presentation went amazingly (seriously, for the first time in my life I actually had fun public speaking). Got about 30 minutes (had some technical issues) out of 60 slides and included a bunch of the images y'all sent earlier. I think I got all the points across that I wanted to, such as what TOR-Es are and that tornadic size does not correlate to intensity. Mentioned Xenia and Wheelersburg as well to flex a bit of my nerdiness.
 
Presentation went amazingly (seriously, for the first time in my life I actually had fun public speaking). Got about 30 minutes (had some technical issues) out of 60 slides and included a bunch of the images y'all sent earlier. I think I got all the points across that I wanted to, such as what TOR-Es are and that tornadic size does not correlate to intensity. Mentioned Xenia and Wheelersburg as well to flex a bit of my nerdiness.
Was Wheelersburg an F5?
 
Was Wheelersburg an F5?
Officially yes, unofficially it's closer to an F3 or F4. Really not a ton of evidence it was that strong based off the few extant images I've seen.
 
Here's a link to an interesting thread in which someone (a student of "tornado archeology") says he found evidence of an exceptionally violent tornado in Mississippi in .... wait for it.... the 1500s!


He needs to do a deep dive eventually into his methodology and how one is able to even trace a scar that far back using tree damage. I’d also like to know how the rankings are determined. It’s really interesting stuff to me, but I have so many questions lol.
 
He needs to do a deep dive eventually into his methodology and how one is able to even trace a scar that far back using tree damage. I’d also like to know how the rankings are determined. It’s really interesting stuff to me, but I have so many questions lol.
In my mind, if there is a way that we can trace tornado damage that far back without it being BS, then the way would be tree damage for sure. There’s just no other type of damage that would stick around for 500 years, not even the most significant trenching/grass scouring ever. It would be very interesting indeed if this is confirmed to be from a tornado, and would likely point well into EF5 intensity if it’s still discernible to this day.
 
Here's a link to an interesting thread in which someone (a student of "tornado archeology") says he found evidence of an exceptionally violent tornado in Mississippi in .... wait for it.... the 1500s!


1500s were built different. They found evidence of a hurricane FAR more powerful than Hattie hitting Brazil around 1500 in the Great Blue Hole.
 
The date should be March 21, not 22. Apparently from newspapers.com, according to another post. The identification of the particular tornado follows Grazulis' rather than the official data (the forum being broken means I can't post the maps)

 
He shared this tweet as well:


Really interesting stuff for sure!

When you look at it, our actual record keeping for tornados is extremely recent in the grand scheme of history.

There does seem to be a 25-50 year return rate on “super outbreaks” in our current record. It’s wild to imagine what a 1 in 500 year outbreak would look like on the other hand.

That, or just some of the absolutely insane outbreaks throughout history that have probably occurred over here. I wish there a scientifically proven method, like they do with hurricanes, to be able ascertain historical tornado events.
 
He shared this tweet as well:


Really interesting stuff for sure!


I asked him if he's thought about reviewing certain other tornadoes, notably Moshannon. I'd crowd fund one for Moshannon. That's my pet tornado. It should be mostly accessible too as it almost exclusively struck Pennsylvania state forest land. Hopefully PA DCNR would cooperate.
 
The one here I’m most interested to see is Jarrel. Is that because the transition from rope to wedge is actually two different tornadoes?
i made the highest quality survey , base on damage and video it seem to have been 2 tornadoes ... at the same time that merged , its just very hard to find the moments you see both but its out there.

i cant upload a single image right now for some reason as all it wants to do is say ERROR.

however i am currently doing a cullman survey with a other user and that one was also multiple tornadoes.

here is the cullman list we currently have.

Tornado 1: EF1 (center type)
Tornado 2: EF4+ (center type) the one that hit downtown
Tornado 3: EF0 (satellite south of Tornado 2) might be seen on video and seen in damage (if what the video shows isn't this tornado then a other undocumented tornado is not on this whole list)
Tornado 4: EF0 (satellite south of Tornado 2) both seen in damage and video and can be perfectly geolocated
Tornado 5: EF0+ (satellite north of Tornado 2) unsure if its seen on video or not but clearly seen on damage
Tornado 6: EF1 (satellite south of Tornado 2) clearly seen in damage , might be seen in video?
Tornado 7: EF0 (satellite south of Tornado 2) seen in damage and very visible in video
Tornado 8: EF0-EF2? (center type? south of Tornado 2) only seen in one video , clearly seen in damage its one of the most confusing one as Tornado 2 and Tornado 8 seem to merge into one wedge

and this is all the parts we are finish surveying everything after Tornado 8 is still pending but here is the for now extra ones we know of (note order will change)

Tornado 9: EF0 (satellite south of the merged Tornado 2) seen in damage we haven't found any videos for that spot.
Tornado 10 Pending: large stovepipe seen on video beside the wedge merged Tornado 2.
Tornado 11 Pending: large stovepipe beside Tornado 10 and merged Tornado 2 (for a few seconds 3 large tornadoes).
Tornado 12: EF0 (center type) Tornado 2 clearly has died and a new one has replaced it.

its to note tornadotalk does list the tornado as 2 tornadoes (Tornado 2 and Tornado 12) however what i am finding is more then just 2
 
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