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Some impressive tree damage made by Roanoke F4 in 2004. So trees in this area certainly can be heavily debarked if the tornado was violent enough.
View attachment 3781View attachment 3782View attachment 3783
I sometimes wonder if it's a tree species thing....perhaps the ones that are most common in that region of the country have features that make them less prone to debarking? Be interesting to get a forestry expert in here.
 
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That sounds right.

I wish sellerphoto hadn’t taken down their interactive map with the photos. Many photos are still up on the site, but many are missing. There was also an excellent high res aerial video on YouTube from Hackleburg to Athens, but it is gone as well. The damage in Moulton isn’t talked about as much, but from the air it was just as severe as Hackleburg. The ground was just blasted white.
Any place I could find damage pics from Moulton? The Hazel Green portion of its path didn't get as much coverage either.
 
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Hi everybody. First-time poster, long-time lurker. Started reading sometime after 4/27 and sometime before the original site/archives were taken down. This thread(and the original as well) is one of my favorite places on the internet and has some amazing contributors(JBK, pohnpei, buckeye, Shakespeare2016, etc). But anyways on to the tornadoes.

One tornado I've always felt deserved more recognition, even though it was officially rated F5, is the tornado that struck the west side of Chandler, MN on June 16, 1992.

June 16 was the climax of a four day severe weather event that primarily affected the central plains into the northern plains. June 15 qualifies on its own as a significant tornado day with two F4's and two F3's in central KS and another two F3's in eastern NE. For the most part, these tornadoes were very short track, perhaps owing to relatively weak mid-level flow, but apparently violent. According to this Stormtrack thread(https://stormtrack.org/community/threads/1992-06-15-nc-kansas-outbreak.17605/) an outflow boundary from a remnant MCS that morning was responsible for a very prolific tornado producing supercell in central KS. It's virtually impossible to find damage pictures from the 15th, although there is some chase footage from KS on that day that can be found on youtube. The 17th(the 2nd high risk of the sequence after the 16th) also featured a mid-morning/early afternoon F3 just south of Madison, WI and a F2 south of Clifton, IL but paled compared to the two days prior.

The 16th featured a strong 300mb jet coming in from the WSW at a magnitude 60-80 kts near Chandler and peak magnitude of 110-130 kts over the Rocky mountains. A broad, neutral tilt trough was centered over the MT, SD, ND border regions and an attendant 500mb jet of 50-70 kts was approaching from the SW(over Nebraska) to SSW(near chandler). 850mb winds were backed from SSE to SE(near chandler and adjacent areas of SD) at a magnitude of 30-40 kts during tornado formation. The soundings from that day are very impressive over a wide area and frankly remind me a little bit of the 19z OAX sounding from the day of the Pilger tornado. From OVN:
View attachment 3775

Anyway, the 16th was prolific to say the least. There were 12 F3+ tornadoes across SD, IA, and MN. Two violent tornadoes touched down in Minnesota apparently produced by the same supercell. The Chandler, MN tornado was the first produced by this supercell and it began in NE Nobles county and ended 16 miles later one county to the north in eastern Murray county. Most of the photographed damage comes from Chandler proper. And while the center of town did experience substantial damage, most of it appears to be in the F2 to F3 range. The violent core of the tornado passed to the west of the city and impacted more rural and less densely populated areas. Grazulis tagged this tornado with his maxi-tornado designation due to the damage in this area I believe. I wish there were better documentation of this part of the damage path and I think this lack of documentation is the main reason why this tornado isn't held in higher regard by us tornado nerds. Anyways , a few pictures that seem to have been taken from the worst affected areas of Chandler:
Classic F5, vehicles stripped down to the frame, some ground scouring, debarked trees, and a house taken off its foundation
View attachment 3776
Note the debarked trees way in the back. This tornado had a wide swath of violent damage
View attachment 3777
Pretty extreme debris granulation
View attachment 3778
If there are any formatting issues in this post feel free to correct me. Also, I'm not a met and my analysis is culled from the SPC violent tornado page. This link is the source for two of the above pictures and features some rare photos I hadn't seen anywhere else:https://www.mnopedia.org/event/chandler-lake-wilson-tornado-1992
I posted about this event previously: https://talkweather.com/threads/significant-tornado-events.1276/page-25#post-46020.
Honestly, I'm not sure about it. To me Chandler was marginal F5 at best. It only killed one person, and that swept away house with the car stripped to the frame in the photograph is where the single fatality occurred. It does seem to have left some scouring on the hills in the background, but it could possibly be previously plowed farmland. It may have achieved F5 intensity, but only briefly over a specific area while it was in and around Chandler. Not sure what to fully think about this tornado.
 
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I also haven't seen much from the path in Tennessee.
So from your quote about Moulton it seems like some severe ground scouring took place; that's interesting to me as the only ground scouring I've seen from Hackleburg is on hillsides for the most part. Also, I think the exact endpoint of it in TN is a bit uncertain, with random spurts of tree damage in ridges near mountains that abruptly stops. I do wonder if there is video footage of the tornado in TN, be interesting to watch the storm in its waning moments.
 
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I posted about this event previously: https://talkweather.com/threads/significant-tornado-events.1276/page-25#post-46020.
Honestly, I'm not sure about it. To me Chandler was marginal F5 at best. It only killed one person, and that swept away house with the car stripped to the frame in the photograph is where the single fatality occurred. It does seem to have left some scouring on the hills in the background, but it could possibly be previously plowed farmland. It may have achieved F5 intensity, but only briefly over a specific area while it was in and around Chandler. Not sure what to fully think about this tornado.
Yeah, there isn't much in the way of hard evidence to suggest that Chandler was more intense than some of the other marginal F5's around that time(except maybe Birmingham 1998.) More of a personal hunch based on the crazy environment that day, the fact that it was a slow-moving wedge beast, and a suspicion that it may have been occluding right as it reached Chandler and thus peaked in the largely unpopulated area between Leota and Chandler. There were also some unverified rumors of extreme vegetation damage in the hills of Buffalo ridge, south and west of Chandler, where that very impressive footage posted by DDM was taken. But yeah, I'm mostly speculating that it might have been a bit more intense than the other relatively recent high end violent tornadoes(Parkersburg excluded) in the Upper Midwest. Barnveld 1984 or Oakfield 1996, for instance.
 
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Speaking of Oakfield 1996, it left some pretty impressive damage as well.
oakfield_eastoftown_carF5.jpg
A steel framed canning factory was virtually leveled as it entered town
66867281_911412092540786_1788786422027649024_o.jpg
66991278_911411979207464_4126179028342145024_o.jpg
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Area east of town where the F5 damage was recorded
oakfield_eastoftown_house2F5.jpg
I tend to think it would be a high-end EF4 if it happened today
https://www.facebook.com/OakfieldWIHistory/media_set/?set=a.911410722540923- pretty much the most comprehensive set of pictures I can find of the damage in town and the source of last three pictures.
 
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Supposedly an image of the Tri-State Tornado.
download (1).jpeg
No information on location that I could find, but it does seem to match some of the historical descriptions of the tornado. I found this image on the Missouri Digital Heritage website which is a neat resource
http://mdh.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16795coll5
Original source of the image appears to be this blog post from WDRB(Louisville, KY) meteorologist Jeremy Kappell
Edit: Alas, it turns out that it's just a heavily doctored image of the 1979 Wichita Falls tornado :(. Quite the bummer.
 
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If this is genuine, that is remarkable. I’m usually pretty skeptical of a lot of “historic” tornado pics because some of them are fakes, but I have to say I have never seen this photo before or anything similar to it.
 
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Supposedly an image of the Tri-State Tornado
View attachment 3802
No information on location that I could find, but it does seem to match some of the historical descriptions of the tornado. I found this image on the Missouri Digital Heritage website which is a neat resource
http://mdh.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16795coll5
Original source of the image appears to be this blog post from WDRB(Louisville, KY) meteorologist Jeremy Kappell
Almost certain that's a doctored image of the Wichita Falls tornado of 1979. Shame, really.

Wichita.jpg
 

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Despite only being rated 140mph, the EF3 tornado on April 29 2017 Canton TX very likely had higher potential if it hit something well constructed at its peak due to the violent visual appearance and entensive tree damage and grass souring like pictures belowed. Also there were cars threw half miles by this tornado.
QQ截图20200123211026.jpg
QQ截图20200619180508.jpg


the aerial damage footage of this tornado:


142357j9rok96kr46u7zzb.jpg
QQ截图20200125005258.jpg
QQ截图20200619181940.jpg
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Despite only being rated 140mph, the EF3 tornado on April 29 2017 Canton TX very likely had higher potential if it hit something well constructed at its peak due to the violent visual appearance and entensive tree damage and grass souring like pictures belowed. Also there were cars threw half miles by this tornado.
View attachment 3805
View attachment 3806


the aerial damage shoto of this tornado:


View attachment 3804
View attachment 3807
View attachment 3808

I thought this tornado was rated EF4 with winds of 180 mph.
 

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Ok, I couldn't remember.
The path of the two tornados were quite close, some damage certainly can be confusing about which one should it belong to. The damage of Eustace EF4 tornado, to some extent, was overshadowed by Canton EF3 tornado. I can only find one aerial damage shot was from the EF4 tornado for sure and it was right before the tornado made the 180mph EF4 dmaage.


But I am very sure that the tree damage, vehicle damage and the house damage I posted before was from the EF3 one.
 

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Given the rarity of personal cameras in the 1920s and the fact that the Tri-State Tornado mostly hit smaller towns and rural farms, I kind of doubt any photos were taken of it. Especially given that the descriptions of it make it sound like it was a very low LCL storm and it may have been rain-wrapped or hard to see for much of its lifespan. This is roughly the time period I work on as a historian (although not on the US), so I have plenty of experience not being able to find pictures of things from that era...
 
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Given the rarity of personal cameras in the 1920s and the fact that the Tri-State Tornado mostly hit smaller towns and rural farms, I kind of doubt any photos were taken of it. Especially given that the descriptions of it make it sound like it was a very low LCL storm and it may have been rain-wrapped or hard to see for much of its lifespan. This is roughly the time period I work on as a historian (although not on the US), so I have plenty of experience not being able to find pictures of things from that era...
The rapid forward speed of the thing (up to 73 mph) at times would also have made photography difficult. In terms of physical appearances Hackleburg is by far our closest modern example to what Tri-State may have been like in size, intensity, and appearance. Especially in this video below:



This vid of Tuscaloosa when it reached Birmingham and changed its appearance also likely similar to the Tri-State's appearance:



Perhaps there's some photographs from the era that are labeled as 'storm clouds' but are actually the tornado but due to it being LCL the photographer didn't recognize that he was actually looking at a tornado. Wouldn't surprise me if there's some photographs like that laying around in someone's attic or the basement of a government archives building and they've been all that forgotten. Who knows....

Also, check out this map of Southern Illinois tornado history. Several tornadoes have gone through this area with very similar paths to the Tri-State Tornado.tristate.jpg
 
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