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One completely forgotten tornado is the 12/13/1954 Jacksonville FL tornado. This strong but brief tornado touched down at the Craig Airport. Part of the 5" thick asphalt runway was scoured, a jeep was tossed 200 yards, the service administration building was destroyed, and a tied-down P-40 plane was thrown a half-mile with the 1500 lb propeller and gear section being carried 500 yards.
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I remember these scanned black and white photographs of an airport runway scoured of asphalt on one side, but they looked different than these. Locomusic01 posted some of the older thread before it went down, perhaps they were more from this tornado? Not sure.
 

TH2002

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Ivanovo damage pics from the Lunevo area
Note: Some cleanup has already taken place
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That was my impression as well, but the photos were apparently taken within the swath you can see in the poor quality Storm Data aerial:

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And both newspaper accounts and people who were there mentioned that grass, greasewood/mesquite shrubs, etc. was scoured out for up to a mile in some areas. I'm still not totally sure what to make of it. Even in loose, sandy sort of soil like that it seems hard to imagine that basically every vestige of plant life could be removed in an area stretching a number of miles in length and 1/2 - 1 mile in width.

Of course, it also seems hard to imagine that a tornado could do some of the other things we know the Bakersfield Valley tornado did, so..
Be really cool if you could find color photos of these, also be cool if you could get color photos of the scoured drainage culvert, oil tanks that were thrown 3 miles, adobe homes that were swept away and the piles of barbed wire and debris that this thing supposedly made (almost like tumbleweed).
 

Oakhurst_Wx

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Yeah, it's been quite a while since I've done any research on it but some of the accounts are pretty striking. IIRC it wasn't especially wide either (1/4 mi?), so I'd imagine it must have been moving very slowly to cause such high-end destruction & debris granulation.
Certainly don't think that it was a slow-moving tornado
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locomusic01

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I remember these scanned black and white photographs of an airport runway scoured of asphalt on one side, but they looked different than these. Locomusic01 posted some of the older thread before it went down, perhaps they were more from this tornado? Not sure.
Man, you've made me really curious now. I vaguely remember the photos but for the life of me I can't remember the tornado. Pretty sure it wasn't this one, though. This is gonna bug the hell out of me lol
 

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Another significant event that deserves more attention is the 8/6/1969 Northwoods Outbreak in Minnesota. The headliner here was the devastating Outing F4. Reaching nearly a mile wide at times, it killed 12 people, 11 of them in the Roosevelt Lake area.





































 

locomusic01

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Less well-known was the F3 that began near Floodwood, which reportedly reached up to 2.5 miles wide (probably more like a mile or so with surrounding downbursts) and caused damage that was very nearly as intense as Outing.





















The Boulder Lake F3, which killed two people, was also quite intense but not as monstrously wide.







There were several other large, intense tornadoes as well (particularly near Dark Lake and Backus), but they tracked mostly over unpopulated areas and didn't cause nearly as much damage.
 

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Do you have any photos from the long-tracked F4 in IA during the Palm Sunday outbreak?
A few, but most of them aren't very good.











At some point, I'd like to go back and revisit my Palm Sunday article and try to fill in the gaps on some of the tornadoes I wasn't able to find much on the first time around. The Tipton, IA F4 is near the top of the list, along with the Rockaway and Maplewood, OH F4s.
 

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Another tornado I've been meaning to dig into further eventually is the 4/17/1963 Kankakee, IL F4. Grazulis describes "near-F5" damage in some areas; I haven't had time to try and find that yet, but it's a personal favorite of mine just because the event featured some really stunning photos of the tornado itself.

Taken as it was passing through Bourbonnais:



And near Momence:



Taken from Kankakee High School:



Taken by a woman from her back porch near Bonfield:



And a whole sequence (taken ~1 min apart IIRC) from around the Bourbonnais area:



And some assorted damage shots:





These are from the area around Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, including "Trailerville" - a trailer park set up for married college students:









And these are from around the Gifford, IN area near the end of the track:

















 
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Man, you've made me really curious now. I vaguely remember the photos but for the life of me I can't remember the tornado. Pretty sure it wasn't this one, though. This is gonna bug the hell out of me lol
Yeah I think it was a different tornado; one half of the runway was completely scoured of asphalt, I've never seen anything like it before (well aside from Jarrell, I guess). Maybe I could dig through the Wayback Machine lol.
 

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Another Palm Sunday 1965 tornado that I’m curious about is the Allen County/Lima, OH F4. The descriptions of the damage from Grazulis and newspapers sounds very intense, with reports of “explosive” destruction of homes, with debris from obliterated houses scattered long distances through fields. Cars were also reportedly thrown and “ripped apart.” It remained in rural areas and only struck farms, but still killed 13 people.
 

locomusic01

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Another Palm Sunday 1965 tornado that I’m curious about is the Allen County/Lima, OH F4. The descriptions of the damage from Grazulis and newspapers sounds very intense, with reports of “explosive” destruction of homes, with debris from obliterated houses scattered long distances through fields. Cars were also reportedly thrown and “ripped apart.” It remained in rural areas and only struck farms, but still killed 13 people.
A few years ago a local discovered a "lost" 8mm home video shot around the Bluffton area, where most of the deaths occurred. It's really fantastic:



I think I've also got some photos - I'll check and post a bit later.
 

TH2002

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Another tornado I've been meaning to dig into further eventually is the 4/17/1963 Kankakee, IL F4. Grazulis describes "near-F5" damage in some areas; I haven't had time to try and find that yet, but it's a personal favorite of mine just because the event featured some really stunning photos of the tornado itself.

Taken as it was passing through Bourbonnais:



And near Momence:



Taken from Kankakee High School:



Taken by a woman from her back porch near Bonfield:



And a whole sequence (taken ~1 min apart IIRC) from around the Bourbonnais area:



And some assorted damage shots:





These are from the area around Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, including "Trailerville" - a trailer park set up for married college students:









And these are from around the Gifford, IN area near the end of the track:

















The main reason Kankakee interests me is because the tornado was filmed from multiple angles at multiple points throughout its life which wasn't all that common in 1963. At one point it had an appearance strikingly similar to Fridley '86:
 

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One underrated tornado of the 2000s is the 2007 Deland/Lake Mack FL EF3. Mobile homes were completely obliterated with frames being bent around trees, the lakeside was scoured, and trees were shredded/debarked. 13 people were killed by this tornado making it one of the deadliest tornadoes in FL history.
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Yeah there’s a presentation by Jim LaDue on YouTube where he insinuates that if this one happened today, he likely would have gone with EF4 based on the tree damage. There were hardwoods that were stripped of all limbs and most bark along the path!
 
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