There's some incredible helicopter video from that tornado, likely lost in a news studio somewhere. I saw it on an old late 90s/early 2000s clip show called Real TV. The footage was almost Fridley, MN like, and I wish I could find the full version of it. There is a quick clip from the aforementioned footage at 2:05 in the video below, however. Also, the 1988 Denver F3 produced some pretty impressive vehicle damage. Check out the mangled car at 3:05!
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Significant Tornado Events
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locomusic01
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If it's the same video I'm thinking of, I'm pretty sure it was shot by KMGH-TV/Channel 7. News stations tend to be notoriously stingy when it comes to tornado videos, though.
MNTornadoGuy
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Doesn’t Grazulis list this tornado as an F2 in his book.
MNTornadoGuy
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Also there was this F2 landspout in Canada that produced high-end F2 damage when it destroyed a home. A reportedly well-built bungalow lost its roof and some exterior walls with debris being scattered for hundreds of yards.
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He does but he also lists the 1993 Utah tornado (which caused tree damage comparable to Teton-Yellowstone) as an F1. He's the best of the best IMO but like anyone else has made some mistakes. Granted when he has lowballed tornadoes it can probably be attributed to Grazulis not having the tools we have at our disposal now when Significant Tornadoes was first published.
Juliett Bravo Kilo
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Does anyone have any damage photos of the 8/11/11 Wood Lake NE tornado? Apparently it took the survey team FOUR MONTHS to assign a rating and when they finally did they went with 140MPH EF3. Not sure if such a tornado can shred and debark trees and toss a steel culvert 0.75 miles from where it originated but that's just me. Guess the survey team either didn't bother to take any photos or didn't bother to post them anywhere easily accessible.
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MNTornadoGuy
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It didn't hit any structures so EF3 is the highest they could go.
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Pretty sure tree damage can go up to 167MPH EF4 (should be able to go higher IMO but that's besides the point). Of course I don't know the exact nature of the tree damage because we don't have any damage photos and "debarked" can mean anything from slight debarking to completely shredded down to a stump. Regardless, the fact that it took the survey team FOUR MONTHS to assign a rating, and the fact that it's virually impossible to find damage photos for a tornado that occurred a mere decade ago is honestly inexcusable.
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Tree damage can be rated EF4, and doing so is a little more accepted these days. The problem is the lack of photos, and the fact that many WFO survey teams are not on the same page about what degree of tree damage is associated with certain intensity levels. I’ve seen some offices assign EF3 ratings to trees that have been “stubbed” but show no actual removal of bark (Cantrell, IA 2019). Then you have teams that assign EF2 ratings to heavily debarked trees (which thankfully is less prevelant these days, and I can’t think of an example ).
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Do you think tree damage should be able to be rated EF5?
So this here is video of the only tornado that I know of that caused a fatality in New York City. It was an EF1 that occurred on September 16, 2010 and was embedded within a destructive macroburst. The death was from a tree falling on a car. It was also part of a small outbreak that produced a few strong tornadoes in Ohio, including an EF3 that caused major damage in Reedsville, OH and Belleville, WV. I do wonder if that particular tornado should have been rated higher than mid-range EF3, as one brick ranch style home in Belleville was swept away, with one occupant being fatally thrown 200 yards away into a field.
Reedsville, OH/Belleville, WV tornado. The last photo is of the house where the fatality occurred:
Reedsville, OH/Belleville, WV tornado. The last photo is of the house where the fatality occurred:
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So this here is video of the only tornado that I know of that caused a fatality in New York City. It was an EF1 that occurred on September 16, 2010 and was embedded within a destructive macroburst. The death was from a tree falling on a car. It was also part of a small outbreak that produced a few strong tornadoes in Ohio, including an EF3 that caused major damage in Reedsville, OH and Belleville, WV. I do wonder if that particular tornado should have been rated higher than mid-range EF3, as one brick ranch style home in Belleville was swept away, with one occupant being fatally thrown 200 yards away into a field.
Reedsville, OH/Belleville, WV tornado. The last photo is of the house where the fatality occurred:
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That outbreak is mostly known for and almost all of the media attention went to the EF0 Park Slope tornado. The EF1 Flushing tornado, EF3 Reedsville tornado and the others got and still get basically no attention.
Juliett Bravo Kilo
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Also when you're documenting 10,000+ tornadoes you're bound to let some mistakes slip through, given the sheer scope of your project.
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So I've been working on the Niles, OH section of my article and today I got a chance to talk to a guy who worked with the fire department to survey and map the damage. He was one of the first people in after the initial search & rescue so he was able to document it before much cleanup occurred. He took hundreds of photos all across Niles, but especially in the hardest-hit areas, so I'm really hoping he's able to find them.
In the meantime, he was also able to point out two details in other photos that I'd originally missed. I knew a semi-trailer had been picked up and thrown into the wreckage of Autumn Hills Nursing Home just behind the plaza (traveling somewhere between 200-300 yards depending on exactly where it originated) but I have no idea how I missed it in the photos. You can see it left of the front-end loader and just above the only remaining section of roof:
In this photo I highlighted a shiny object in the field east of Stillwagon Rd. It doesn't look like much, but according to him it's a vehicle that was originally parked all the way on the other side of the street. It was thrown roughly a quarter-mile and he said basically everything in front of the firewall was torn off and scattered in pieces hundreds of yards further through the woods.
In the meantime, he was also able to point out two details in other photos that I'd originally missed. I knew a semi-trailer had been picked up and thrown into the wreckage of Autumn Hills Nursing Home just behind the plaza (traveling somewhere between 200-300 yards depending on exactly where it originated) but I have no idea how I missed it in the photos. You can see it left of the front-end loader and just above the only remaining section of roof:
In this photo I highlighted a shiny object in the field east of Stillwagon Rd. It doesn't look like much, but according to him it's a vehicle that was originally parked all the way on the other side of the street. It was thrown roughly a quarter-mile and he said basically everything in front of the firewall was torn off and scattered in pieces hundreds of yards further through the woods.
Juliett Bravo Kilo
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Amazing how you really have to look for clues for extreme damage feats like this, shows the importance of having experienced surveyors when it come to tornado rankings.So I've been working on the Niles, OH section of my article and today I got a chance to talk to a guy who worked with the fire department to survey and map the damage. He was one of the first people in after the initial search & rescue so he was able to document it before much cleanup occurred. He took hundreds of photos all across Niles, but especially in the hardest-hit areas, so I'm really hoping he's able to find them.
In the meantime, he was also able to point out two details in other photos that I'd originally missed. I knew a semi-trailer had been picked up and thrown into the wreckage of Autumn Hills Nursing Home just behind the plaza (traveling somewhere between 200-300 yards depending on exactly where it originated) but I have no idea how I missed it in the photos. You can see it left of the front-end loader and just above the only remaining section of roof:
In this photo I highlighted a shiny object in the field east of Stillwagon Rd. It doesn't look like much, but according to him it's a vehicle that was originally parked all the way on the other side of the street. It was thrown roughly a quarter-mile and he said basically everything in front of the firewall was torn off and scattered in pieces hundreds of yards further through the woods.
Also, I found some photos of extreme vehicle damage from Niles-Wheatland that I'll post below, as it's amazingly hard to find automobile damage from this tornado (or most from this outbreak). It's aerials of the Niles Park Shopping Plaza area, in the left below photo you'll see a car with what appears to be missing it's entire front half.
Source: https://extremeplanet.wordpress.com...he-strongest-tornadoes-ever-recorded-part-iv/
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Not sure if this photo has been posted here before, but it's from Hackleburg and shows some debarked low lying shrubs. Tree and shrub damage generally wasn't Hackleburg's strong point, but the photo is pretty impressive:
Juliett Bravo Kilo
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Not sure if this photo has been posted here before, but it's from Hackleburg and shows some debarked low lying shrubs. Tree and shrub damage generally wasn't Hackleburg's strong point, but the photo is pretty impressive:
Hackleburg did a lot more violent tree damage then people give it credit for.
These 2 photo show an entire line of trees virtually gone in the center of the path:
Three images of extreme damage in Hackleburg. At top left, a view of large trees that were completely debarked near the Wrangler Factory. At top right, a vehicle that was rendered unrecognizable in the vicinity of Clay Street; note the debarked and denuded trees it's located in. At bottom, the tornado was powerful enough to rip concrete from the ground. Bottom pic is just concrete ripped from a foundation (I think) but part of the image so I left it.
Source:
Examining the Phil Campbell Tornado – The Ultimate EF5
□ During the April 2011 Super Outbreak, one of the most impressive tornadic events in recorded history swept through six counties in northern Alabama. The massive and often invisible EF5 tornado le…
extremeplanet.wordpress.com