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Significant Tornado Events

Lake Martin EF4 said:
1984 Carolinas outbreak?

Also didn't you say before that there were photos of the New Waterford tornado?
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I don't hate myself that much.

And I don't remember tbh, it might be one of the tornadoes where someone said they have pictures but they still haven't sent them. That's a pretty big list at this point. I debated waiting a little longer to see if anyone else came through, but I figured I can always go back and add anything else that comes in. I linked my email in the article so I'm hoping that also might bring in more stuff from people I haven't reached yet. Assuming there is anyone out there that I haven't already talked to lol
 
locomusic01 said:
I don't hate myself that much.

And I don't remember tbh, it might be one of the tornadoes where someone said they have pictures but they still haven't sent them. That's a pretty big list at this point. I debated waiting a little longer to see if anyone else came through, but I figured I can always go back and add anything else that comes in. I linked my email in the article so I'm hoping that also might bring in more stuff from people I haven't reached yet. Assuming there is anyone out there that I haven't already talked to lol
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Stuff like Carolinas 1984 TornadoTalk will likely turn into a massive article eventually.
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
Well, you could do smaller articles about poorly-documented Dixie events (like your 1884 Enigma one).
Also, don't you have another article on the various Tornado Alleys in this country that for some reason I can't find now? Lol.
Perhaps you could go back to the article and add some of the photos and videos you forgot to the first round.
Anyways, great job....the photos from Barrie and Grand Valley reveal that these things were even more violent then I previously thought.
Shame there isn't any photos of video of the Kane tornado itself but oh well.
Also, still waiting on Moshannon photos?
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Yeah, that's one of a handful of drafts I have in various stages of completion, mostly on the "not very" end.

I do plan on adding more stuff whenever I've got something worth including. The Moshannon woman hasn't come through yet, which is pretty much what I've come to expect unfortunately. I'm hoping the article might be able to shake some new stuff loose somewhere. I know there's a TON of stuff out there, it's just a matter of making the right connections.

Anyway, I think I'm probably gonna stick with something a lot more manageable in scope next. I've got a bunch of ideas but I haven't really thought about it seriously yet. I've very much learned my lesson about impulsively picking an event without thinking it through lol
 
locomusic01 said:
Yeah, that's one of a handful of drafts I have in various stages of completion, mostly on the "not very" end.

I do plan on adding more stuff whenever I've got something worth including. The Moshannon woman hasn't come through yet, which is pretty much what I've come to expect unfortunately. I'm hoping the article might be able to shake some new stuff loose somewhere. I know there's a TON of stuff out there, it's just a matter of making the right connections.

Anyway, I think I'm probably gonna stick with something a lot more manageable in scope next. I've got a bunch of ideas but I haven't really thought about it seriously yet. I've very much learned my lesson about impulsively picking an event without thinking it through lol
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It might be better to do older events where there's no one alive to remember anything so you don't have to go as many wild goose chases lol.
 
locomusic01 said:
I don't hate myself that much.

And I don't remember tbh, it might be one of the tornadoes where someone said they have pictures but they still haven't sent them. That's a pretty big list at this point. I debated waiting a little longer to see if anyone else came through, but I figured I can always go back and add anything else that comes in. I linked my email in the article so I'm hoping that also might bring in more stuff from people I haven't reached yet. Assuming there is anyone out there that I haven't already talked to lol
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Also yeah - I remembered you said Salem, Johnstown, Mesopotamia and some fourth one I couldn't remember had photos but turns out you actually said Saegertown. Johnstown, Mesopotamia and Beaver Falls had photos. Oops
 
locomusic01 said:
Yeah, I was actually debating between Grand Island and Blackwell-Udall before I decided to punish myself with 5/31/85. I've also thought about 6/8/66 Topeka, 4/10/79 Red River Valley, 6/13/76 Jordan and 6/12/1899 New Richmond (among a handful of others) as events that'd be manageable but still worth exploring.
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Also your Palm Sunday description has something interesting relating to Blackwell-Udall.
"I had seen newsreel footage of a killer tornado in Udall, Kansas when I was 16 and the way the clouds were moving made me feel really fearful that this storm was going to be similar."
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locomusic01 said:
Yeah, I was actually debating between Grand Island and Blackwell-Udall before I decided to punish myself with 5/31/85. I've also thought about 6/8/66 Topeka, 4/10/79 Red River Valley, 6/13/76 Jordan and 6/12/1899 New Richmond (among a handful of others) as events that'd be manageable but still worth exploring.
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Is Jordan really all that impressive though? I know it did some high-end damage to that hamlet but it doesn't appear to have been exceptional looking back. I know Fujita said it was among the most violent he ever surveyed but it was very early in his career.
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
It might be better to do older events where there's no one alive to remember anything so you don't have to go as many wild goose chases lol.
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I do occasionally find myself thinking, "This'd be a lot easier if everyone were dead." lol

It's actually pretty fun though, at least when it isn't completely infuriating. I got to know a bunch of the people who were impacted and it was cool being able to tell their stories instead of just working with whatever I could find in print.
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
Is Jordan really all that impressive though? I know it did some high-end damage to that hamlet but it doesn't appear to have been exceptional looking back. I know Fujita said it was among the most violent he ever surveyed but it was very early in his career.
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Depends on what you consider exceptional, I guess. Obviously wasn't historically large or deadly or long-tracked or whatever, and probably wasn't in the same class intensity-wise as some of the tornadoes I've covered. But it was very violent in its own right, and I think the event itself (insane instability, super weird track, cyclonic & anticyclonic satellites, etc.) is pretty damn interesting.

The fact that it's become so overlooked (maybe underrated?) is also kinda appealing. Same reason Topeka and Wichita Falls/Red River Valley appeal to me, although I'm not sure I'd call them overlooked, exactly.
 
locomusic01 said:
That reminds me, I really need to revisit Palm Sunday some day. I was pretty happy with it when I first wrote it, but it deserves something a lot more in-depth.
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Do you think you'll ever go back and revise your articles on Glazier-Higgins-Woodward and possibly other articles? It's amazing how much more info is now available then almost a decade ago on some tornado events.
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
Do you think you'll ever go back and revise your articles on Glazier-Higgins-Woodward and possibly other articles? It's amazing how much more info is now available then almost a decade ago on some tornado events.
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I'd like to, but I'd probably never get anything done if I kept trying to fix and improve stuff I wasn't happy with. Palm Sunday just sticks in my craw because I don't really feel like I did it justice. Actually I kinda feel that way about Joplin too, but I think it'd be way too easy to fall down the rabbit hole on that one.
 
locomusic01 said:
I'd like to, but I'd probably never get anything done if I kept trying to fix and improve stuff I wasn't happy with. Palm Sunday just sticks in my craw because I don't really feel like I did it justice. Actually I kinda feel that way about Joplin too, but I think it'd be way too easy to fall down the rabbit hole on that one.
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Joplin there's a ton of photographs out there now you could definitely add but yeah that might take longer than planned.
That said, revising old articles would definitely be easier than researching new ones lol.
 
I didn't know about the Iate evening Iowa-Wisconsin tornadoes the night before 5/31/85, but it doesn't surprise me given the setup. What's annoying (from a tornado geek/chaser perspective) about this year is I kind of anticipated something similar with the Southwestern drought creating a strong EML that spreads further east and north than usual, but this year it's actually so strong that it's causing cap busts here, as well.

It's actually pretty unusual to get a cyclic tornadic supercell that starts in Iowa and continues into Wisconsin. In the vast majority of cases, the Mississippi River seems to act like a brick wall for tornadic storms, with a sharp drop-off in instability as they cross into WI.
 
locomusic01 said:
Yeah, I was actually debating between Grand Island and Blackwell-Udall before I decided to punish myself with 5/31/85. I've also thought about 6/8/66 Topeka, 4/10/79 Red River Valley, 6/13/76 Jordan and 6/12/1899 New Richmond (among a handful of others) as events that'd be manageable but still worth exploring.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing about this stuff. I know it was a massive amount of work for you, but I (and others) enjoy it so much and greatly appreciate it. For weather nuts like us, it is very difficult to find enough stuff to read, and your articles are always exceptional. I look more forward to them than you know.

As for what to do next… Udall came to my mind immediately. I very much enjoyed your Woodward and Pomeroy articles and doing Udall would be very interesting IMO.

Grand Isle… I don’t know why but that just never caught my attention very much. I’m sure you would make it interesting, but the outbreak itself just isn’t something that I actively try to research. Really, about the only thing that interests me very much with that outbreak is the meteorological setup and why so many of them were anti-cyclonic tornadoes.

While I’m talking about that… I really enjoy the meteorological setup portion of your articles. That is one of my favorite parts of your writing. You can’t go into too much detail there for me. I would love for you to write about the setup on 4/3/1974. That was so complicated, you could probably just do the setup for an entire article, lol.

I do find the ‘74 outbreak fascinating but I realize it is so enormous that you’d likely never finish. Maybe an article about each F5? One write-up for each F5?

Anyway, that is some thoughts on what you might do next.
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
I'm wondering if it was something like what happened with Hesston and Goessel. That said, when tornadoes merge I don't think it makes an even bigger tornado; the smaller, weaker one just gets absorbed into the larger one.
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It seems to have been pretty Pilger-y, with two distinct tornadoes that traveled separate paths both before and after Gainesville and just happened to come together and "merge" right over the city. My guess is that they just passed through the same area in close enough proximity that it seemed like they'd merged into one, but I dunno how you could ever sort out precisely what happened at this point. The fact that they'd been immediately preceded by yet another, smaller tornado just yards to the north makes it even weirder.
 
locomusic01 said:
It seems to have been pretty Pilger-y, with two distinct tornadoes that traveled separate paths both before and after Gainesville and just happened to come together and "merge" right over the city. My guess is that they just passed through the same area in close enough proximity that it seemed like they'd merged into one, but I dunno how you could ever sort out precisely what happened at this point. The fact that they'd been immediately preceded by yet another, smaller tornado just yards to the north makes it even weirder.
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Yeah, I can’t imagine that they merged, then un-merged to just go their separate ways. I always figured that they crossed pretty close together time-wise and the story eventually morphed into something like the giant hybrid. But who knows? Maybe they did.
 
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