Oakhurst_Wx
Member
I was wondering where you found these?Pretty excited that I finally found a couple of photos from the Salix, IA F4 the day before New Richmond. The quality is terrible, but I don't care. I didn't really expect to find anything at all. They're from a series of shots taken by the head of the Sioux City weather office, so I'm hoping the originals (or at least decent-quality reproductions) are still out there somewhere.
Anyway, this is the Malloy home just southeast of Salix, or what little was left of it. Parts of the house (described as a "fine new home") were carried up to a mile and five of the seven family members were killed; two of them were thrown nearly half a mile.
This is a neighbor's home a few hundred yards away - it, too, was a large house that had been built fairly recently. Witnesses described seeing the whole structure lift high up into the air before breaking apart and "scattering to the four winds." Thankfully the family had made it to their storm cellar and were unhurt.
From various descriptions of the path, it sounds like this tornado produced some pretty high-end debarking + ground scouring. It was only around 300 yards wide (probably more like 50-100 yards if you're talking about the swath of intense damage) but it moved quite slowly and was widely visible as it crossed the Missouri River and approached the south side of town. It was described as moving "only as fast as a man can walk," although it probably wasn't that slow. I'm reasonably confident this was part of a family of at least three tornadoes, but the others mostly destroyed barns and silos and whatnot.