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Significant Tornado Events

Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
I can believe it with a cement truck that the drum would be in one piece but everything else would fall apart, given the way they're designed, plus the cylindrical shape of the drum will help the wind go around it, not a lot of surface area.
I know El Reno and Chickasha 2011 disintegrated multiple automobiles and I think Flint did too. Niles-Wheatland definitely did but unfortunately not a lot of pics of vehicle damage from it. Probably one of those things not a lot of people think to photograph.
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This also makes me wonder what sort of dynamics are going on inside the tornado to disintegrate a vehicle without much debris impacts going on. One example off the top of my head happened as the Greensburg tornado was just entering town and inflicting EF5 damage to a row of residences on the south side of the city. Two vehicles were lofted simultaneously by the tornado, one was on the west side of the tornado centerline, or “core” of the tornado, while the other was on the east side. The car on the west side of the centerline originated from a home that was rated EF5 and was a relatively small vehicle that was blown about 200 yards into a field but remained mostly intact:
52C52494-2B63-4A6D-A0CC-0940717324CF.jpeg
The other vehicle on the east side of the centerline was a pickup truck that originated from a home that sustained EF3 damage. However this truck went straight airborne and was thrown an entire mile completely disintegrating before landing in the living room of a house on the west side of the centerline, all that remained was a section of the frame and the cab while the remaining pieces were never found.
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Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
Sorry to retread but these other 2 pics of Jarrell do justice to the "battlefield" comparison:
View attachment 17840

View attachment 17841

Just, complete desolation. Unreal.
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Yeah, I wasn't exaggerating when I said it looks just like Passchendaele lol

hero-new-1700x591.jpg

pohnpei said:
The left side of first pic was likely remains of a vehicle? Things mangled so completely that hard to distinguish.
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TH2002 said:
Looks like a crumpled up mobile home frame to me. Could be wrong though.
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A bit of both. You can kinda see it in a few of the other photos and it looks like a section of trailer frame mixed with bits of puréed vehicles (like a bumper and part of an axle at least) along with some other assorted wreckage. But yeah, there really wasn't a lot left at all in many places, and the stuff that was there was essentially unrecognizable.
 
Ivanthetornadoenthusiast said:
View attachment 17852View attachment 17853
These are the damage photos from the Gedebage, Bandung (Indonesia) tornado of December 18, 2014. The damage may looked a lot worse but i think there may have been some structural flaws
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The first photo shows the Pudak Scientific building that had its third floor destroyed and almost loses all of its roof
The second photo shows a warehouse (Pt Bintang Agung Gedebage) that was destroyed
 
locomusic01 said:
This is why I desperately wish I could've found photos of the truck I mentioned from Tionesta. Based on Jack's description, it landed somewhere between three-quarters and eight-tenths of a mile from where he'd parked it, and considering the path between its start and end points was mostly very heavily forested, it seems pretty unlikely that it would've been able to roll or bounce to get there. Some of the intervening forest had been flattened of course, but a fair bit of it had been outside the tornado's path. And if it had sailed up and over the trees the whole way, it would've had to gain altitude pretty damn quickly.
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Yeah, Tionesta I think is another F5 candidate from that day, based on its forest damage and what it did to that truck. The more I read your article the more it becomes clear how violent that day was and how several tornadoes of that day were pretty underrated. Barrie for sure was an F5 (if briefly) and Tionesta, Kane, and probably Moshannon reached F5 intensity at some points although Moshannon I understand being F4 since it didn't hit much more than trees.
And while I'm at it Beaver Falls and Saegertown were F4s, easily.
 
buckeye05 said:
Regardless if it’s concrete or not, it’s absolutely not two properties. It’s honestly baffling how much thought and analysis (or attempted analysis, rather) that you put into your posts, yet still arrive at completely incorrect, off-base conclusions more often than not. Damage photo analysis just isn’t your forte, and I’m not trying to be mean or anything.
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@buckeye05 You are correct, it is the same property. However, my principal argument still stands: isn’t the foundation made of concrete? Is there a way to tell?

Smithville-2.jpg
 
Western_KS_Wx said:
This also makes me wonder what sort of dynamics are going on inside the tornado to disintegrate a vehicle without much debris impacts going on. One example off the top of my head happened as the Greensburg tornado was just entering town and inflicting EF5 damage to a row of residences on the south side of the city. Two vehicles were lofted simultaneously by the tornado, one was on the west side of the tornado centerline, or “core” of the tornado, while the other was on the east side. The car on the west side of the centerline originated from a home that was rated EF5 and was a relatively small vehicle that was blown about 200 yards into a field but remained mostly intact:
View attachment 17843
The other vehicle on the east side of the centerline was a pickup truck that originated from a home that sustained EF3 damage. However this truck went straight airborne and was thrown an entire mile completely disintegrating before landing in the living room of a house on the west side of the centerline, all that remained was a section of the frame and the cab while the remaining pieces were never found.
View attachment 17844View attachment 17845
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My guess is the disintegrated vehicle was struck by subvortex that centrifuged/lofted it higher and subjected it to more extreme winds than the mostly intact vehicle that was hit by probably no more then EF3 winds.
Also, with tornadoes the right side is typically the strongest so more extreme damage usually happens there. I suppose the second vehicle was sucked into that side?
 
Casuarina Head said:
@buckeye05 You are correct, it is the same property. However, my principal argument still stands: isn’t the foundation made of concrete? Is there a way to tell?

Smithville-2.jpg
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The more I look at that photo, the more I'm convinced it's not concrete because:
  • There's empty space visible underneath the subfloor (particularly on the left), indicating it is sitting on top of a foundation rather than directly on the ground;
  • It looks too 'bent' to be concrete; I assume if it was concrete, the chunk would have broken off completely before it bent that far upwards.
Again, I could be wrong. Still a pretty impressive feat of damage nonetheless. Speaking of Smithville and subfloors, one at another residence was darn near bent up at a 90-degree angle:
Smithville-EF5-home-subflooring.JPG
 
Officially, the Rainsville tornado caused no EF5 damage past County Road 112 near Sylvania, although the 2011 aerial imagery reveals some pretty incredible damage just west of Sulphur Springs in the Henagar area. I personally believe the tornado may have attained a second peak in intensity here, albeit briefly.
Sulplur-springs-damage-home.jpg
Sulphur-springs-damage.jpg
The first area I believe EF5 damage may have occurred in was along County Road 739. Multiple homes, two chicken houses and one business were destroyed here. One newly built home in particular was swept away, killing the two occupants (the home was not there in the 2008 street view imagery, and a memorial to the victims is all that remained on the site in the 2014 imagery). Two or three other homes were also destroyed on the north side of the road, but their degrees of damage are unknown due to there being no aerial imagery of that side.

Sulplur-springs-damage-homes.png.
The second area of possible EF5 damage occurred at the Sulphur Springs Gap, at the intersection of County Roads 739 and 140. Three more relatively new homes (built in 2006-2007 per satellite imagery) were swept away, and there was little debris left behind from at least one of them, though they were on block foundations. (One of the homes is not visible due to, again, the aerial imagery being cut off.)

On a somewhat unrelated note, the owners of one of the destroyed homes in the third image did not reuse the old foundation for the new house, but built the block foundation back up anyway, and it remains in their front yard today. Does anyone know why they would do this?
 
One particular place that I believe Rainsville reached EF5 intensity was the place after lingerfelt1608 road.
Apparently very intense souring and wind rowing occurred. Treefall pattern was highly symmetric which also indicative of extreme intensity.
230927_226155677399749_2651969_n(1).jpgZ_T$}G%~DB@0VW`I]7J1$J1(1).png
One house lower center of the second pic was obliterated in the right section of tornado's ciruculation
Enlarge it
SAVE_20230217_113539.jpg
You could tell from the red and black car near the house to know which house it was.
And I think these two photos were once posted in the thread.
228325_10150188381838433_1117345_n(1).jpgQQ图片20210321195854(1).jpg
Large harwood trees completely debarked here which was also the strongest tree damage along its path.
Vehicles tossed long distance into forest and mangled in this place as well.
215887_10150188388968433_6912487_n(1).jpg227088_10150188389788433_4958804_n(1).jpg
 
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Austin Dawg said:
If I knew what exact property it was I might know or could possibly get some Information.
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Does anyone remember the name of the family who owned that property? I knew at one time, but its slipped my mind. Also, I know it was located along the north side of MS 25 right before the tornado entered town. I believe it was right before Barrs Ferry Road, and I think you can see the vacant lot still visible on Google Maps.

In any case, I don't think the whole thing was a subfloor, based on the other photos and the Tornado Talk article, but it is possible that the one section that was uplifted was. It's really hard to tell, and getting some solid confirmation either way would answer a lot of questions.
 
buckeye05 said:
Does anyone remember the name of the family who owned that property? I knew at one time, but its slipped my mind. Also, I know it was located along the north side of MS 25 right before the tornado entered town. I believe it was right before Barrs Ferry Road, and I think you can see the vacant lot still visible on Google Maps.

In any case, I don't think the whole thing was a subfloor, based on the other photos and the Tornado Talk article, but it is possible that the one section that was uplifted was. It's really hard to tell, and getting some solid confirmation either way would answer a lot of questions.
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It was the Cox family, I believe.
I'm reading the TornadoTalk summary finally and the more I read it the more impressed I am with Smithville. It actually managed to slightly deform the railroad tracks in town; considering its forward is extremely impressive. It also managed to throw a bowling ball far enough and with such force that it actually was cracked upon impact.
The article does say that the slab was dislodged and slightly deformed although that's clearly not the same thing as an entire foundation being lifted, like a certain poster seems to think.
 
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Yup it was the Cox family residence. Good memory on your part. I do recall reading on the Tornado Talk article that they say it did indeed deform the foundation, which they say was concrete. If they are truly thorough with their research, I'm inclined to believe them. I just would want to hear from an independent source that it was for sure a concrete slab foundation to be 100% confident in that.
 
buckeye05 said:
Yup it was the Cox family residence. Good memory on your part. I do recall reading on the Tornado Talk article that they say it did indeed deform the foundation, which they say was concrete. If they are truly thorough with their research, I'm inclined to believe them. I just would want to hear from an independent source that it was for sure a concrete slab foundation to be 100% confident in that.
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Same. I'm trying to find info about it through NWS/NOAA but it looks like did away with lots of their damage photographs and have made finding info on it much more difficult.
 
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