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Significant Tornado Events

TH2002 said:
Not sure if these have been posted, but here are a few vehicles from Bridge Creek:



And speaking of vehicle damage, what the heck happened here?! Apparently this engine block came from an SUV parked at the candle factory in Mayfield. Any photos of the vehicle this came from?
View attachment 18860

A few more from around the candle factory:
UY5FPWXYLFGL3DEGHFZRIXPPUA.jpg

TornadoSat-factory.jpg

1639530082494.jpg
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It is the red car.
 
TH2002 said:
Not sure if these have been posted, but here are a few vehicles from Bridge Creek:



And speaking of vehicle damage, what the heck happened here?! Apparently this engine block came from an SUV parked at the candle factory in Mayfield. Any photos of the vehicle this came from?
View attachment 18860

A few more from around the candle factory:
UY5FPWXYLFGL3DEGHFZRIXPPUA.jpg

TornadoSat-factory.jpg

1639530082494.jpg
Click to expand...

Wow, that vehicle and factory damage from Mayfield reminds me a lot of the Wrangler plant at Hackleburg in 2011; also, looks like quite a bit of grass/ground scouring happened around here. This thing should've been rated EF5.
 
MNTornadoGuy said:
It is the red car.
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More vehicular carnage, this time from the Jonesboro tornado (2020). This was a UPS truck at one point.
locomusic01 said:
By the way, speaking of vehicular destruction, what the hell happened here?! I was aware of the 3/28/2020 Jonesboro EF3 but I haven't really kept up that well with more recent events, so this flew under my radar.

ovGTU6O.jpg
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Jonesboro was weird. It caused EF2-EF3 structural damage, but apparently caused multiple instances of EF4+ vehicle damage.
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
Wow, that vehicle and factory damage from Mayfield reminds me a lot of the Wrangler plant at Hackleburg in 2011; also, looks like quite a bit of grass/ground scouring happened around here. This thing should've been rated EF5.
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Not sure if the candle factory itself was well built enough to warrant an EF5 rating (again, a problem with the scale) but the contextual and vehicle damage in Mayfield is worse than I thought and points to EF5 intensity IMO.

Another tidbit - the Wrangler plant in Hackleburg is rated EF4 on the DAT for some reason...
 
Juliett Bravo Kilo said:
47 mph is pretty fast for a tornado that far north; usually the fast movers are down south.
Since we're on the topic of New Richmond I just have to share this panorama view that I've no doubt has been posted on here but it really shows the scale of the disaster. Keep in mind that this picture was taken a couple days later when some cleanup had likely occurred. That said, the left half of the photo is about as complete a wipe out as you can get; all the more impressive that this occurred in the last couple miles of the tornado's path; perhaps the narrowing of the funnel when it was going through the city likely accelerated the wind speeds somewhat?

View attachment 18828
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The right side of the photo is actually worse than it looks, too. The few buildings that appear to have been left standing are actually temporary structures erected after the tornado. In reality, everything was just completely obliterated. The area to the right of the train tracks in the middle distance here had been a neighborhood with some of New Richmond's largest and fanciest houses. Immediately to the left of the tracks had been a train station, two hotels, a couple of brick businesses and several more large homes. And of course lots of mature hardwood trees shading every street.

All of it was just.. gone. Basically the only things of note that stood after the tornado were the two bank vaults, and even those had been battered pretty badly and the door of one of them had nearly been ripped off.

zFLaUVW.png
 
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locomusic01 said:
The right side of the photo is actually worse than it looks, too. The few buildings that appear to have been left standing are actually temporary structures erected after the tornado. In reality, everything was just completely obliterated. The area to the right of the train tracks in the middle distance here had been a neighborhood with some of New Richmond's largest and fanciest houses. Immediately to the left of the tracks had been a train station, two hotels, a couple of brick businesses and several more large homes. And of course lots of mature hardwood trees shading every street.

All of it was just.. gone. Basically the only things of note that stood after the tornado were the two bank vaults, and even those had been battered pretty badly and the door of one of them had nearly been ripped off.

zFLaUVW.png
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It's rare to have a total wipeout like this from a fast mover; the only thing that really is comparable is Smithville and that thing was moving even faster. Crazy.
 
Speaking of the forward speed, you'd normally expect such a quick-moving tornado to have a rather asymmetrical damage path with the most intense destruction on the south side of the core. That may have been true to some extent here, but the difference isn't very pronounced at all. In fact, I've found an unusual number of accounts of people (and sometimes entire houses) being violently thrown westward on the north side of the path. I may be reading too much into it, but that seems to suggest to me that the tornado's rotation was incredibly intense irrespective of the translation speed.
 
buckeye05 said:
I see CMU in some of those, but I do recall that a few poured concrete foundation homes lost their subfloors as well though. Honestly, I’m in the “high-end EF4 is acceptable” camp for Washington 2013, mainly due to a lack of truly extreme contextual damage. The wind rowing was very impressive, but in terms of debarking, scouring, and vehicle damage, it seems a step below the others if you’re comparing it to confirmed EF5s like Parkersburg.

I guess I’m looking for that distinct, classic muddy EF5 aftermath, with everything completely shredded, trees with essentially no bark left, grass scouring, and vehicles left completely unrecognizable or torn apart. Also, most EF5s have that one bizarrely intense instance of damage that really stands out, like what Parkersburg did to that basement wall, and I don’t recall anything like that in Washington. Now every single one of those things doesn’t have to be present obviously, but besides the wind rowing, I don’t see anything quite of that caliber contextual damage wise. But that’s just imo, if I see some photos that show differently, I’ll gladly change my mind.
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To me, parts of Bremen in 2021 had that “look” to them. The construction of the homes was unfortunately not as good as it could have been, but these photos leave little doubt that something rare and very intense happened here.
 

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CLP80 said:
To me, parts of Bremen in 2021 had that “look” to them. The construction of the homes was unfortunately not as good as it could have been, but these photos leave little doubt that something rare and very intense happened here.
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I strongly believe that the tornado reached it's absolute peak in Bremen. This area definitely had the look. I really think if there had been at least one anchored, poured slab or basement foundation home in this area, an EF5 rating would have been necessary. There's no doubt in my mind that this tornado contained EF5 winds.
 
TH2002 said:
Not sure if these have been posted, but here are a few vehicles from Bridge Creek:



And speaking of vehicle damage, what the heck happened here?! Apparently this engine block came from an SUV parked at the candle factory in Mayfield. Any photos of the vehicle this came from?
View attachment 18860

A few more from around the candle factory:
UY5FPWXYLFGL3DEGHFZRIXPPUA.jpg

TornadoSat-factory.jpg

1639530082494.jpg
Click to expand...

Every time I think about the Mayfield tornado, I have less and less respect for the NWS as a whole. The only reason why they would consciously try to underrate tornadoes were only be because they value money over science.
 
locomusic01 said:
Speaking of the forward speed, you'd normally expect such a quick-moving tornado to have a rather asymmetrical damage path with the most intense destruction on the south side of the core. That may have been true to some extent here, but the difference isn't very pronounced at all. In fact, I've found an unusual number of accounts of people (and sometimes entire houses) being violently thrown westward on the north side of the path. I may be reading too much into it, but that seems to suggest to me that the tornado's rotation was incredibly intense irrespective of the translation speed.
Click to expand...
It could be because it hit a tightly-packed downtown area; everything was smashed together into one big pile and scattered equally about.
 
Lake Martin EF4 said:
More vehicular carnage, this time from the Jonesboro tornado (2020). This was a UPS truck at one point.

Jonesboro was weird. It caused EF2-EF3 structural damage, but apparently caused multiple instances of EF4+ vehicle damage.
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Two things that are wrong with that:

1.) The soon to be added vehicle scale peaks out at high-end EF3. It’s fine to call it “violent looking” vehicle damage but “EF4+ vehicle damage” isn’t a real thing. But yes, there is a degree of vehicle damage that seems to be unique to violent tornadoes, that I can’t deny. But if we’re trying to follow the scale, we can’t make our own rules and designations.

2.) That was a mail truck. They have a high-profile, boxy shape that is largely made of thin metal paneling that’s riveted together, making it much easier to both catch the wind and separate the vehicle chassis. It’s not like a car being stripped to its frame/chassis.
 
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Casuarina Head said:
Does the EF Scale assign ratings to vehicles? As far as I know it doesn’t. Apparently only the old F Scale did so.
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A vehicle scale is about to be implemented in the next EF scale update. I’ve seen it and it peaks out at high-end EF3.

Vehicles behave weirdly in tornadoes, so I do kinda get that. The Houston metro low-end EF3 from last month threw cars from the parking lot at Deer Park High School, and mangled them almost beyond recognition, with moderate damage in the immediate vicinity. On the other hand, I’ve seen cars shift laterally or just flip over in the immediate vicinity of solid EF4+ damage. Personally, I believe that has to do with how much of a “vertical component” a tornado has but I can’t back that up with scientific data.
 
buckeye05 said:
Personally, I believe that has to do with how much of a “vertical component” a tornado has but I can’t back that up with scientific data.
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There's also the aerodyamics. Cars are slick facing the wind, much less so any other direction, so if the strongest winds are head-on the damage will be less. There's also the construction itself. Today's cars are weak and frangible to absorb crash impacts more safely at the cost of much greater vehicle damage. Cars built 30 years ago and light trucks are sturdier structurally and wouldn't show equal damage in the same circumstance. And just because a car is bigger doesn't make it stronger against this kind of damage.

I'm glad they're trying to quantify vehicle damage as there's a far more universal chance of finding that DI versus fixed structures, but they're going to have a lot of problems with it. The same goes for distances thrown. There's just too many differences between different types of vehicles, and too many types to make the process of assessment fast.
 
MNTornadoGuy said:
New TornadoTalk article on Inverness is out. The devastation in rural MS was high-end.
https://www.tornadotalk.com/fitler-delta-city-isola-ms-inverness-part-2-f5-tornado-february-21-1971/
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I had no clue this thing crushed multiple cotton gins, threw a large tank over a half mile, crushed/tore apart steel containers and did severe wind rowing/topsoil scouring throughout much of its path. Also irritated that we'll have to wait till part 3 for more details on the Inverness portion of the path. I think the damage in and around the Delta City area and farms before and after it could be considered F5, unlike the LA portion of the path.
 
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