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Tornado Anniversaries

Of course the anniversary already passed 10 days ago, but I wasn't sure where else to put this.

May 21, 2024 (Greenfield day) was my last chase to date in my 2009 Toyota Corolla. Just a few days later, my wife and I bought a 2023 Highlander. Because she doesn't currently work, I've been driving that most of the time and only use the Corolla when she needs the Highlander to run errands or go to appointments while I'm at work. Therefore, today was the first oil change I've done on that car since then, and a year later I found myself pulling a whole lot of twigs out of the undercarriage from all the debris I ran over on the way home from that chase. After missing the southwest Iowa tornado show (having targeted further east thinking the storms would be more discrete there, which they were but never could really take off), threading the needle between all the remaining storms and having mostly fair weather for the majority of the drive home (unusual), as I got within a few miles of home I began to encounter multiple roads blocked by downed trees and power lines, as a separate round of storms had caused one of the more widespread/significant damaging wind events in recent memory for the Madison area.

PXL_20240522_030908072.jpgPXL_20240522_030925802.jpgPXL_20240522_032625853.jpg
 
Ah yes, 6/1. Two notorious events define this date:

1990: One of the strongest tornadoes of all time touches down near Bakersfield Valley, Texas. It scours 800 feet of asphalt from a road, causes extremely widespread ground scouring, and throws/rolls several oil tanks for miles. It is, in my opinion, second only to Matador as the strongest tornado in Texas state history.



2011: What was almost certainly a violent tornado (which did not get the EF4 rating it deserved solely because of NWS skulldiggery) caused massive damage across Southern Massachusetts. The tornado caused $227 million in damages, killed 3 people, and ended up becoming the inspiration for the name of Ethan Morarity's YouTube channel: June First, a tribute to his experience with that horrendous (but, arguably, not as horrendous as his Vilonia/Rochelle takes) tornado.





https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N6iPW9noTD8&pp=ygUYMjAxMSBTcHJpbmdmaWVsZCB0b3JuYWRv
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ffbv-MUUDk&pp=ygUYMjAxMSBTcHJpbmdmaWVsZCB0b3JuYWRv0gcJCbAJAYcqIYzv
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ERLuA6XXSlA&pp=ygUYMjAxMSBTcHJpbmdmaWVsZCB0b3JuYWRv0gcJCbAJAYcqIYzv
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0fXctU0xis4

Map. Peep the tiny Georgia E/F4 county:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tornado/comments/1l0xqw0/strongest_tornado_on_this_day_in_history_by/
 
35th anniversary of the 6/2/90 Ohio Valley outbreak. This produced 65 torndaoes, seven rated F4 including the 106-mile track (officially, with things like Yazoo City still occurring in the modern era I treat all >100-mile path lengths as suspect now) Albion, IL tornado with the "funny-lookin'" horizontal vortex that was an iconic part of early-mid '90s TV tornado docs along with the footage from Andover, Hesston, Pampa and the like.

 
On this day in 1990 there was a major tornado outbreak in IL/IN/OH for no reason




And Dimmitt in 1995

And of course in 1998 there was the Frostburg, MD F4, which was also Pennsylvania's last officially rated violent tornado, along with a number of other tornadoes





Map. Lots of red on this map from Texas to Pennsylvania:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tornado/comments/1l1sint/strongest_tornado_on_this_day_in_history_by/
 
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Today marks the 45th anniversary of the "Night of the Twisters" that saw seven tornadoes terrorize Grand Island, Nebraska. Five people died, around 200 more were injured, and damages totaled around $285 million (in 1980 USD). The tornadoes notably took erratic corkscrew paths through the area as they rotated around the parent mesocyclone, which itself had a slow forward speed as it moved from northwest to southeast; this created some rather complex damage patterns as there were multiple instances of areas being hit at least twice in relatively short succession. In addition, while anticyclonically rotating tornadoes tend to make up less than 1% of all tornadoes, three of the seven tornadoes were anticyclonic.

Much of the debris from this storm was dumped into a landfill that was eventually named Tornado Hill and tuned into a local park.

The event was immortalized in the classic children's novel The Night of the Twisters, a fictionalized depiction of the event that became the basis for a made-for-TV movie (though the movie notably changes the events to a fictional town being hit on Halloween night).

However, the event saw other tornadoes occur across several other states as well, with one more fatality (in Indiana) and over 200 more injuries across seven states. The final tally from the entire outbreak is 29 confirmed tornadoes, six deaths, 413 injuries, and $300 million (1980 USD) in damages.
 
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Today marks the 45th anniversary of the "Night of the Twisters" that saw seven tornadoes terrorize Grand Island, Nebraska. Five people died, around 200 more were injured, and damages totaled around $285 million (in 1980 USD). The tornadoes notably took erratic corkscrew paths through the area as they rotated around the parent mesocyclone, which itself had a slow forward speed as it moved from northwest to southeast; this created some rather complex damage patterns as there were multiple instances of areas being hit at least twice in relatively short succession. In addition, while anticyclonically rotating tornadoes tend to make up less than 1% of all tornadoes, three of the seven tornadoes were anticyclonic.

Much of the debris from this storm was dumped into a landfill that was eventually named Tornado Hill and tuned into a local park.

The event was immortalized in the classic children's novel The Night of the Twisters, a fictionalized depiction of the event that became the basis for a made-for-TV movie (though the movie notably changes the events to a fictional town being hit on Halloween night).

However, the event saw other tornadoes occur across several other states as well, with one more fatality (in Indiana) and over 200 more injuries across seven states. The final tally from the entire outbreak is 29 confirmed tornadoes, six deaths, 413 injuries, and $300 million (1980 USD) in damages.

 
Bit more from Grand Island. Obviously known for the general craziness of the event, but some of the tornadoes (especially the F4, naturally) were pretty notable in their own right:

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It's the 45th anniversary of perhaps the most insane tornadic event of the 80s, the Grand Island outbreak. Fun fact: there was actually a pretty impressive outbreak in the Mid Atlantic on 6/3/80, including a F4 in Pennsylvania and WV's most damaging tornado since Shinnston, but no one remembers it because of what transpired in Nebraska that night.






https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=38uPs1JmaiE&pp=ygUSMTk4MCBncmFuZCBpc2xhbmQg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TY6fuX9YxGQ&pp=ygUSMTk4MCBncmFuZCBpc2xhbmQg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pgT-MnamgMo&pp=ygUSMTk4MCBncmFuZCBpc2xhbmQg

It also inspired a book and TV movie:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bJFzwikn8HI&pp=ygUSMTk4MCBncmFuZCBpc2xhbmQg

There was also an extremely intense tornado family across IA and IL in 1860 (including a likely F5 in Camanche, IA) and a violent tornado in Bradshaw, NE in 1890. The 1860 event:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tornado/comments/1l2hma1/165_years_ago_today_a_supercell_crossed_iowa_and/

Map:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tornado/comments/1l2l5da/strongest_tornado_on_this_day_in_history_by/
 
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