Significant Tornado Events

[TH2002]

A bit late, but some more stuff that proves Jarrell did indeed sweep away well-constructed homes. I also seem to recall someone posted some sort of survey report of Double Creek w/ labels showing how each home was constructed, but annoyingly I can't find it now:

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Loyal Valley damage pics, a few days late on its anniversary but oh well:




In a couple of pics it looks like (in the background) an entire hillside was scoured. Pretty crazy. Also, the mesquites being debarked is wild, only other time I've seen that is with Bakersfield Valley.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

More pics:




Last 2 are pieces of a pickup truck. A chunk of asphalt from a highway was found in the grove of trees with the pickup hood wrapped around them.

 

[andyhb]

Damage pics from Ethridge, TN I've never seen before:

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View attachment 27099


Footage of the tornado itself:




More pics here:

The Deerfield-Ethridge Tornado of 1995

Today (May 18) is the 20th anniversary of the 1995 Deerfield-Ethridge Tornado. On May 18, 1995, an F-4 tornado cut a huge, 29-mile path of destruction across Piney, Deerfield, Brace, and Ethridge, …

lawcohistory.com

This tornado passed over the same area in TN that the 1998 "forgotten F5" did 3 years later.

Whoa, didn't know there was video of that tornado. Great find. Also mother of god that Loyal Valley tree damage is absolutely extreme.

 

[A Guy]

What’s the rationale again for purposely lowballing a tornado rating. Does it have to do with insurance or not wanting a town to be associated with an F5 tornado?

I think it's an engineering pedantry dominated mindset. The whole thing reminds me of that saying that "an expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy". In this case it's literally true, they try to account for every factor that could compromise the 'load path' while arriving at a figure that other evidence indicates is probably drastically wrong.

I don't know what the incentive is as it's one in that scientific community - not just the engineers, but some of the meteorologists as well. Though if you push them they'll admit that winds are probably much higher. For the engineers it allows blame to be shifted to builders at least.

One thing I've noticed that even though it's often tacitly admitted that EF DI determined winds are often not accurate, they are usually treated as such for the purposes of engineering and climatology. If it was admitted that higher speeds occur this would indicate the risk is higher than EF-speed based assessments would say. On the other hand, if someone obtained evidence of significantly higher winds for a given degree of damage, this could indicate that houses are more resistant than thought, which would be a good thing.

But overall it's a hard question to answer - you can't ask the people involved because they don't believe they are underrating tornadoes. That's why I think it's a mindset problem that will take some fresh minds or really decisive evidence to shift.

 

[atrainguy]

Today's the anniversary of the Kalamazoo F3 that hit downtown. Not historic in the grand scheme of things, but still locally significant.

 

[Casuarina Head]

Some rather violent damage from Pryor, Oklahoma, on 27 April 1942 (note the debarking of shrubbery and/or trees):



This source also contains many photographs that I have never personally seen before, also from this F4+ event.

 

[Ivanthetornadoenthusiast]

Yeah, don't have a whole lot on them but here are some (admittedly poor) photos from the Bean Lake, MO F3:















And the Maysville, MO F2 (more appropriately rated F3 by Grazulis):



And of course the Conway, AR F4:

The pics won't appear for me