The Great Comanche Iowa tornado of 1860

[Ben Engle]

Thanks for posting this, I grew up in the Cedar Rapids area and it's neat but also scary to think about this event being so close to 'home'.

 

[Scott A. Kampas]

As one would expect, it was part of a larger outbreak.
Per Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_tornadoes_and_tornado_outbreaks


Mid-Mississippi Valley tornado outbreak of June 1860 3 June 1860 Middle Mississippi Valley - ≥148 fatalities, ≥409 injuries Exceptionally violent outbreak

 

[SteveCarter]

People there still mention that tornado, which is something to really make you think. It has become folklore, but sadly...still true. I lived in that area for 30 years, in morrison, IL, which is 20 miles due East of Cammanche, IA. Of course, I always figured the stories told to me by my Grandma, from her Grandma, etc., were exagerated, but now...perhaps not. My uncle still lives in Cammanche to this day, and my family has lived around there since 1820-1825. This tornado could be one of the biggest tornadoes EVER, according to the reports out there from that day and time. Thanks for those links.....awesome read.

 

[Joel Wright]

Anyone have any thoughts as to what sort of parameters could have created such a monstrous supercell, or family of supercells?

Like mentioned above, it's a bit unusual for a long-track tornado to move east-southeast for such a long distance. Overall the track was fairly consistent as well. It's a bit interesting that the track actually bends a bit to the left as it approaches the Mississippi River. You'd think if anything it'd track a bit more to the right as time went on, considering it seemed to strengthen even more as it approached the Mississippi.

 

[afischer]

Anyone have any thoughts as to what sort of parameters could have created such a monstrous supercell, or family of supercells?

I'd assume a fairly typical combination of moderate CAPE and strong deep layer shear existed, plus a large warm sector with rich BL dewpoints and strong 1km SRH. As for the specific pattern resulting in such favorable kinematics for cyclic/violent tornadoes (but with somewhat atypical due westerly mean flow), my best guess would be a seasonably (or even unseasonably) intense, slightly negative-tilt shortwave trough moving through ND/SD/MN... with the tornadic supercell located well to the southeast of the synoptic surface low-- perhaps right beneath the westerly mid- and upper-level jet axes.

But, I could be wrong... and probably am.

 

[Mike McDonald]

Thanks for posting this, I grew up in the Cedar Rapids area and it's neat but also scary to think about this event being so close to 'home'.

Well...I found this in the description of the 1882 Grinnell tornado:
"The famous Iowa tornado of 1860 beginning in Hardin county and crossing the Mississippi river at Camanche, where it literally destroyed the town and killed some sixty people, was much longer and just as violent in places as this one was, although it did not touch the earth so often. *Its course was directly over Cedar Rapids, but it jumped that city in a skip of ten miles that it made.* Else there would have been in that city the same hour wrought in human life and property that was wrought in Grinnell."
http://iagenweb.org/history/annals/jul1882.htm

One thing that jumps out at me about this tornado family is its path. Typically, extremely long-track tornadoes and/or long-lived tornado families seem to most commonly move between NNE and E. This one looked to move roughly ESE.

This from a description of the 1893 Pomeroy tornado:
"The weather records show that fully eighty per cent of tornadoes move from the southwest to the northeast. *It is a noteworthy fact, however, that the three longest and most destructive storms of that character that have visited Iowa, namely, the Camanche tornado of 1860, the Grinnell tornado of 1882 and the late Pomeroy storm, all moved on a line trending toward the southeast.* There appears to be something more than coincidence in the fact that these three major storms have pursued the same general course, apart from the line of minor disturbances. The suggestion may be offered that the more powerful northwest currents not only give direction but also add to the intensity of the whirling columns."
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iacalhou/story.html

Ah - the first recognition of "right movers" though the science of why has changed.

Two of the stories about the Camanche tornado say that the system which spawned it died out over Michigan.

I found all these links by doing a Google search on "Camanche tornado." Another link said that the Camanche tornado was described to the nation as “The Great Tornado (Camanche)”, in Harpers Weekly, June 23,1860.

As Jesse said, local libraries are a good place to find original (or at least on microfilm) sources. Newspapers are quite frequently found on microfilm. One can also see what the LDS (Mormon) family history centers have, too. Go to http://www.familysearch.org and click on the "Library" tab at the top. On the next page are tabs for "Family History Centers" and "Family History Library Catalog."

Daily weather maps from the Weather Bureau/NWS from Janaury 1, 1871 to the present are available electronically at:
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/dwm/data_rescue_daily_weather_maps.html

I have an interest in these from a family perspective, too. My mom's side of the family first settled in Scott County, Iowa in 1852. They moved to Pottawattamie County, Iowa in 1884. My dad's side of the family first settled in Bureau County, Illinois, also in 1852. My g-g-g-grandfather left there to buy land in the Nebraska Territory when it was created in 1854. He left two of his kids there to manage the land and went back to Illinois. My g-g-grandparents didn't leave Bureau County for Omaha until 1884.

Mike

 

[Joel Wright]

The F3 Iowa City tornado of last April also moved east-southeast as it moved through the city. It pales in comparison to the above tornadoes, but it was still a fairly strong tornado relatively speaking.

The track of the Comanche tornado is particularly interesting to me, as it would have tracked less than 20 miles from where I sit typing this.