Today in weather history . . .

[Thomas Loades]

May 5 • 1995 — The costliest hailstorm in the U.S. pounds Fort Worth, TX, around 1945–2000 CDT when a bow echo merges with a short-lived HP supercell. The storm encountered, among other things, the city's Mayfest — and battered the thousands of attendees with baseball-sized stones. No-one was killed by the hail, fortunately, but 14 others died in storm-generated flooding and roof collapses. It did over $1 billion damage.

May 6 • 1975, Wichita Falls, TX, event. The town was, however, well warned by REACT spotters and sirens, and only 3 people died. That said, it missed the Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack — its stands filled with spectators — by about a block.

 

[Thomas Loades]

May 11 • 1953 — What was already a costly season became far worse this afternoon when a tornado touched down SW of Lorena, McLennan Co, TX. It proceeded to move NE, sideswiping Hewitt, then plowing directly through downtown Waco. Hundreds of homes were ddamaged or destroyed, and hundreds of buildings were flattened in the downtown area, around Austin Avenue in particular. About 30 people died in one building — the R.T. Dennis Furniture Co. building — alone, as it was (by eyewitness accounts) twisted, then collapsed, probably because it was not made of steel-reinfoced concrete that might have held a little better to such stresses. 114 people were killed, the second-to-last single tornado to kill more than 100 people in the U.S. so far. It was rated F5; about two hours before this event, an F4 ripped through western San Angelo, destroying about 300 homes and damaging the Lake View School, where students crouched in the hallways as the roof blew off. Remarkably, less than 10 were injured there, but the tornado killed 11 and injured about 200 elsewhere.

• 1970 — An F5 tornado touched down on central Lubbock, TX, and moved generally N, devaststing neighborhoods as it went. 28 people were killed. Though its losses were severe, this tornado is more significant for the advances it made to tornado science. Professor Tetsuya Theodore Fujita of the University of Chicago made a detailed damage survey of this tornado's damage path, and from it:
—He refined the concept of multiple vortices later in the year — he realized that these could be little dust-devil-like vortices, and he now called the "suction spots." The next year, he would publish a paper with the entire concept, now "multiple suction vortices," mapped out.
—He conceived the Fujita wind damage scale. All the original examples of damage for each level on the Fujita scale were taken from the damage at Lubbock.* This, he felt, would be an easier way of caategorizing tornadoes and compiling a database of them. Allen Pearson, then director of the NSSFC, aggreed, and contributed classifications for path width and length that could also be used in a database — this was mainly because of the constraints of keeping records by punch-cards, and when they were phased out, so too were Pearson's components, because it was now easier to add the raw data for their categories.

*The originals can be seen in A.B.C. Whipple's Storm (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1982). The examples published in Storm Data (this version is reprinted in Significant Tornadoes) use damage from Lubbock for F0–3, damage from Jordan, IA (6/13/1976) for F4, and damage at Birmingham, AL (4/4/1977) for F5.

 

[Thomas Loades]

May 15 • 1896 — A tornado that had been 400 yards wide simultaneously enters its shrinking stage and the western side of Sherman, TX. The path contracts to just 60 yards, but causes near-complete devastation in that area. 73 people are killed.

May 16 • 1977 — A now-legendary period in early stormchasing, the "Seven Days In May," reaches a pinnacle here as a mini-outbreak moves across the TX panhandle into W OK.
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It starts with this F3 at Quail, TX . . .
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. . . continues with this spectacular wedge (also F3) that barely missed Shamrock, TX . . . moves into OK with an equally spectacular event near Mayfield . . .
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. . . then concludes with this event that moved from Mayfield past Grimes and Cheyenne.


May 18 • 1902 — A tornado moves roughly E in Goliad co., passing through the town of Goliad and destroying much of it. 85 die in the town itself, and a total of 114 die in the entire event. This tornado, rated F4, was probably the deadliest tornado to occur so far south in the U.S.

 

[Thomas Loades]

May 20 • 1957 —
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This menacing funnel was photographed near Spring Hill, KS; around this time, it killed a family of four attempting to outrun it in their car. It had touched down to the SW, near Ottawa, and as it passed south of that town, it was photographed in a multiple-vortex phase—one of the earliest such records of this phenomenon, although it wasn't understood at the time. It killed three others in KS, then what was possibly this tornado (or possibly the next family member; that concept wasn't well understood then either, and not properly mapped) crossed the KS/MO state line and roared into the southern suburbs of Kansas City, MO. The worst affected were Hickman Mills and Ruskin Heights, where schools, a shopping center, and more than 1,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. The tornado rated F5. Debris was lofted so high in the supercell, it was visible flying past aircraft at an altitude of 30,000 feet — and found on the ground in IA.

Oh, and Goliad Co. is in Texas.

 

[Thomas Loades]

May 22 • 1981 — Another major historical chase day, in which the NSSL crew intercepted three events: near Alfalfa, OK (an F1, then F2) . . .
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. . . near Cordell (F1) . . .
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. . . and just W of Binger (F4).
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And in the two events at Alfalfa, Stirling Colgate attempted to fire instumented rockets into the tornadoes — his goal was to measure the electrical field present around tornadoes, as it had long been thought that electrical activity in thunderstorms has a correlation with tornado formation and intensity. Unfortunately, neither attempt was successful. The concern with tornadoes and electricity has receded anyway.
• 1987 — A tornado cuts a path just three miles long in sparsely populated Reeves Co., in far western TX. Tragically, that path took it right through the small community of Saragosa. 85% of the town's buildings were leveled to the ground, a quarter of the town's 500 residents were injured, and 30 died. 22 of them were in the town hall attending a Head Start class's graduation ceremony — none of the children died, but more than a few parents did, shielding their kids. It was an F4.
• 2004 — What may have been a family of tornadoes moved through Jefferson/Saline/Gage/Lancaster/Otoe counties, NE, on a 54-mile path that saw the little town of Hallam left 95% destroyed, along with numerous farms and a school. One person died, 138 were injured, and $160 million damage was done. The event, as a single tornado, was an F4. The path was apparently up to 2 miles wide, but that may have been from microbursts flanking the tornado/es.

May 24 • 1973 — A landmark chase day, in which teams from the NSSL and University of Oklahoma intercepted a supercell in Canadian Co., OK, that produced a large tornado, which plowed through the town of Union City, as well as about 8 farms. Not only was the full life cycle of the tornado recorded on film, but measurements were taken by the experimental Doppler radar at NSSL which captured both the tornado and mesocyclone.
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Looking SE from the W edge of Union City as the tornado shrinks. It was as the tornado roped out that it did its only F4 damage, due to the circulation contracting and increasing the windspeeds.

May 25 • 1955 — On a tragic night in the plains, an F5 tornado roared through Blackwell, OK, at about 2130 CST, killing 20 and destroying about 400 homes. Several eyewitnesses described bright colored lights radiating steadily from within the funnel. Then, at 2330, another huge tornado touched down in Sumner Co., KS. It killed 5 of the 10 King family children when it flattened their weak oil field house NE of Oxford, then ground its way right through Udall. More than half the population were killed (75 or 77) or injured (270), and most of the town was destroyed.
• 1985 — The worst cyclone to hit Bangladesh in the 1980s inundates the low-lying farmlands at the Ganges Delta yet again, and kills 10,000. With only 100–110-mph winds, it is a weaker storm than those of 1970 and 1991.

 

[Thomas Loades]

May 27 • 1997 — A warm, oppresively humid (with dew points in the 70s as early as 0900) day on the S TX plains springs to life in the mid-afternoon as a cluster of thunderstorms reach severity with extreme rapidity — so fast, in fact, that the tornadoes they spawn all move SW as the storms expand, but remain relatively stationary. What could be called a family of tornadoes — though by all accounts it was as if a single tornado kept appearing and disappearing from the one spot under the wall cloud — started at Temple, moved over Lake Belton (wrecking a marina), past Prairie Dell, then gave way to a huge tornado that moved agonzingly slowly toward the town of Jarrell. The tornado passed just to the SE — but went grinding over the "Double Creek" subdivision. A community of double-wide trailers on concrete foundations, it was especially susceptible to tornadoes, and this one just about wiped it from the face of the earth. Only the slabs were left.* All the 27 fatalities (14 of them school children — it was the start of summer vacation) occurred here; this was not for lack of warnings, just a lack of secure places to hide. There was one other tornadic death this day as an F3 slashed through an Albertson's (whose roof collapsed, resulting in the death and 7 injuries), and a residential neighborhood of Cedar park, further to the S.

*The tornado was rated F5, but had it been moving faster than 4 mph, it may have garnered a lower rating.

 

[Thomas Loades]

May 30 • 1998 — The town of Spencer, SD, is almost wiped out by a large tornado this evening. Only about 12 houses were left untouched. 6 died, and 150 were injured. (The town's population was, then, 317.) The tornado rated F4, and the OU Doppler on Wheels recorded winds of 246 mph somewhere in this tornado.

May 31 • 1985 — Probably the worst outbreak to take place in the NE/Great Lakes area killed 88 people: 76 in OH and PA, 12 in ON. The first tornadoes (13 in all) were in S-central ON, among them two F4s. The worst killed 8 people at Barrie (F4), and another killed 4 to the S around the communities of Arthur, Grand Valley, Tottenham, and Orangeville. It's cited as having one of the longest tornado tracks in Canada — about 67 miles — but it may have been at least two tornadoes. Almost no-one saw funnels in any of these events because the tornadoes were, unusually for ON, spawned by HP supercells.
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Then, tornadoes began in far western and N NY, then into PA and OH. The worst tornado of these killed 18 people as it rolled through Newton Falls, Lordstown, Niles, and Hubbard, OH, then Wheatland and Hermitage, PA. It was an F5.
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The F5 just W of Niles, OH, at about 1750 EST.
Also in the outbreak was an F4 that flattened much of Albion, PA, killing 12; an F4 that killed 16 in Atlantic City, Hannasville, Cooperstown, Sheakleyville, and Dempseytown, PA; an F4 that killed 9 across Beaver and Butler counties, PA; and another F4 (this was a violent outbreak indeed) that cut a path up to 2½ miles wide in the Moshannon State Forest, PA, downing about 88,000 trees as it went.

 

[Thomas Loades]

June 2 • 1995 — One of the most scientfically important tornadoes to date touches down near Dimmitt, TX, and is intercepted by the entire NSSL VORTEX armada; hurricane hunter aircraft, Doppler-On-Wheels trucks, and more than 100 mobile mesonet vehicles surround the storm and gather data from its birth to its death. The tornado itself damaged several farms, removed 600 feet of asphalt off HWY-86, and was rated F3. A downdraft up to 55 mph was detedcted by the DOW in the center of the vortex.
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This is what it’s all about.

June 3 • 1980 behind them. Such convoluted paths probably owed to smaller scale influences of inflow winds, outflow from the precip areas, and the RFD having far more impact than they otherwise would. Also because of this, 3 of the family members (#2, #3, #4) were anticyclonic.

Tornado #1 was an F3; tornado #2 rated F1 and never entered the town. Tornado #3 also rated F3 and had a far longer track into the N part of town, hitting a veterans' home where it killed one. Tornado #4 also meandered outside of town, but to the SE, and rated F1. Tornado #5 was the big one. An F4, up to ¾-mile wide, it cut a sickle-shaped path through the Se part of town, killing four people, and practically leveling all the buildings lining the block's length of South Locust Road it headed down. Tornadoes #6 and 7 were both to the SE of town, rating F2 and F1 respectively. By 2245, the supercell had at last exhausted itself. Grand Island had incurred $260 million damage.

The event was popularized in the Juvenile novel Night of the Twisters, by Ivy Ruckman (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1984); it was made into a 1995 telemovie of about the quality you'd expect of telemovies, complete with Canadian-accented Nebraskans.
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Tornadoes #2 (left) and 3, at about 2010. Looking N.

 

[Thomas Loades]

June 7–8 • 1984 — At 2340 CST, June 7, a tornado suddenly develops from a storm in Iowa county, WI; so suddenly, the nearest WFO doesn't issue a tornado warning until about 2355, when a hook echo becomes apparent on radar. Tragicaly, five minutes before then, the tornado charged through the little town of Barneveld, and ripped it apart. About 90% of the town was damaged or destroyed (up to F5 damage), 9 were killed, and 200 injured. The tornado dissipated at 0020, June 8, in Dane county. Debris was dropped as far as 30m to the NE — and, oddly, ESE of the tornado's path.

June 8 • 1953 — The last tornado to kill more than 100 people in the U.S. rips through the northern suburbs of Flint, MI. An F5, it leveled hundreds of homes (especially along a mile of Coldwater Road), and killed a total of 115 people. The tornado occurred just after dark, which prbably accounts (at least in part) to the death toll. The next member of the tornado faily killed one (and that death is often tacked onto the total at Flint), and 24 others died in violent tornadoes earlier in the evening around Erie, MI, and Cleveland and Sandusky, OH.
• 1995 — Another legendary chase day for both the VORTEX armada and independent chasers. First, there was an F4 that slashed into the industrial district of Pampa, TX

. . . which only gave long-time chasers Alan Moller and Chuck Doswell the chase of a lifetime (to date). Then came the juggernauts at Kellerville and Allison, to the N and NE — both violent, and the latter up to 1½m wide at times.
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The Kellerville, TX, tornado
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The Allison, TX, tornado, taped by Jim Leonard.

 

[Mike Smith]

As today is June 8, it brings to mind June 8, 1974. Massive tornado outbreak in Oklahoma and fatal tornado in Emporia, Kansas. There is a complete story about this event at www.weatherdata.tv then schroll down to lower left ("Download Severe Storm Stories") and click on the PDF. You might enjoy reading about the history of severe storm broadcasting as seen through the prism of this event.

 

[Thomas Loades]

June 8 • 1966 — The first $100 million tornado in U.S. history bisects Topeka, KS, from SW to NE. Entire neighborhoods are laid waste by the F5 tornado, the state Capitol is pelted by flying debris, a 10-story building in dowtown Topeka is wrenched (albeit not very far) off its foundations, and about 100 people in one of Washburn University's buildings are very lucky that they go to the "wrong" corner of the building when they hear the tornado approach — they seek the SW corner, go to the SE instead, and avoid getting flattened by collapsing walls and flying debris because of course the SW corner is not safe at all. (Much of the university was badly damaged, and books are found up to 65 miles away in IA.) 16 die and about 500 are injured.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/top/torn.jpg
Looking NW as the tornado begins ripping apart residential areas in SW Topeka. Note the rise just to the left of the tornado — this is the infamous Burnett’s Mound, which Native American legend held would protect the city from tornadoes as an elder was buried there, and it was at exactly the SW corner of the city. The tornado went right over it, and did F5 damage to homes nearby.

June 9 • 1953 — The same trough which led to the tornado outbreak the previous day fires up again, but this time over New England. The result is the worst tornado the region has ever seen, as a massive vortex touches down on the N end of Quabbin Reservoir, Worcester co., MA, and moves SE, devastating a string of small towns — Petersham, Barre, Rutland, Holden, Shrewsbury, Westboro, Northboro, Southboro — and the N part of Worcester (between Holden and Shrewsbury). The tornado is officially F4, but that rating was assigned in the early 1970s, and subsequent research has turned up at least one instance of F5 damage (at Holden), possibly more (at Worcester). At any rate, many of the buildings the tornado almost leveled were triple-decker tenement buildings (not unlike those so often recalled in Robert Cormier's novels) that would have had greater strength than a frame home because of all the internal walls — so, greater tornadic intensity may have been require to do the damage observed. 94 were killed, and 1,288 injured; 4,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Debris from this tornado was lofted as far as Provincetown, MA (E Cape Cod). There were two other tornadoes this day: An F2 at Franklin, MA (to the SE — probably a second family member), and a tornado of unknown intensity S of Durham, NH. Hail was reported as far north as the Bangor/Portland/Eastport, ME, region.

June 10 • 1958 — A tornado raked a 45-block area of El Dorado, KS, killing 15, injuring 50, and damaging or destroying 200 homes. While this was going on, however, an early portable Doppler radar — more like the DOW of today, as opposed to the OU portable unit — measured winds of 206 mph in the tornado. It was the first comfirmable time that a tornado's windspeeds had been recorded.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

1 year ago today saw one of the biggest tornado outbreaks in Wisconsin history, surpassed in number of tornadoes only by 3 others and in sheer intensity by only one (July 18, 1996).

I did see a wall cloud on 6/23/04, it looked really cool with ominous fingers of scud hanging very low to the ground (which resulted in erroneous tornado reports) but I couldn't get any video because my camcorder chose that exact moment to suffer a tape jam! :evil:

My family & I got a scare that day because my grandparents reside in a senior living complex on the west side of Madison just a few blocks from that tornado's path. Talking to my grandfather later we learned of what appears to be a distressing lack of tornado & severe weather awareness/preparedness among the complex's staff/residents.

Some links related to the June 23, 2004 outbreak:

SPC Storm Reports

WFO-MKX report

WFO-GRB report

WFO-ARX report

My account/photos

Jeff Raflik's account and photos

A collection of damage photos and eyewitness accounts from the Madison tornado

Final stats on the June 23, 2004 outbreak:

17 tornadoes

2 F3

2 F2

9 F1

4 F0

An unusually intense series of tornadoes for Wisconsin-on most tornado days nearly everything falls into the 30-second F0 spinup category.

1 dead

16 injured

And note this event took place on a day with only moderate instability. Maybe 75/60 T/Td to the best of my recollection. Today we have 91/69 and not a chance of thunderstorms.

 

[Thomas Loades]

June 12 • 1899 — A tornado touches down on Lake St. Croix, WI, and moves NE, leveling two farms and killing three people before tearing through the center of New Richmond. Though the funnel was widely visible and none too large, there were about 1,000 more people in town that day for a circus. As hundreds of buildings were destroyed across town, 114 more people were killed, mostly from flying debris.

June 16 • 1928

June 20 • 1957 was the tornado, a few miles W of town, and before the tornado had actually touched down. It was a large, ominously dark cloud hanging clower than the rest of the parent storm's cloud deck; it rotated, though not very fast, and had a long tail that didn't reach the ground. Subsequent analysis from T. T. Fujita named these hitherto unknown creatures: The wall cloud and tail cloud. Fujita's analysis of this event detailed a similarly foreign concept, the tornado family. The Fargo tornado was (and, officially, still is) plotted as having a 70-mile-long, straight-line track; in fact, this length consisted of 5 tornadoes, with paths between 10 and 15 miles long each.

June 27 • 1957 — The deadliest June hurricane, Audrey, kills about 500 people when she makes landfall as an intense category 3 in W LA, affecting Cameron Parish particularly badly. This exceptionally high toll was largely due to residents ignoring warnings to leave low-lying coastal areas; most drowned in the storm surge.

 

[Thomas Loades]

July 10 • 1989 — A mini-outbreak of tornadoes affects central Connecticut, including an F4 tornado (one of only a few violent tornadoes ever recorded in New England) that ripped through almost 400 homes and businesses at New Haven, injuring 40.

July 11 • 1990 — What was, until the May 5, 1995, Fort Worth event, the costliest hailstorm in U.S. history, pounds Denver, CO, with hail from golf ball to orange in size, and does $600 million damage. There were no fatalities, but about 50 injuries — least fortunate among them, a group of children and their parents caught on a ferris wheel when the storm knocked out the power.

July 21 • 1987 — A complex system of a tornado and something like 71 microbursts passes over the Continental Divide in the Teton Wilderness, WY. It's probably the highest-altitude tornado on record. It rated F4, felled tens of thousnads of trees, and may have been up to 2 miles wide.

July 31 • 1987 — Perhaps the most infamous tornado in Canadian history roars up the eastern edge of Edmonton, Alberta.

That afternoon, around 1400 MDT, a squall line began advancing on Edmonton from the S. At about 1430, an individual thunderstorm cell developed just N of the line, and rapidly intensified, At about the time that cell was absorbed into the squall line, the tornado touched down.
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It began as a slender funnel at 1455, just W of Leduc (S of Edmonton city limits). It began rapidly widening as it moved past Beaumont, headed due N.
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At 1506, it crossed Ellerslie Road, halfway between Beaumont and Edmonton's SE edge. At that time, the condensation funnel vanished — the tornado was probably undergoing vortex breakdown.
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Over the next 10 minutes, the tornado moved along the E edge of Mill Woods — and, as it did so, displayed a spectacular array of multiple vortices. Damage was fairly limited here, and up to F2.
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The tornado hit its first intensity peak at 1525, as it crossed the Sherwood Park Freeway and tore through an industrial area known as "Refinery Row." Here, it threw boxcars up to a half mile from their tracks, and picked up an empty 300-gallon oil tank from an abandoned Texaco refinery, and tossed it 200 yards. 12 people died here. (The video still on the right was taken from the building that also housed the Alberta Weather Center.)
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At 1540, the tornado moved W of the Strathcona Science Park and clipped the E edges of Clareview and River Valley. There, it did F4 damage to two homes. (Brief moment of opine: I think it's possible that the tornado was an F5, since — at the time F4 damage was done — the tornado was exhibiting violent, rapid motion, akin to known F5 tornadoes; also, at Clareview, the F4 damage occurred in the let-hand side of the tornado — the weaker side with respect to the tornado's forward motion. The intense right-hand-side was passing over the empty, treeless bank of the North Saskatchewan River.)
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Finally, at 1555, the tornado began shrinking — but, as it did so, passed right through the Evergreen Mobile Home Park. 15 people were killed: a record for tornado deaths in a North American trailer park, although that was probably broken at Kissimmee, FL, in the Feb. 23, 1998 tornado.) After an hour on the ground, it dissipated.