1974 Tornado Super Outbreak Part 2??...

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day2otlk_0600.gif ^ | 3/30/23 | basalt

[DCBryan1]

Meanwhile in Kansas, people go outside to watch.

In the early 90s I was in an armor unit and got a tornado safety breifing. Question: If you are in a main battle tank and a tornado is approaching you, where is your safest place? I answered, "Hell, in a damn main battle tank".

Wrong answer. Lowest possible area, preferably underground.

What?!

Reason was that main battle tanks do NOT have their turrets attached and if picked up or rolled, will probably separate turret and hull.

Safety officers showed us pictures of overturned tanks and 500? ton locomotive engines overturned and blown 1/4 mile away or more (basically rolled with tornado).

Andover KS tornado happened later and we rolled in and made me a believer in preps for tornadic weather.

[j_guru]

Yes. The Dayton tornado hit my neighborhood around 10:50 PM. Was just over a half mile wide. Yes, your ears pop, and yes the sky was green afterwords. The wildest thing I have ever seen!

PS. Yes it sounds like a freight train. lol

[DCBryan1]

The one I’ll never forget is the Jarrell, Texas tornado. There was literally nothing left but slabs.

Sad fact is most of the dead were literally ground to pieces. Fort Hood mortuary affairs had to come in and match fingers with hands, then hands with wrists, wrist to arms, arms to torsos, etc. You wont find the pictures or graphic details as they are still classified LES (law enforcement sensitive).

Coroner reports stated " massive/multiple blunt trauma"....a sanitary and better than telling relatives that most of your loved ones remains are the size of a quarter out there in that field still today.

They never found ANY remains of a couple of those poor souls. One of the teenagers they only found his one of his hands.

That tornado just stayed stationary and ground everything up.

If you ask "what is the most destructive tornado", they'll say Jerrell, TX.

It is the case study for destructiveness and was the cause of revisiting the Fujita scale and later became the Enhanced (EF) scale.

100 % fatality rate in the dark red brown (not the dark cloud shadow)...it even pulled up/scoured the grass down to 18". It stayed stationary for 2-3 minutes. Had it stayed for 2-3 mins more it might have even taken the slabs up (it took up parts of slabs in 4-5 homes.

Today, a baseball park and playground cover the homes of the 5 members of the IGO family:

It even took up roads:

When the first responders pulled up they found a muddy field. They looked for bodies for about an hour and came back to the command post perplexed at no human remains and only 3 wounded survivors and they asked, where are the telephone poles? Where are the air conditioners? where are the walls? Where is the yards and trees? cars? All gone. It was the sudden realization that the bodies were ground up and contained in the debris and spread aloft in the muddy fields surrounding the former neighborhood. Truly a horrific storm.

[diplomatic_immunity]

A ‘74 Toronado could probably survive an F4 with nothing more than some broken glass. Those things were built like a brick outhouse.

[DCBryan1]

Good documentary called Jarrell Texas F5 Tornado Dead Man Walking Documentary

Apparently, old native American legend states that if you see this, you cannot survive.

[lepton]

Safety officers showed us pictures of overturned tanks

---

I was wondering if they were too heavy for surface area. Probably still safer in the tank...until you aren’t.

And have you seen the footage of the Andover tornado going from a wisp touching the ground to a huge thing opaque more than a quarter mile wide in about 20 seconds?

[lepton]

I recall a spinning cell in the clouds once which never came down, and looking right up into the middle of it as it passed directly over. That was a very odd effect.

[j_guru]

Dead Man Walking, if I remember correctly.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Ping

[miserare]

Please, Lord, no!

I have a dozen close family members living about 50 miles from Memphis, in Jackson, Finger, and Shelby County.

[basalt]

every time the movie American Graffiti is on, i watch just to see those cars. Cant believe they mass produced cars with those body designs. The “fins”...and contours...just beautiful machines.

[mewzilla]

Related, from 2020, on a fascinating documentary about Ted Fujita.

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/new-documentary-details-life-and-career-of-ted-fujita-mr-tornado

[RckyRaCoCo]

Has ‘Tornado Alley’ shifted east?

[miserare]

Knock on wood.

[basalt]

seems like it has..at least in the deep South. March and April, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas..then May-June, kinda curves around thru Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas...but really, if the conditions are right, the entire mid-west. But it seems those 6 States really catch the brunt of the “violent” tornadoes..

[AppyPappy]

I’m always glad I live in Appalachia. Tornadoes are rare around here, a once in a lifetime for the area thing.

[1Old Pro]

I’m always glad I live in Appalachia. Tornadoes are rare around here, a once in a lifetime for the area thing.

Also rare in upstate NY, this on was 25 years ago:

On 31 May 1998, an F3 tornado struck Mechanicville, New York, injuring 68 people and causing $71 million in damage. The tornado was part of a widespread, severe weather outbreak across the northeast United States. The synoptic conditions that caused the outbreak and the mesoscale and storm-scale environments that produced the tornado are discussed.

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/wefo/20/4/waf875_1.xml

[M Kehoe]

Hi.

Good to see your moniker.

The green is erie. Just like the draining of Tampa Bay during hurricane Irma.

You know by instinct something bad is going to happen.

5.56mm

[SaveFerris]

Back when America was truly awesome

60’s and 70’s cars are my favorites

Good thing I’m not a multi-billionaire because I’d have a gigantic collection

[basalt]

im cant imagine the molds it took to stamp those fenders etc...man..