Talk:Tornado records

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I removed

"Costliest thunderstorm: May 16, 1995 during the "Mayfest" in Fort Worth, Texas. A hailstorm with hailstones the size of grapefruits hit the city causing $2 billion in damage.

The list is about tornadoes, and I could find no mention anywhere that a tornado was involved in this event. Joyous 05:27, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)

Not to mention it isn't even accurate as the most destructive (non-tornadic? non-tornadic damage?) thunderstorm and it is very difficult to obtain all the damage costs from thunderstorms compared to tornadoes. Evolauxia 23:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

My deletions

Biggest single tornado: During the Super Outbreak of April 3, 1974, one tornado left a 5 mile wide damage path near Frankfort, Kentucky.

This appears to be Tetsuya Theodore Fujita's Super Outbreak tornado #54, which is documented as 800 yards wide in Thomas Grazulis' Significant Tornadoes 1680-1991. However, in the various maps shown in this reference, the path of #54 seems to be exceptionally wide as it died out - significantly more than other 800 y tornadoes in the Super Outbreak, although not likely to be five miles wide. If someone can clearly document a wider pathlength, please cite a reference.

I would shy away from a 'biggest single tornado' entry in any case, since methods of estimation of tornado size aren't especially reliable.

That entry is definitely erroneous; and yes there are great problems in determining "widest" tornado. It is no longer listed as a record due to various issues. A decent candidate is the Hallam, Nebraska tornado of May 22, 2004 which was found to have a 2.5 mile wide damage path by an expert survey team. Evolauxia 23:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

The Wilber/Hallam Nebraska Tornado is the largest, according to both[[1]] and [[2]].

Neither of which are authoritative sources (such sources are listed in the Hallam tornado outbreak article) and it doesn't change the very real difficulties involved in path width determination, but Hallam is a solid candidate.

Slowest ground speed: Less than 10 mph (16 km/h) during the Jarrell Tornado.

Ground speeds of essentially zero for tornadoes have been noted in the past. According to Grazulis, the June 2, 1929 Hardtner, Kansas tornado was observed to be nearly stationary at several places in its path. Its parent cloud was stationary for an hour.

Yes, many tornadoes have been stationary part or all of their lives, so it should not be listed. Evolauxia 23:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Verification

Most significant coincidence: A small town in Kansas called Codell was hit by a tornado on the exact same date three years straight! A tornado hit on May 20, 1916, 1917, and 1918. The U.S. gets 100,000 storms a year; only 1% produces a tornado. The odds of this coincidence occurring again is practically infinitesimal to nonexistent.

Yes, according to Grazulis. Such an occurrence is extremely unlikely - again according to Grazulis, the average frequency for a tornado strike at any particular place in Kansas is once per 2,060 years. The chance of three strikes in successive years on the same day in (relatively) the same place is very low. But the most likely place for it to happen is Oklahoma, followed by Kansas.

Reference - Thomas P. Grazulis; Significant Tornadoes: 1860 - 1991; Environmental Films; ISBN 1879362007 (hardcover, 1993)

Catbar (Brian Rock) 02:07, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It is worthy of mention but I renamed the subtitle. Evolauxia 23:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

No fatal tornadoes in Canada during the 1990's?

The fact that Canada didn't had a killer tornado in the 1990's is not true. I checked in La Presse's archives and there has been one fatal F2 tornado in St-Charles east of Montreal in July 1994 - which killed a local doctor. The article is in French and not accessible by Internet but here's the source : M-F Leger, "Deja six tornades et l'annee n'est pas fini", June 11th 1994, La Presse, Montreal, p.A1 ---> The translation should be : "Already six tornadoes and the year is not over"--JForget 19:06, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Path Lengths

In accordance with the following website [[3]], the longest tornado path was 293 miles. A weather book I own confirms this measurement.

That is definitively wrong. The 293-mile path length for the Mattoon-Charleston, Illinois Tornado of May 26, 1917 was listed as the longest tornado decades ago but was found to be a tornado family. The longest tornado path is fairly indisputably the Tri-State Tornado where no breaks in damage were found; even in possible cases where differing members of a tornado family and downbursts masked damage, it still would hold the record. Evolauxia 23:18, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

La Rochelle tornado, September 1669 is said to have travelled over 400km (maybe even more, as it possibly began as a waterspout over Bay of Biscay). However, it is entirely possiblethat it was a family of tornadoes. --Mikoyan21 15:01, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Maximum Winds

I edited the wind speeds to agree with the Doppler on Wheels website [[4]] and with the refereed publication on the Red Rock tornado. Hebrooks87 20:36, 20 June 2006 (UTC)Hebrooks87

Narrowest F5 tornado

I was wondering if anyone knows what was the "smallest" F5 tornado in width, I know I saw at a page ([[5]] the Oakfield tornado was only 100 yards wide when it was an F5, although there were probably one or two that may have been smaller then that when they were AT F5 strength. --JForget 01:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Kansas May 2003 F5?

Is there a citation for the statement that one of the F4s in Kansas in May 2003 was considered to be an F5 before being rated F4? There were two F4s that month in Kansas (Crawford County and Leavenworth/Wyandotte County). I don't know the thought process of the Quick Response Team survey on Crawford County, but my office mate was on the other one that assigned the rating and no one on the team considered it an F5. It had marginal F4 damage [[6]]. Hebrooks87 13:02, 16 July 2006 (UTC)Hebrooks87