Significant Tornado Events

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

Going through Grazulis' new book again and naturally had to read his entry on Jarrell. Here it is:






Pretty sure 250 mph on the old scale is high-end F4 and EF5 on the new scale, so not sure how he thinks those are F3. He also makes emphasis on how many homes were unanchored or poorly anchored and how destruction of them may have helped to sweep away properly-anchored homes (on the other page of this entry) so...yeah.

Interesting he speculates that it may have started out as a landspout; not sure I've heard of any other case of a landspout transforming into a violent multivortex tornado.

 

[Juliett Bravo Kilo]

The entry on Pampa, TX 1995 is also interesting. To quote "The F4 rating is subjectively based on the movement of industrial equipment weighing up to 30 tons. Only strong F2 to minimal F3 damage was done to homes, as the tornado had weakened by the time it arrived in the residential area. Some rough photogrammetry of the rotational speed of the funnel by the Tornado Project indicated that about 100 feet above ground level, the rotation was in the 200-250 mph range, not counting a very high vertical wind component, probably well in excess of 100 mph".

This is weird, as I thought that Grazulis had calculated wind speeds up to 300 mph with Pampa right above ground level. Also, an interesting discussion I had with a YouTuber awhile back revealed that the tornado was initially slapped with an F3 rating but later upgraded to F4 but that the damage results of it were "accidentally" discarded a year or so after the event. Similar stuff happened with the Hoover, Allison and Kellerville, TX tornadoes of 6/8/1995 too. Sounds like another Vilonia deal happened here.