Rated high end EF-4 with 190mph winds. 10mph shy of EF-5. Now before you ask, I don't know how they can tell the difference in 190mph vs 200mph vs 180mph.
Rolling Fork Tornado
- Thread starter Hugh's Burner Phone
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The actual depth a pine straw needle penetrates a telephone pole*******
Seriously though, my thoughts and prayers are with my fellow Mississippians. Our state has seen far too many nautral event devastations for far too many decades
I went to an elementary school out of state that a tornado had destroyed a few years earlier (school was out).
There was a framed section of chalkboard with a splinter embedded in it.
Amazing. What I find equally phenomenal is how "knife-like" the winds can be -- in other words, one-half of a structure can be completely devastated while the other half looks "untouched"
Question. Is that strictly the internal speed of the tornado or does that in any way factor in the storm was moving at 60mph ?
even more unbelievable than that is how sometimes things within a structure are completely intact while things all around it are obliterated
There's no way to determine how much the forward speed of the tornado affects total wind speed. The rating is just based off the damage that it is done.
We had relatives on the coast when Camille hit. I took a Polaroid of pine needles sticking half way through a stop sign. More current, guy I know in Amory lost his entire garage roof last week. A fiberglass canoe that was leaning against the outside back wall of the garage is still leaning against the garage.
2 speeds. Wind speeds in the vortex which is what the 190 would be and then the speed of the storm from getting from sat rolling fork to Aberdeen. I think that was around 45 mph.
This was taken last Sunday in Rolling Fork…. A sweatshirt embedded in a tire.
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EF scale is pretty much all based on damage assessments. You don't see certain EF-5 effects it's not EF-5.
When the F5 hit Smithville, my Mom went by my brother's house before the storm and dropped some cornbread on the kitchen bar on a covered paper plate. His house had a couple of walls partially standing, while his neighbors across the street had foundations and rubble.
The bar was the only thing standing in the kitchen with an untouched plate of Saran wrap-covered cornbread.
The bar was the only thing standing in the kitchen with an untouched plate of Saran wrap-covered cornbread.
Since we're trading weird stories one of my uncles many years ago had one hit his neighborhood. He has a typical ranch style house. On one side it took the roof down to decking. On the other side it didn't even blow the pine needles off the roof.
Friends of ours owned the Piggly Wiggly in Smithville. When we went to help after the storm there wasn’t a single piece of the building standing , no roof, no walls and very little in sight. 75% of the groceries were still on the shelves. You could have taken a grocery cart and shopped
In 1989, before the Enhanced Fujita scale was introduce, the tornado that hit south Huntsville was rated a high end F-4 with, as I recall, winds of 260. After the studies that resulted in the enhanced scale, the wind speeds would be nowhere near that high. I've not seen any numbers as to what the speed really was estimated to be for that storm, but it's all an educated estimate. It's just that winds were way overrated before the EF scale came about, and it's possible they're underrated now.
The highest wind speed measured by Doppler radar was 302 mph in Oklahoma. I seem to remember that "Doppler on Wheels" measured 315 in Moore, Oklahoma but that may now be considered erroneous. There may have been higher speeds (such as in Greensburg, Kansas) but there were no measurements available.
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I would have loved to have known the actual wind speeds in the Smithville Tornado. The fact it lifted that truck as far as it did and bounced it off that water tower was incredible.
I was in Rolling Fork and Silver City last week as part of the relief effort. Rolling Fork reminds me of the coast after Katrina after. Ruble everywhere and trees stripped of bark and limbs. There are several wooden bear statues around Rolling Fork and statues of Teddy and Holt, they all made it through without major damage, the museum was heavily damaged though. The debris fields were huge, farmers had crews out in fields picking up tin, wood and tons of other debris to get ready for planting. You can see the path on Hwy 35 between Vaiden and Hwy 82, on I55 and on Hwy 82 on the east of Winona.
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