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- Tornado Talk Weekly (August 14, 2023)
Tornado Talk Weekly (August 14, 2023)
Wow! What a trip!
Company Updates!
From Owner, Jen Narramore
The Tornado Talk team has made it back from the whirlwind trip south to research for our summaries on the April 3-4, 1974 Super Outbreak project! There are so many things we learned, and we gathered tons of data. We also had the opportunity to meet many folks from various communities who helped us gather information. Most of our time was spent in Alabama and we visited places like Guin and Jasper. We also traveled to locations hit by tornadoes in the 2011 Super Outbreak. We visited several memorials in towns like Rainsville, Cullman and Tuscaloosa. We are left overwhelmed in a good way and we are motivated to get started on our summaries!
Because of the trip we are a bit delayed on three new FREE summaries. Those will trickle out over the next few weeks.
This Week In Tornado History!
August 14: On this day in 1898: An F4 tornado moved 20 miles through parts of Deuel County, SD. Grazulis documents eight fatalities, this includes five members of one family killed at their farm.
August 15: In 2016, an EF2 tornado hit near Whitestown, IN. Extensive damage occurred to trees and a barn.
Image from NWS Indianapolis.
August 16: An estimated F3 tornado moved NNW through Ashley Heights, NC in 1928. Five homes, a store and a cotton gin were destroyed. Path length less than a mile. Associated with a tropical storm. Two were killed, 20 injured.
August 17: Seven tornadoes were produced by Hurricane Danny on August 17, 1985. One of those was an F2 that caused extensive damage in Spartanburg County, SC. Nine homes and 38 mobile homes were destroyed. There were 39 injuries.
Image from newspapers.com.
August 18: In 1880, an estimated F2 crossed an unknown distance in Cass County, ND. There was at least one fatality documented by Grazulis. A man was killed in his destroyed home 14 miles SSW of Fargo, on the Sheyenne River.
August 19: Tropical Storm Fay spawned an EF2 tornado around 1:30 AM EDT, in Wellington, FL on August 19, 2008. The most intense damage occurred at the Palm Beach Equine Clinic. A heavy trailer was tossed 40 yards.
August 20: A QLCS moved across Iowa on the early morning hours of August 20, 2019. It produced four tornadoes. The strongest was an EF3 that hit near Lacona. Metal buildings were leveled.
Twister Tales!
We had the opportunity to drive through Tuscaloosa on our tornado history trip. We traveled through Peterson and Holt and then angled down through T-Town. It was heartbreaking to drive through neighborhoods that had been destroyed by the 2011 tornado. You can see a complete change in the landscape with open spaces where buildings used to be.
We drove to 31 Beverly Heights. This is where Will Stevens, Loryn Brown and Danielle Downs were killed. We tell their story in our summary series about this event.
From the summary, “A large oak tree crashed onto the home, causing the second story to collapse onto the bottom floor. First responders found the friends under the debris. They had not survived. In an article in AL.com, “Will had been found protectively embracing Danielle and Loryn, their hands clasped tightly in his.”
Article of the Week!
Wildfires on the island of Maui in Hawaii
From the CIMSS Satellite Blog: “GOES-18 (GOES-West) 5-minute images of Day Land Cloud Fire RGB, Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm), Fire Temperature RGB and “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) with an overlay of Fire Power derived product (a component of the GOES Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm FDCA) (above) showed thermal signatures associated with wildfires on the island of Maui in Hawai`i during the afternoon and evening hours (from 2:01 PM to 11:01 PM, local time) on 08 August 2023 — particularly near Lahaina (the West Maui Fire), where that large wildfire (which began to rapidly intensify around 0121 UTC on 09 August, or 3:21 PM local time on 08 August) caused extensive damage and forced evacuations, with at least 93 fatalities being reported.”
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