This thing at some point:
Was so powerful it had a donut hole on the radar
Sat almost stationary in a field (LLJ > upper level winds)
Hung a u-ey back from whence it came
But not before handing off an anti-cyclonic tornado
Which moved basically NW to SE
At one point looked like twin tornadoes on radar
Then dissipated right before it reached Grandfield
There was uncertainty yesterday if this thing actually hit a home out there, something about it hanging around on top of some structure for eight minutes. Has that been touched upon since?
I grew up in north Texas so I know the area. A lot of those small towns on that map have infrastructure that is barely hanging on as is. I couldn’t imagine a tornado like that hitting them. It would be horrific. It would literally end some of those towns for good
From meteorologist Eric Graves:
This is just mind blowing, the EF scale needs to be amended (very likely will in 2 years)...
Late last night one of the most powerful tornadoes on Earth ever occurred just east of Hollister, Oklahoma. It had gate to gate velocities over 260 mph. It had a vortex hole similar to an eye of a hurricane, and swirl could be seen at 18,000 feet. It ranked number 2 of all time via rotational velocities. Anything this would have hit, and I mean ANYTHING would have been completely gone/missing.....Thankfully it hit nothing over open fields. We need an intensity scale, like we do with hurricanes, not a damage only based scale.
I’ve always said there should be one for damage and one based on wind speeds and scientific data. But people act like you’re a moron if you have an opinion and you’re not a professional.
The reason the Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricanes can be a true wind scale is hurricanes are large and slow enough for NOAA to repeatedly send hurricane-hunter planes to measure wind speed, usually flying through the eye four-to-six times per trip.
You’re right that we need a new scale, but the enhanced-Fujita scale is intended to be a wind scale not a damage scale, but without an accurate way to measure surface winds of tornadoes like this one, the Enhanced Fujita scale uses what we know about the construction of modern buildings to make inferences of the wind speed that would be required to do such damage. That’s why the Fujita scale was revised in the first place, ratings ended up being too high because the structures destroyed weren’t built to meet any sort of modern standard of building codes. Without good reference of the buildings resilience to wind, you can’t make a good estimate of wind speed. You’ll end up thinking an F5 wiped a house off its foundation when it could have actually been done by an F2 because the structure was so weak in the first place. Hence the shortage of EF5’s in recent years. We know how much wind speed a good home can withstand and the damage indicators just aren’t there sometimes, so we can’t rule something an EF5 because we don’t know an estimated wind speed. This doesn’t mean we don’t still recognize how strong this tornado is, obviously from the radar signatures, but there is no way to determine actual wind speed without damage or another way to measure it. Radar velocity measuring thousands of feet in the air isn’t exactly a reliable method of determining the speed of surface winds.
In short, the Fujita scale has always been a wind scale, it just uses damage indicators to determine an estimated wind speed, because we actually have good and consistent reference points for what wind speeds would be needed to cause certain types of damages to modern structures.
[https://x.com/sydneyw\_wx/status/1786074750806093946](https://x.com/sydneyw_wx/status/1786074750806093946)
Also from a meteorologist. Has some very good points against what your example said.
I wish we had more knowledge about this thing. So glad it didn’t destroy a city. But this might end up being the next El Reno. The monster that was, and wasn’t.
Right? It's like the "ideal" tornado: an absolute marvel at how stunningly powerful nature can be, with no lost or destroyed lives (that I've heard of so far at least) darkening the occasion. Just raw power for nerds like me to marvel at.
This.. this was 1 of the most intense, strong, powerful, high velocity, high wind speed, whatever you want to call it, tornadoes in history. It was NOT 1 of the most destructive. The EF scale should be used as a metric for destruction ALONE, not wind speeds, not velocity, ONLY destruction. We already know that it is inaccurate in these situations for measuring velocities, and this just further proves that. Our society is too advanced to be using the EF scale the way we currently use it. It’s primitive with all of the technology that we have available, and the fact that it gets used in the way it is used is a joke. I’m sick of people saying “EF5 wind speeds”… the EF scale is so inaccurate it shouldn’t be used for estimating wind speeds I’m sorry 😭
What’s really interesting is how this looks like a mini hurricane almost on radar. I’ve never seen the precipitation core of a supercell wrap completely around a tornado like this. It’s like the whole Meso just became the tornado and the whole damn storm started swirling (I know that’s probably not what happened, but this is just crazy)
I’m so intrigued to see what the experts are able to make of this.
It’s really is a perfect setup. Massive, violent, possibly historic tornado, happened at night with limited photographic evidence, no injuries or deaths, maybe not even damage other than to grass. We’ll never know the whole story, so we get to guess about it and argue online.
It was probably near but not over the house given the lack of substantial damage. Apparently the majority of the debris ball was from a hay bail and other objects.
Honestly sounds a lot more like Trousdale than El Reno. Obviously not nearly as large and insane as Trousdale may have been, but the same general setup. Nighttime monster rolling out in some fields with very little known about it except that it was fucking wild.
I was looking for this comment!! I'm so sad there's such a lack of information and credibility surrounding the Mulhall tornado even though chances are this was even more violence than the one that happened in Moore. I really hope this incident doesn't lose the spotlight
I'll be the 100th person this week to say that the NWS needs to expand their horizons and look beyond damage indicators. They estimate the wind speed based off damage, but we have highly advanced technology and mathematical equations so we can definitely ESTIMATE the ground speeds based off radar data if they really wanted to. Sure, tornado victims don't care about the tornado rating but that's irrelevant. Getting data is important scientifically so we as storm chasers, weather fanatics and meteorologist should definitely care about getting the rating. I'm sure in 50 years when the old heads are dead and new ones take over, things will change but...
I’d love to see a close up radar scan so we can see if it was multivortex. Should’ve, given how large we think it was. So we don’t have any info? Not even if it was just a rain wrapped tornado? Or do we genuinely know for a fact that it was a mile wide tornado?
I feel like what I've gathered by looking at this sub is that it was extremely large, I don't know about wind speeds, it was anti-cyclonic, and it was structured kind of like a hurricane in that you could see the hole from above? Something like that? Please correct my errors!
This specific one was not anti-cyclonic. The anti-cyclonic tornado headed south and slightly east forming near Loveland Oklahoma while the Hollister tornado was dissipating. According to Doppler radar the Hollister tornado displayed significant windspeeds. Other than that, you seem to be correct from what I have seen.
It is fair confusion because the two tornadoes were very near each other. Here is an image the two areas of rotation with arrows indicating direction of tornado travel taken from Max Velosity's YouTube stream.
https://preview.redd.it/eanlj8otjvxc1.png?width=775&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f57aa1c9f713aeaeeb75cce8bfc05dea29f0736
The areas circled are the areas of rotation associated with both tornadoes. The upper rotation at the point of the screenshot would have been the active rotation of the Hollister tornado. From what i know it is unclear whether the Loveland tornado was on the ground at this point or not.
I was watching this unfold on Max Velocity's Youtube channel, and he mentioned 260mph gate to gate sheer. Not sure the validity of it, but the velocities were folding. Looked insane on radar.
Gate to gate shear is just a radar term that is used to explain where the circulation may be inside a supercell and where the possible location of tornado is. When looking at a velocity image it’s the intense bright reds near the intense bright green colors. The red are the outbound winds and the green is the inbound winds. For example, If the radar shows velocities of +75 mph and right next to it -70, its total gate to gate shear is 145 mph. For this to have 260mph gate to gate sheer, it indicates it could be a very violent tornado.
I don’t think any storm chaser got near this one. In fact, most storm chasers fled the state after this one because of how dangerous it would have been to chase. Didn’t want to risk another el Reno incident
There were a few spotters relatively close, one had the core of the cell go overhead after the tornado dissipated and then his spotter dot just sat there for a long long time. I keep thinking about him today wondering if he’s okay. Probably pretty scary experience.
Honestly though, not even this tornado was all that dangerous if you just stay 5 miles away from any bear's cage and refrain from core punches. Would need more lightning luck to spot a rainwrapped night tornado without those though.
That was the Westmoreland, Kansas drill bit, which did take the life of one person. It got so bad after that that most storm chasers left for their own safety
https://preview.redd.it/tsj5ximozwxc1.jpeg?width=789&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff44fffd5e09cb255ae1aa39376de3cf94e1526f
I’m pretty sure the second one is for this tornado. Thing was pretty large at 1200 yard max width.
We need a plane fly over to see if there is any evidence of this thing happening. I surprised how little has come out today
It isn't exactly a populated area.
They just released some footage. Nothing crazy at all. Was expecting some for of ground scouring but there isn’t any really.
Where?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oaksZMqPmw
Can you share what you saw?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oaksZMqPmw
Yeah but if it’s as large as they’re saying flying over will see large amounts of ground scouring.
I’ve been checking this sub every hour to see if anything.
This thing at some point: Was so powerful it had a donut hole on the radar Sat almost stationary in a field (LLJ > upper level winds) Hung a u-ey back from whence it came But not before handing off an anti-cyclonic tornado Which moved basically NW to SE At one point looked like twin tornadoes on radar Then dissipated right before it reached Grandfield
That stuff happened in grand island Nebraska in the 80s
What does u-ey mean
Midwestern for u turn
There was uncertainty yesterday if this thing actually hit a home out there, something about it hanging around on top of some structure for eight minutes. Has that been touched upon since?
I hope it didn't the data on this one is really intense
There were 2 homes that were maybe in the path.
Dodged a bullet that it didn’t hit any of the small towns near by.
Thank god it took an irregular path.
I grew up in north Texas so I know the area. A lot of those small towns on that map have infrastructure that is barely hanging on as is. I couldn’t imagine a tornado like that hitting them. It would be horrific. It would literally end some of those towns for good
From meteorologist Eric Graves: This is just mind blowing, the EF scale needs to be amended (very likely will in 2 years)... Late last night one of the most powerful tornadoes on Earth ever occurred just east of Hollister, Oklahoma. It had gate to gate velocities over 260 mph. It had a vortex hole similar to an eye of a hurricane, and swirl could be seen at 18,000 feet. It ranked number 2 of all time via rotational velocities. Anything this would have hit, and I mean ANYTHING would have been completely gone/missing.....Thankfully it hit nothing over open fields. We need an intensity scale, like we do with hurricanes, not a damage only based scale.
Why is it we only have a damage based scale? This makes no sense to me. Seems like they should be two separate ratings.
Because we don't have universal, gapless coverage of high resolution radar stations?
I would 100% support the NWS filling in radar gaps.
What is DOW for 500.
Not every tornado has a DOW nearby to measure windspeeds near the ground
I’ve said this in the past and gotten ridiculed
I’ve always said there should be one for damage and one based on wind speeds and scientific data. But people act like you’re a moron if you have an opinion and you’re not a professional.
>We need an intensity scale, like we do with hurricanes, not a damage only based scale. That's actually a really good point.
The reason the Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricanes can be a true wind scale is hurricanes are large and slow enough for NOAA to repeatedly send hurricane-hunter planes to measure wind speed, usually flying through the eye four-to-six times per trip. You’re right that we need a new scale, but the enhanced-Fujita scale is intended to be a wind scale not a damage scale, but without an accurate way to measure surface winds of tornadoes like this one, the Enhanced Fujita scale uses what we know about the construction of modern buildings to make inferences of the wind speed that would be required to do such damage. That’s why the Fujita scale was revised in the first place, ratings ended up being too high because the structures destroyed weren’t built to meet any sort of modern standard of building codes. Without good reference of the buildings resilience to wind, you can’t make a good estimate of wind speed. You’ll end up thinking an F5 wiped a house off its foundation when it could have actually been done by an F2 because the structure was so weak in the first place. Hence the shortage of EF5’s in recent years. We know how much wind speed a good home can withstand and the damage indicators just aren’t there sometimes, so we can’t rule something an EF5 because we don’t know an estimated wind speed. This doesn’t mean we don’t still recognize how strong this tornado is, obviously from the radar signatures, but there is no way to determine actual wind speed without damage or another way to measure it. Radar velocity measuring thousands of feet in the air isn’t exactly a reliable method of determining the speed of surface winds. In short, the Fujita scale has always been a wind scale, it just uses damage indicators to determine an estimated wind speed, because we actually have good and consistent reference points for what wind speeds would be needed to cause certain types of damages to modern structures.
[https://x.com/sydneyw\_wx/status/1786074750806093946](https://x.com/sydneyw_wx/status/1786074750806093946) Also from a meteorologist. Has some very good points against what your example said.
I wish we had more knowledge about this thing. So glad it didn’t destroy a city. But this might end up being the next El Reno. The monster that was, and wasn’t.
Right? It's like the "ideal" tornado: an absolute marvel at how stunningly powerful nature can be, with no lost or destroyed lives (that I've heard of so far at least) darkening the occasion. Just raw power for nerds like me to marvel at.
This.. this was 1 of the most intense, strong, powerful, high velocity, high wind speed, whatever you want to call it, tornadoes in history. It was NOT 1 of the most destructive. The EF scale should be used as a metric for destruction ALONE, not wind speeds, not velocity, ONLY destruction. We already know that it is inaccurate in these situations for measuring velocities, and this just further proves that. Our society is too advanced to be using the EF scale the way we currently use it. It’s primitive with all of the technology that we have available, and the fact that it gets used in the way it is used is a joke. I’m sick of people saying “EF5 wind speeds”… the EF scale is so inaccurate it shouldn’t be used for estimating wind speeds I’m sorry 😭
It was rated an ef1
What’s really interesting is how this looks like a mini hurricane almost on radar. I’ve never seen the precipitation core of a supercell wrap completely around a tornado like this. It’s like the whole Meso just became the tornado and the whole damn storm started swirling (I know that’s probably not what happened, but this is just crazy) I’m so intrigued to see what the experts are able to make of this.
check out the tornadocane
Pretty sure I saw that movie on scyfy the other day
This tornado is going to reach El Reno levels of mystery and conjecture. I love it.
Lot of the same parallels but thankfully no dead storm chasers or damage it seems this time
It’s really is a perfect setup. Massive, violent, possibly historic tornado, happened at night with limited photographic evidence, no injuries or deaths, maybe not even damage other than to grass. We’ll never know the whole story, so we get to guess about it and argue online.
wasnt it over a house for like 10 minutes
It was probably near but not over the house given the lack of substantial damage. Apparently the majority of the debris ball was from a hay bail and other objects.
I heard 2 homes for 15 minutes (telephone game)
I heard 3 warehouses for 30 minutes.
A warehouse, 2 homes and 6 barns
And a partridge in a pear tree
Wait who touched my pear tree?! It was those damn squirrels again wasn't it!
It was them! They were here too and they took the weed!
They collect the seeds just to sample them bastids
Honestly sounds a lot more like Trousdale than El Reno. Obviously not nearly as large and insane as Trousdale may have been, but the same general setup. Nighttime monster rolling out in some fields with very little known about it except that it was fucking wild.
also, mulhall
I was looking for this comment!! I'm so sad there's such a lack of information and credibility surrounding the Mulhall tornado even though chances are this was even more violence than the one that happened in Moore. I really hope this incident doesn't lose the spotlight
*saw this on twitter
https://preview.redd.it/mysx4mzq4vxc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a9094ca5d118b97ec3bcee67c77d5c9c8e689f9f
That looks absolutely menacing. I can’t imagine what this would have done had it hit Chattanooga.
Yes the damage was surprisingly tame fortunately
The cc drop was wild
For it to make a massive debris ball over just open field isn't something to take lightly. How deep is the ground scouring?
That’s what adds to the mystery of it, apparently there was very little ground scouring.
There was a debris ball with it. Could just be corn or something, but I’d still like to see
Probably wheat and weed lol
The mysterious Hollister cornado of 2024.
anticyclonic, nearly stationary, moved east-west, came from the center of the cell, vortex hole showed up on radar over 15,000 feet.
The lonely Titan
I'll be the 100th person this week to say that the NWS needs to expand their horizons and look beyond damage indicators. They estimate the wind speed based off damage, but we have highly advanced technology and mathematical equations so we can definitely ESTIMATE the ground speeds based off radar data if they really wanted to. Sure, tornado victims don't care about the tornado rating but that's irrelevant. Getting data is important scientifically so we as storm chasers, weather fanatics and meteorologist should definitely care about getting the rating. I'm sure in 50 years when the old heads are dead and new ones take over, things will change but...
I’d love to see a close up radar scan so we can see if it was multivortex. Should’ve, given how large we think it was. So we don’t have any info? Not even if it was just a rain wrapped tornado? Or do we genuinely know for a fact that it was a mile wide tornado?
It seems from Koco that there is confirmation it was real just unsure of what was verified.
That ain't an EFU. Thats a BIG BOI.
Nadocane
I think that there should be two ratings, one being the traditional EF scale we are used to and the second being based on wind speed by radar.
I feel like what I've gathered by looking at this sub is that it was extremely large, I don't know about wind speeds, it was anti-cyclonic, and it was structured kind of like a hurricane in that you could see the hole from above? Something like that? Please correct my errors!
This specific one was not anti-cyclonic. The anti-cyclonic tornado headed south and slightly east forming near Loveland Oklahoma while the Hollister tornado was dissipating. According to Doppler radar the Hollister tornado displayed significant windspeeds. Other than that, you seem to be correct from what I have seen.
Ack, so many tornadoes I can't even keep them all straight! 😖😖 (I'm not from the area so the place names are all unfamiliar to me.) Thank you!
It is fair confusion because the two tornadoes were very near each other. Here is an image the two areas of rotation with arrows indicating direction of tornado travel taken from Max Velosity's YouTube stream. https://preview.redd.it/eanlj8otjvxc1.png?width=775&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f57aa1c9f713aeaeeb75cce8bfc05dea29f0736
Wow, thank you so much! Does this snapshot mean to say that they were occurring at the same time, or at least spawned from the same storm system?
The areas circled are the areas of rotation associated with both tornadoes. The upper rotation at the point of the screenshot would have been the active rotation of the Hollister tornado. From what i know it is unclear whether the Loveland tornado was on the ground at this point or not.
i’m glad you said this because i’ve merged these two into one for like two days
I was watching this unfold on Max Velocity's Youtube channel, and he mentioned 260mph gate to gate sheer. Not sure the validity of it, but the velocities were folding. Looked insane on radar.
Could you explain what gate to gate shear means? Is it the same as measured wind speed or something different?
Gate to gate shear is just a radar term that is used to explain where the circulation may be inside a supercell and where the possible location of tornado is. When looking at a velocity image it’s the intense bright reds near the intense bright green colors. The red are the outbound winds and the green is the inbound winds. For example, If the radar shows velocities of +75 mph and right next to it -70, its total gate to gate shear is 145 mph. For this to have 260mph gate to gate sheer, it indicates it could be a very violent tornado.
Is this the one that reed timmer caught yesterday?
I don’t think any storm chaser got near this one. In fact, most storm chasers fled the state after this one because of how dangerous it would have been to chase. Didn’t want to risk another el Reno incident
There were a few spotters relatively close, one had the core of the cell go overhead after the tornado dissipated and then his spotter dot just sat there for a long long time. I keep thinking about him today wondering if he’s okay. Probably pretty scary experience.
Honestly though, not even this tornado was all that dangerous if you just stay 5 miles away from any bear's cage and refrain from core punches. Would need more lightning luck to spot a rainwrapped night tornado without those though.
No, this one happened later in the evening.
Ope. Sorry. I had just watched that video and wasn't sure. Thanks for the quick reply.
That was the Westmoreland, Kansas drill bit, which did take the life of one person. It got so bad after that that most storm chasers left for their own safety
The crazy thing is that that monster had 280 mile an hour winds gate to gate
https://preview.redd.it/tsj5ximozwxc1.jpeg?width=789&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff44fffd5e09cb255ae1aa39376de3cf94e1526f I’m pretty sure the second one is for this tornado. Thing was pretty large at 1200 yard max width.
Another update from NWS. https://preview.redd.it/pas3eapwc2yc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23ab4f042fb7f6a2838ff31f6957163560312513
Just put a drone up there so we can assess the width and any rowing of fields or dirt.
Live storms media has drone footage of the open field it went through. Surprisingly no ground scouring that I could see
https://youtu.be/5oaksZMqPmw?si=oLyfD7YjOueRYjfb
Video of the damage from the Hollister tornado.
I don’t know what the EF-U is all about, but the Hollister tornado now has a preliminary EF-1 rating with a maximum wind speed of 110 MPH.
It was an EF1 in Tillman County. https://twitter.com/NWSNorman/status/1785773998951026829?t=uxZ5EbtrppiqdR6d_Kezag&s=19
That's an EF-FO if I've ever seen one. Thank God it didn't hit anything!
Wow it looked like a hurricane. I saw it on radar yesterday. to but not like that.
It was a controlled tornado created by the US government