Pecos Hank
patreon
Free Download: THE FASTEST - MOVING TORNADO ON RECORD
🕑 Added 2023-11-05 23:37:23 +0000 UTCHere's a little something extra special. This is the data poster we used to calculate the fastest - moving tornado on record. Besides providing an overview of the incredible forward moving velocity, it also turned out to be an interesting work of art. Closer inspection reveals a number of neato details.
Above is Skip Talbot and Jennifer Brindley's location. They were the closest and had the best perpendicular vantage. It was Skip and Jennifer who made the observation that this tornado was moving exceptionally fast. Using two other chaser's footage, Skip calculated the tornado to be moving 90 mph and posted a diagram on facebook that went largely unnoticed. My perspective was more in line with the tornado's path and thus it didn't appear to be moving exceptionally fast. In 2019 I skeptically confronted Skip about this. He's generally not one to make such errors. Long story short, Dr Anton, Dr. Tracie, Skip, Jennifer and I decided to revisit this case.
I spent weeks meticulously surveying UTC time synched footage of the tornado passing objects like trees, pylons and structures. This particular spot was extra frustrating because my calculations would not align with the NWS's damage path. No matter how much analysis I did, the results would not match. It was Dr. Anton that said... "Maybe the NWS data is wrong." Hello! Eventually, Dr. Anton was able to find a scar the tornado left on the Earth on Google Maps that confirmed I had the correct damage path.
Above you can see the pylons and tree groves that were imperative to calculating this tornado's precise location.
Above is the fastest portion of this tornado's life. You can see the 4 vantage points intersecting and cross checking analysis. At times the vortex was sharply visible as it passed objects. Other times the exact vortex location at the surface was obscured in debris and thus denoted with a margin of error +/- X frs (frames).
Here are Dr. Anton's velocity calculations using my analysis. All five of us greatly contributed to these findings and I believe Skip is working with Anton publishing these results... At the slow, slow speed of science.
Attached below is the large digital file for you to download. If you decide to print it, I recommend printing it 24" x 36." The fonts are tiny and there's a lot of detail that might get lost in a smaller print.
From the heart,
Hank
Comments
Celton
Interesting, makes for a fantastic poster graphic to hang up! Your findings regarding the NWS survey track are not that uncommon. The NWS does a lot of great work but when they go to do a survey they sometimes rush through it (especially during rural portions of a tornadoes track) because they have other things to get done back at the office, especially during significant multiday severe weather periods like this event was. Some errors are more egregious then others but its perfectly fine for 95% of tornado tracks. Its just something to keep in mind if your going to being doing forensic level analysis of the paths, your going to find mistakes.
Mike Castles
You are da man, this is very cool.
