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My top 25 tornado outbreaks in the Lakes/OV


Hoosier

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I've put together a list of some of the more notable tornado outbreaks in the Lakes/OV region from 1950-2013.  I started off with well over 50 events and have narrowed it down to 25, which wasn't easy as there was a lot to choose from.  Before I get into the countdown, some rules and notes...

 

For purposes of this thread, I define the subforum region as the entire states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio.  Additionally, the area of Minnesota covered by ARX, the area of Iowa covered by ARX and DVN, and the area of Missouri covered by DVN, LSX and PAH (basically se MN, e IA, e MO). 

 

Things I looked at to come up with the rankings for each outbreak were number of tornadoes, total path length of all tornadoes, number of strong tornadoes, number of violent tornadoes and number of fatalities.  These categories are subject to error (we all know about the issues with rating tornado intensity but path length can be a source of error as well as some tornadoes were given artificially long path lengths even if there were clear breaks in damage, particularly in older events) but this is the way I went about it.  Did not want to mess with path width or anything else.  In some cases, other factors such as time of year/climatology were considered in coming up with rankings.

 

Generally speaking, I used a 6 hour rule in determining the number of tornadoes for each event.  That is, if there was more than a 6 hour break in between tornado occurrences, any tornadoes that occurred after that break did not count toward the total.  However, I bent this rule in one case which will be explained when the time comes.  Tornadoes that began outside the subforum and crossed in were counted, but only the portion that happened in this subforum was counted toward the total path length and fatalities.  The same process applies to tornadoes that started in this subforum and crossed out.

 

Highly localized outbreaks did not make the list for the most part.  As mentioned at the beginning, it was tough to narrow this down and I may include a list of honorable mentions at the end.  Severeplot images are provided to show tornado tracks and intensities, but the numbers on the bottom of those images will differ from what I have in many cases as Severeplot picks up on tornadoes that happened outside of the subforum boundaries.  Also, any tornadoes that went unrated do not show up on Severeplot.

 

Ok, enough rambling.  Drumroll please.

 

 

#25 - March 5-6, 1961

 

19 tornadoes

325 miles

9 F2+

0 F4+ 

1 fatality

 

 

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Nice work--Looking forward to the rest--

 

 

Thanks.  I'll try to do about 5 per day.

 

It became difficult to rank some of these as numbers were relatively similar in various categories, so you could argue that things could be shifted up or down.  Another issue was how to deal with outbreaks that produced many fatalities but not many tornadoes.  Overall I'd say I placed slightly less emphasis on fatalities compared to the other stuff, and one must bear in mind how much the warning process has improved compared to the early years.  

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#14 - March 11-13, 2006

 

35 tornadoes

345 miles

13 F2+

1 F4+

2 fatalities

 

 

In the first post I mentioned the 6 hour rule that was used.  This is the one case where I bent it as there was a 6 hour and 1 minute gap between the end time and start time of two of the tornadoes in Illinois on March 11 into March 12 (there were actually some tornadoes occurring outside the region during that time).  That is really within the "margin of error" and I felt it silly to get hung up over 1 minute.

 

Many tornadoes occurred just west of the subforum in this event.

 

 

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#10 - January 24, 1967

 

23 tornadoes

140 miles

20 F2+

2 F4+

5 fatalities

 

This was an unusual January outbreak for so far north.  This outbreak is responsible for 2 of the 3 F4s that have occurred in the region in the month of January since 1950. 

 

 

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#9 - December 18, 1957

 

25 tornadoes

191 miles

22 F2+

3 F4+

17 fatalities

 

 

This was a very impressive outbreak especially by December standards.  I wrestled with the order of this and #8 but this one occurred over a much smaller area than #8.   

 

 

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#6 - June 8, 1953

 

9 tornadoes  (1 unrated)

215 miles

8 F2+

4 F4+

142 fatalities

 

 

This event probably had more tornadoes than shown (I guess you can say that in many instances).  The high ranking on my list is largely due to the violent tornado and fatality counts.  The Flint-Beecher tornado is one of five on record in the region to result in over 100 fatalities and the only such tornado in the post 1950 era (1896 St. Louis, 1899 New Richmond WI, 1917 Mattoon-Charleston IL, 1925 Tri State). 

 

 

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Nice list, very interesting! Down to the top five now. One and two are easy to guess, and I imagine 6/2/90 and 11/17/13 will be included as well. After that though, my knowledge of the tornado history of this area becomes a little lacking. 5/25/11 had a whole bunch of tornadoes, but most of them weren't anywhere near the significance of some of the others on on this list. May 18th was somewhat similar with a decent number of tornadoes, but none of real significance, at least in this particular area. Maybe November 22, 1992? That would probably be my guess. Of the remaining five, I'd guess a ranking as follows.

 

5) November 22, 1992

4) November 17, 2013

3) June 2, 1990

2) April 11, 1965

1) April 3, 1974

 

We'll see how well I do!

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Nice list, very interesting! Down to the top five now. One and two are easy to guess, and I imagine 6/2/90 and 11/17/13 will be included as well. After that though, my knowledge of the tornado history of this area becomes a little lacking. 5/25/11 had a whole bunch of tornadoes, but most of them weren't anywhere near the significance of some of the others on on this list. May 18th was somewhat similar with a decent number of tornadoes, but none of real significance, at least in this particular area. Maybe November 22, 1992? That would probably be my guess. Of the remaining five, I'd guess a ranking as follows.

 

April 21st, 1967 (Belvidere/Oak Lawn) is my guess for being the other one out of the top 5. Ranks high on fatalities and number of violent/significant tornadoes.

 

http://www.tornadohistoryproject.com/tornado/1967/4/21/map

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Did the F3 tornado in 1976 hit the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore?  Sandstorm!

No.  That tornado is misplotted on the SPC database.  According to Grazulis, it was an F4 that traveled 25 mi from far east central Lake County near the Ross and Ainsworth communities, across Porter County near South Haven and between Valpo and Chesterton, into NW La Porte County.  It passed S of the Dunes.

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