weunice

Now that we can literally "see" almost every tornado from radar we know what we have now. Furthermore, with the ready availability of cell phone cameras and whatnot we have seen a drastic increase in weak tornadoes reported. Let's face it, you all watch the chases in the south. You tend to get a whole lot of three things: 

1. Rain wrapped
2. Night time
3. Trees

At least you can see in the plains so historically it might have seemed obvious to us that was tornado alley. I don't doubt a shift to the SE so don't get me wrong but I wonder to the extent that this has always been the case. There have been some epic tornado outbreaks in the south long before climate change was involved. I am thinking of a few oldies like the April 24, 1908 outbreak and the Enigma Outbreak just to name a couple. 

I am an armchair chaser as well. Often though, storms in the southeast, particularly closer to the gulf look more like this. 

https://twitter.com/ScottieWAFB/status/1136661292700319745

This is why I doubt I will ever see a tornado in my neck of the woods in my lifetime (I am ~100 miles from the coast). They are almost all rain wrapped or in poor visibility situations. 

It makes me wonder if a rope tornado(<100 yds wide) could move along the ground at 70+mph and still do EF5 damage. Has anything like that ever occured?

I don't know but the Elie Manitoba F5 was not very wide when it was filmed destroying the homes that earned it that rating.