1953 ORH Tornado

[ORH_wxman]

Actually, this photo was from the Beecher/Flint tornado the day before (June 8, 1953). I have updated my show and HOPE that our IT at the office uploads it before the anniversary. I added some photos of Flint/Beecher (including this one), plus had to remove all references that the tornado was an F5. Thanks to the re-evaluation team that was held in 2005 (I believe), it was kept as an F4. (The photo above will be in my updated show.)

Dr. Greg Forbes was on that team (yes of TWC fame, and formerly of Penn State as I recall). I was invited to present at the National Weather Association Annual Meeting in Louisville a few years ago, That year, they had a special Historical themed presentation session of several national and regional major storms, and they felt that the Flint and Worcester tornadoes warranted this recognition. I re-tooled my Worcester show to include Flint, and Dr. Forbes was there (so was Dr. Joe Schaefer <sp?> recently retired from the Storm Prediction Center). They had interesting comments on their perspectives on these tornadoes. I had a lot of great feedback after that show.

<soapbox time> IMHO, with the research I did on this show, I truly feel this WAS an F5 tornado, as Will does. The debarked tree in the show was such evidence. The "no evidence" of the type of building construction and materials used is BS. When you look at the new show, I got some new photos of the damage of the BRICK building on Assumption College's (now Quinsigamond) campus. PLEASE...the tornado took off a large section of the 2nd and 3rd floors of that building!!! Many other buildings were of STRONG construction, even with NO records. <off my soapbox>

There is also at least one "new" photo of the tormado as well, one I know you guys will LOVE!!! I'll let you know if/when it gets updated on our website.

--Turtle

Ahh, thanks for the correction...didn't realize that one pic of damage was the Flint tornado. The damage in the two storms was similar regardless.

Yeah the damage to the old brick building at Assumption was pretty damning evidence too of the strength. I'm not sure if its still there, but not too long ago (maybe less than 10 ago), you could still see where the old bricks and the new bricks were when they rebuilt the building after the tornado occurred. There was a color difference about halfway up. I should go check and see if it is still visible.

[Typhoon Tip]

Not to be outdone, I believe there was a picture in the Joplin thread of a chair stuck in a concrete wall feet first.

Here it is:

http://www.americanw...post__p__716331

yeah, not a shocker. F3 damage did this once -

[Ed Lizard]

Did someone here finally figure out if the EML made it all the way to New England?

Did they launch soundings then? Back in the age of tubes, it'd be an awfully big sonde, and w/o GPS I'd think someone would have to follow it through a glass to estimate wind speed, but I'd think they had sondes by then...

[HoarfrostHubb]

Why do so many websites list this tornado as 90 fatalities. I guess it had 93 then 1 died 2 days later for 94...

[Ed Lizard]

Bump for date.

It seems to come up every now and then during severe season, so I thought I'd make a thread on it. Unfortunately there are only a few known photographs of the storm and obviously no radar images that far back.

There is debate whether it was an F4 or F5, but its remained an F4 over the years.

At any rate, here are some images:

Rutland, MA:

Holden, MA

Worcester, MA:

Sfc map around time storm formed