April 12 Severe Event

[the ghost of leroy]

Why did you leave your town to drive to a disaster zone to gawk during a pandemic?

[magpiemaniac]

45 minutes ago, cheese007 said:

"It's OK we're in the RFD" followed by something slamming into their vehicle makes me wonder about their chasing abilities...

25 minutes ago, btownheel said:

The fact that they were trying to chase a rain wrapped major tornado at what appeared to be 70 ish mph makes me wonder even more.  That's Russian roulette for all intents and purposes.

RFD = Real F****** Dumb

[Calderon]

So how many TOR Emergencies did we wind up with from this outbreak, nearly 2 dozen?

[WxKnurd]

Coworkers neighborhood in Seneca

[burrel2]

I resisted the urge to drive to Seneca today even though it’s less than 10 miles from my house. Figure I’ll check it out in a few days after emergency services have finished what they need to do.

 

i did drive to the pharmacy today and it appears the tornado made it to approximately 12 mile recreation area as there were dozens of trees down/snapped right there with a tornado look to them.  If you plot the points from there to the Seneca damage the tornado path line intersects  my house. Luckily it appears to have lifted right around the 12 mile rec area which is about 1.5 miles  before reaching home. Whew! Explains the large rigid insulation panel fragments  all over my property though as they must have been carried straight here from the borg plant and fell out when the tornado lifted. I didn’t see those panels/fragments anywhere else on my drive.

[Buckethead]

000
NOUS42 KGSP 132122
PNSGSP
GAZ010-017-018-026-028-029-NCZ033-035>037-048>053-056>059-062>065-
068>072-082-501>510-SCZ001>014-019-140930-

Public Information Statement
National Weather Service Greenville-Spartanburg SC
522 PM EDT Mon Apr 13 2020

...NWS DAMAGE SURVEY FOR EF3 TORNADO EVENT...

Start Location...3 SSE Westminster in Oconee County SC
End Location...2 W Central in Pickens County SC
Date...04/13/2020
Estimated Time...03:20 AM EDT
Maximum EF-Scale Rating...EF3
Estimated Maximum Wind Speed...160 mph
Maximum Path Width...900.0 yards
Path Length...16.66 miles
Beginning Lat/Lon...34.6175 / -83.0834
Ending Lat/Lon...34.7329 / -82.8263
* Fatalities...1
* Injuries...0

...Summary...
A  large and significant tornado passed through parts of Oconee
and Pickens Counties early Monday morning, beginning south of
Westminster, and ending north of Clemson.  Maximum structural
damage to houses and a large warehouse in the area indicate peak
winds near 160 MPH, for a strong EF3 rating. Damage exists over a
wide swath, and the width of the tornado was at least a half mile.
There is one known fatality, numerous injuries, and 2 people still
missing at the time of this statement.


$$

[burrel2]

900 yards wide... wowzers. Not exactly your run of the mill squall line spin up.  

[Chinook]

Storm-based warnings for the last 3 days.  I heard there were 141 tornado warnings in 24 hours.

 

 

[09-10 analogy]

This is possibly the worst outbreak for SC since 1984? 

[janetjanet998]

so....................

how soon is  too soon for someone to start a thread about this weekends potential

 

 

[brianc33710]

I haven't been able to keep up today. Did the SPC expand the moderate risk N & E? Much of what happened later was in the "enhanced" risk.

[OhioWX]

 

[burrel2]

The giant B from the borg plant sign im Seneca was found in a yard in liberty, sc. that’s roughly 15 miles away from the plant. 

[nwohweather]

Definitely lived up to the billing. One of the great severe outbreaks I've ever been apart of

[lilj4425]

4 hours ago, the ghost of leroy said:

Why did you leave your town to drive to a disaster zone to gawk during a pandemic?

Because I can.

[JasonOH]

Bassfield is a prelim EF4. The trailing tornado is prelim EF3.  (Thanks to Andy for the correction. I got my counties all messed up)
 

 

[LansingWeather]

6 minutes ago, lilj4425 said:

Because I can.

I was gonna say that too, but I held my tongue.

[andyhb]

17 minutes ago, JasonOH said:

Bassfield is a prelim EF4. The trailing tornado is prelim EF2. 
 

 

Tornado from second supercell is prelim EF3. The first tornado from the lead supercell (same that produced the Bassfield EF4) is EF2 (in Walthall County). Just wanted to clarify since this all is quite confusing indeed.

[JasonOH]

Since I was confused earlier here is a tweet with the tracks

 

[DanLarsen34]

 

[DanLarsen34]

Just now, DanLarsen34 said:

 

The lead violent tornado is going to have a legit shot at EF-5 once they’ve completed the survey of the worst affected areas. This is unreal damage.

[MUWX]

The only thing holding that storm back is the quality of the construction. The vegetation damage is very high end. 

[DanLarsen34]

1 minute ago, MUWX said:

The only thing holding that storm back is the quality of the construction. The vegetation damage is very high end. 

Had the same thought, but lest we forget that tornadoes can still occasionally get an EF-5 rating based off of vegetation damage. It’s rare, but there is precedent for it if the other contextual evidence supports such a rating. 

[DanLarsen34]

I know we discussed this earlier, but it bears repeating: this was a major outbreak. There’s a good chance we had 60-100 tornadoes in a 24 hour period, with several intense ones. It’s even possible we end up with 3-6 violent tornadoes when all is set and done. 
 

it may not have been the multiple discrete cell outbreak some were expecting, but we still ended up having one of the higher-end tornado events of the past 20-30 years yesterday. 

[DanLarsen34]

 

[JasonOH]

Great twitter thread about the NWS warning process for at embedded supercell that produced the crazy radar imagery last night in SC. 
 

 

[Wmsptwx]

Seems like a lot of 170 type Ef 4s I believe same as Tenn tornado earlier this year and the Beauregard tornado of 2019.

[Buckeye05]

2 hours ago, DanLarsen34 said:

 

This is one of the cleanest sweeps I've ever seen, and the best candidate for EF5 I've seen in years. Notice how not only is the foundation is clean of debris, the whole area is clean of debris, and there is no recognizable directional debris pattern. That is indicative of a remarkably violent tornado. Also note that all plumbing fixtures are all completely sheared off and missing as well. Most importantly, there is a close up video of the foundation perimeter on youtube, and not only is the house well-anchored, but the anchor bolts are bent flat against the slab from the force of the walls being violently ripped away. The only thing keeping me from saying with certainty that this is EF5 damage, is that there is some vegetation on the property that is suspiciously untouched, with quite a few leaves remaining. However, I'm wondering if these non-defoliated limbs and trees blew around the back side of the circulation from an area that wasn't affected by as violent of winds. Also not seeing any crazy grass scouring, but in any case, this is a candidate. We'll just have to see.

[Windspeed]

RE: Discrete, semi-discrete and QLCS cells.. They can all produce violent tornadoes when you have intense parameters like CAPE and bulk shear. There was a period of time yesterday that when it appeared convection was going to go more linear that many, myself included, imagined the event was going to bust. Some to the point of it's going to be a flop mentality. Yet clearly beyond the two main discretes that produced the preliminary EF3 and EF4 twisters in MS, we are going to be presented with numerous violent tornadoes that were produced by quasi-linear cells. We have to realize or change thinking that just because an event doesn't produce the classic string pearls or 5-10 long-tracking individual discretes, it is somehow less of an event. This one in particular wasn't just an outbreak, but a very infamously memorable one. The parameters were just nuts and what we got was indicative of them.

[Buckeye05]

Just now, Windspeed said:

RE: Discrete, semi-discrete and QLCS cells.. They can all produce violent tornadoes when you have intense parameters like CAPE and bulk shear. There was a period of time yesterday that when it appeared convection was going to go more linear that many, including myself, imagined the event was going to bust. Some to the point of it's going to be a flop mentality. Yet clearly beyond the two main discretes that produced the preliminary EF3 and EF4 twisters in MS, we are going to be presented with numerous violent tornadoes that were produced by quasi-linear cells. We have to realize or change thinking that just because an event doesn't produce the classic string of 5-10 long-tracking discretes, it isn't somehow less of an event. This wasn't just an outbreak, but a very infamously memorable one. The parameters were just nuts and what we got was indicative of them.

Good point. I've noticed that in certain setups, storm mode doesn't effect the overall outcome much. When conditions are favorable enough, semi-discrete and QLCS structures can spit out numerous strong tornadoes, and even long-tracked ones. Strong QLCS tornadoes are more common than I think many realize. This seems to be especially true with Dixie severe events.