My Favorite Tornadoes :)

I would like to begin this ranking by acknowledging that all the storms I am about to discuss caused a great loss of life and property, not to mention unquantifiable trauma.

The Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale is a numerical scale from 0-5 which "ranks" a tornado on measured wind speed and level of destruction. The flaw of this system is that a tornado with high winds and other meteorological measurements like pressure and size can be classified very low if it does not cause property damage. This will be important later.

With all that said, let's talk about my favorite tornadoes!

5. El Reno, Oklahoma (2013)

Big boy! The El Reno tornado holds the record for the widest tornado ever recorded at over 2 miles wide. This tornado didn't cause a lot of damage and was classified as an EF3, so it perfectly illustrates the pitfalls of the EF scale as stated above. El Reno gets last place for being enough to make it into the record books, but not being interesting enough to make me watch a thirty minute YouTube video about it.

4. Tri-State tornado (1925)

Only so low on the list because it could actually be a myth. The Tri-State tornado crossed Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois to claim the place of deadliest tornado in American history, and the second deadliest in the world. This tornado also holds the record for longest path and time on the ground. All around, an incredible storm of unknown power, and we will never know if it truly existed or not. Many meteorologists believe this was a series of tornadoes moving along the same storm system rather than a single tornado, but we'll never know. I love an unsolved mystery.

3. Bridge Creek-Moore, Oklahoma (1999)

One of the most well known tornadoes ever, the Bridge Creek-Moore tornado holds the record for fastest winds ever recorded in a tornado at 321 miles per hour. This tornado devastated major areas of Oklahoma, but is mostly remembered for the recorded wind speeds. Respect where respect is due.

2. Midway, Indiana double tornado (1965)

The 1965 Palm Sunday super outbreak is one of the forgotten super outbreaks, but it produced one of the most iconic tornado photos ever: the double funnel tornado in the middle of Midway, Indiana. Seriously, Google it. One of the earliest examples of tornadic photography, and an incredible picture that has been studied by meteorologists ever since. My second favorite tornado picture ever.

1. Jarrell, Texas (1997)

Come on, you know the Dead Man Walking tornado would be number one. This tornado defied everything we know about tornadic activity to take a massive shit on the town of Jarrell, wiping it effectively off the face of the earth. Pavement was sucked out of the ground, skin was peeled from cattle, and houses were reduced to barely a patch of discolored grass. Almost everyone in the town died, and bodies could only be identified through dental records as their faces had been slashed up by the whirling debris.

An EF5 is measured as total destruction, but Jarrell was beyond destruction. Destruction leaves something behind which tells you a home was once there. There was nothing left to prove Jarrell had ever been a town, leaving even first responders confused on where to go in the aftermath. This was annihilation, an extinction. The Dead Man Walking tornado of Jarrell, Texas deserves to be categorized as the first ever EF6. In this essay I will...