This week's tornado vs the 1925 Tri-State
Hey Reader,
I wrote a lengthy post about this week's "Quad-State Tornado" that struck parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky. It's about an 8-minute read and worth your time if this sort of thing interests you like it does me: https://justinharter.com/1925s-tri-state-tornado-vs-2021s-quad-state-tornado/
When I started writing my book about the 1925 Tri-State Tornado, the meteorology was fascinating to me. But more fascinating was our response to it and how people encountered and endoured the storm and its aftermath. For one thing, it was unusualy warm that morning—about 50-60º in most places—and after the tornado passed over it was cold enough it started snowing. Something people had to suffer through by lighting fires inside overturned train cars.
This week's Quad-State tornado killed 90 people, whereast the Tri-State killed 695. Part of that is from better warnings and building standards, but 90 people is still significant.
Our response today is much different, and even how we rate tornados is contentious. For one thing, we rate tornados by how much damage they do to modern building standards. Something many rural places may not have a lot of.
The official record is always going to be somewhat unclear. The 1925 event was hard to measure, there was no radar, and the NWS conservatively calls it at 219 miles. The Quad-State tornado, if it didn't leave the ground about 80 miles in as radar indicates it may have, could be 8 miles longer at 227 miles. Wind speeds, funnel speed, and other measures will take longer to establish.
Either way, the 1925 event was dramatic and terrifying and deadly. And the 2021 event was equally terrifying—at night no less—and tragic. Both will enter the record books for different things and alter how we think about and measure tornados.
Harter Research and Writing
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