STRANGEST Tornado Paths

There have been over 100,000 tornadoes documented, these are some of the STRANGEST tornado paths ever recorded.

Check out "tornadoarchive(dot)com" to explore other tornado paths.

If you look in the area surrounding Chicago, there's one tornado that stands out - the 1990 Plainfield F5 . This tornado was a rare F5 tornado that traveled south-east, a majority of the tornadoes in the united states travel northeast. On May 27, 1997 a slender tornado would form north of the town of Jarrell Texas. This tornado would move southwest, and would intensify as it got closer to town. What it would do next was truly disturbing. It would stall over the Double Creek Estates for at least two minutes producing arguably the worst tornado damage ever recorded. The entire sub-division was swept clean, all that was left was mud. A similar tornado would take place near Eureka Kansas on July 6, 2016. The tornado would move southeast and would stall at one location attaining EF3 status. Like the Jarrell tornado, this tornado would do the worst damage where it was moving the slowest. On May 28, 2013 a large tornado would form near Bennington Kansas. This tornado would perform an odd loop, but overall this tornado was well behaved and would only impact a few structures. The 2013 El Reno was another strange tornado, it would change directions, speed up, and would unfortunately be the only tornado in history to take the lives of storm chasers, impacting the Twistex team. The 2011 El Reno would also exhibit strange directional changes. But the best example of a tornado looping would occur only 20 miles away in Moore Oklahoma, where the 2013 Moore tornado would loop, inflicting EF5 level damage on the area where it impacted twice. The 2007 Greensburg EF5 would also loop at the end of its life. At the same time, another, even larger tornado would form, the Trousdale EF3 tornado. Another strange tornado path happened near Funing China, where an EF4 tornado ripped through a heavily populated area in East China. What made this tornado strange was the extreme detail included in the torando's survey, which may have been done with balloon reconnaissance. On July 26, 2014 a tornado would occur in Central Mongolia and is shown to be the only tornado in Mongolia. This tornado was EXTREMELY photogenic, but was it the only tornado in Mongolia's history? No. Mongolia has a long history of tornadoes. Okay, now for the top three STRANGEST tornadoes. Coming in at number three is the Udall Kansas F5 tornado that happened on the night of May 25, 1955. This tornado would zig zag, then would take a sharp turn. Strange, especially considering it was such a strong tornado. Number two is the 2007 Elie Manitoba F5 tornado. This tornado would take many sharp turns and loops. It would do the worst damage at the second loop, where it would obliterate an entire home at F5 strength. The STRANGEST tornado event would happen on the night of June 3, 1980 near the town Grand Island Nebraska. A southeast moving supercell would produce multiple erratic tornados, at one point there would be two tornadoes on the ground at the same time. The strongest tornado would do F4 damage on the south side of town. This event was analyzed by Dr. Ted Fujita, and he would note that many of the tornadoes were actually anti-cyclonic, making 1980 Grand Island Nebraska event even stranger.

[ModestFennec]

The Jarrel F5 really said "F*ck this area in particular"

[thatrandomguycommenting]

The Jarrel tornado imo is the most disturbing, that tornado stalled over that neighborhood and first responders recorded bodies that where "ground up like market beef" worst of all they where told by local weather to not run from the tornado but take cover in their homes which would ultimately kill them.

[xentastic]

The Mongolian tornado is just amazing to look at. It’s literally what I’ve been picturing in my mind of tornados before buildings and humans and just this eerie tornado roaming around in a vast plain of endless land.

[roblxplyr]

imagine hiding in your basement thinking it'll go over you in a matter of seconds and instead it just sits there for a full 2 minutes before moving on

[traemaxwell]

The Jarrell Tornado was so strong that it sucked the asphalt off the roads and scoured the ground up to 18 inches. It simply fascinated me hearing how strong the winds needed to be for this to occur.

[Shrekowski]

I still believe Grand Island's outbreak is one of the most slept on tornadic events on weather youtube, probably due to not a lot of photos or videos existing of the tornado or the aftermath. I was born in '01 so a solid 21 years after and lived in Grand Island for the majority of my life, my mom and grandparents lived through the event and it lives in infamy in the town. Tornado Hill is a huge hill in Grand Island that was built entirely out of debris, covered in soil and planted with grass. One of the neatest characteristics of the town.

You did it well needed justice, Chris. Thank you. As a lifelong resident and average historian

[dannyllerenatv]

The 13 Moore tornado was also a slow mover when it entered Moore, apparently moving around 9 MPH at times. I did not know about the looping part, which is devastating when you consider how large that tornado was. The 13 Moore tornado, however, was eerily "hypnotizing" and photogenic. The 1999 Moore F5 was flat-out evil-looking, almost like a pissed-off Kraken straight out of the sky with all the suction vortices coming out of that thing.

[dieterdelange]

No matter how many times I watch/read about the 1997 Jarrell F5, it always fascinates and terrifies me. It's sad that there is still much about this storm that will never be known. God rest the 27 souls lost that day.

While I agree that the Dead Man Walking photo is creepy, IMO the most terrifying image is of one of the other tornadoes in that outbreak, taken from a slight distance, out in the fields. The funnel is a clear tube, with a huge dust cloud and a massive wall cloud that is almost oval-shaped. One can clearly see the rotation in the wall cloud. It has haunted me since I first learned about Jarrell in 2004.

[deathendings]

Balloon reconnaissance...China...I get it.

[Strype]

[7:35] Imagine being in the middle of that double loop. As long as you survived, you'd probably be the only person in the history of the world to be able to say you got hit by the same tornado 3 times.

[enbykeith]

The looping ones are crazy. Imagine getting hit my a tornado, and then getting hit AGAIN by the SAME TORNADO just minutes later

[thechitownclown]

I lived through the Plainfield F5. Scariest day of my childhood. Destroyed our house. I remember the apartment building that got hit. The top half of the building ripped off and some of the people got sucked out. Most of the bodies were found in a field nearby. The damage was undescribable.

[DaveTexas]

Living just south of the Jarrell area, the two tornadoes that wiped out different sections of town (the first happening in 1989) are impossible to forget. Seeing an entire neighborhood wiped off the face of the Earth is truly horrifying. The Austin metro area is just south of "Tornado Alley, " so we don’t see tornadoes as frequently as areas to the north of us do, but we’ve had some doozies here for sure.

[DarkFilmDirector]

So many videos cover Jarrell now and many people comment on it. My father physically witnessed its birth when he was driving north on I-35, describing a movement catching the corner of his vision off to the west. The dusty disturbance gradually became a whirl and it connected upward in a thin, small tube. When he looked back at it moments later, more vortices had landed next to the original central circulation and were dancing around it. This was around the time the famous photo of its "dead man walking" phase was taken. He continued on north and the last sight he had of it was in his rear view mirror and it horrified him how big and black it got. It seemed so innocent and beautiful at first and then turned so terrifying after just a few minutes. He lost sight of it just before it made its fateful turn towards Double Creek. Some of my coworkers like the Lockhart family were fellow kids when it happened and went to the elementary school there. Some of their classmates were victims. The Williamson County first responders had to spend years in therapy after trying to identify the flayed remains. No one in the community that lived there before the population boom of the 2010s likes to talk about that day. Only that it made them frightened of every dark clouded day and every storm after that for a while. Nothing about the storm that May made sense logically, it didn't behave like tornadoes generally do in central Texas. That same storm system went onto produce the Cedar Park tornado and the Lake Travis/Briarcliff tornado. Both of which were very violent. The Cedar Park store I remember caused the roof at the Albertsons to collapse and the manager saved the lives of over a dozen people when he urged them to take shelter in the freezer. That was a dark day for Texas and my biggest memory from it was my dad's face when he got home and told us what he saw. He was dismayed and horrified that the tornado system he saw went on to be one of the worst in history...

[timcrnkovic]

One of the things that made the Grand Island cluster exceptional was the presence of the 3 anticyclonic ones. Only about 1 in 50 tornadoes are anticyclonic and they had 3 in one night, one of which was F3. Only one anticyclonic tornado has ever been rated higher than that.

[BigSmokeRailfanning]

there was also the 1955 Blackwell tornado, part of the tornado family of the Udall, Kansas tornado. It was also an F5 and it was infamous for the appearance of "orbs" which were rotating around the skinny funnel, theres a sketch of it on the web. The tornado went exactly north and then made a hard left turn to the west before dying out.

[Strype]

[5:14] Wow. That tornado completely embedded a car into a tree before completely skinning/degloving it, leaving nothing but the frame behind? That's gotta be one of the craziest photos I've ever seen.

[VASHtheSTAMPEDE_]

The 2008 Atlanta tornado is one that always comes to mind. Moved from north to south, not only that but if i remember correctly it was the only tornado of that day and was in an area that wasn't forecasted for tornadoes that day.

[tropicalsunset]

This is one of the best tornado analysis videos I've ever seen on YT. Its not overly long (not dragged out), excellent music, three panels per tornado, clear high res maps. I'm well versed in tornado info and there were various things and even images I've never seen before.

[djamo]

I grew up in Grand Island, NE and was 10 when the “Night of the Twisters” happened. I know many people who were hit, including the house my sister was in. There was nothing left of the house except for the foundation. Her friend’s house was hit by a satellite from the worst of the seven tornadoes; the high-end F-4 “South Locust St. tornado” that killed four of the five people who died from the storm, and one that would easily be an EF-5 by today’s scale (estimated 250 MPH winds).

Everything about that night was strange. We only had a 20% chance of thunderstorms that night, too, but about 7 PM, everything about the sky seemed weird. Tons of marshmallow-like cumulonimbus clouds started forming, almost like eggs stacked perfectly on top of one another. The sky was even more green than the hail core from the May 31st, 2013 El Reno tornado, too; the greenest I have ever seen. Too bad the event happened in 1980 and the few photos of the event’s genesis must not have been from cameras advanced enough to capture the actual color.

The El Reno supercell is the closest comparison I have seen, only June 3rd was actually bigger. I believe that sometime in the future, unfortunately, a cell this size is going to be more organized and produce the worst tornado ever. Hopefully, it will hit in a rural area and there won’t be any fatalities.

I’ll never forget driving around GI on June 4th, 1980, either. The Army hadn’t imposed any curfew or restrictions yet and it wasn’t declared a natural disaster until later in the day. Since things like that moved slower in 1980 and we didn’t know/believe the extent of the damage yet from the radio broadcasts, my mother took my sister, her friend whose house was destroyed, and me to get her friend’s car across the street from Pier Park, a park that is three blocks by five blocks and laden with so many trees you couldn’t see from one end of the park to the other, and it was devastated. I was on the west side of the park and was able to see the grade school (Dodge School) that sits across the street from the east side of the park. Before that night, that was impossible. Somehow, my sister’s friend’s car wasn’t damaged that badly and was still drivable because the tornado made a 90° turn right before that spot and went due south after tracking due west at its inception.

We also drove a few blocks east toward Meves Bowl, a bowling alley that took a direct hit at F4 strength and that was the first time I’d ever seen cars in trees. I can’t remember the exact distance, but people were finding bowling balls miles away. I remember my mother saying we would stay on the street we took from Pier Park, E. Bismark Rd., so we could find our way home since there weren’t many landmarks left and nothing looked the same.

Pier Park was also where our Little League diamonds were. I played catcher that year, and I would literally lose some balls out of my pitchers’ hands in the stacks of trees that laid behind the home run fence all summer. It was funny watching spectators look for home run balls that summer, though; one of the few funny takes from the storm- well, except for the fact that my pre-teen friends and I had many spots to throw snowballs at cars the next couple of winters since there were so many empty lots with foundations in which to hide. Don’t judge. Most of us didn’t get Ataris until 1982 and that’s what boys my age did in GI in the early 80s. Lol.