The Jarrell, TX, F5 Tornado of May 27, 1997: A Case Study
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- Опубликовано: 13 июн 2024
- In-depth meteorological discussion of the central Texas tornado outbreak of May 27, 1997, that featured the infamous and deadly Jarrell, TX, F5. We'll discuss the meteorology behind the event and dive into some of the reasons why an environment that was initially unfavorable for significant tornadoes produced one of the more notable tornado outbreaks in recent memory.
Thumbnail images via NWS Austin/San Antonio Jarrell event page (see below) and "Dead Man Walking" on RUclips ( • Jarrell Texas F5 Torna... ).
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
2:53 Meteorological discussion
28:37 Unusual southwestward storm motion
34:54 Jarrell tornado formation mechanisms
46:53 Possible storm merger
49:28 Summary
Resources:
Houston and Wilhelmson 2007, Part 1: digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/vi...
Houston and Wilhelmson 2007, Part 2: digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/vi...
Houston and Wilhelmson 2002 (conference proceedings on Jarrell): ams.confex.com/ams/SLS_WAF_NW...
Jon Davies 2002 paper on significant tornadoes in weak shear environments (including Jarrell): ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/...
SPC forecaster Stephen Corfidi's 1998 paper on Jarrell: www.spc.noaa.gov/publications...
NOAA service assessment on the event: www.weather.gov/media/publica...
NWS Austin/San Antonio webpage on the event: www.weather.gov/ewx/wxevent-1...
NWS Dallas/Fort Worth webpage on the event: www.weather.gov/fwd/Jarrell-T...
NWS Austin/San Antonio and Dallas/Fort Worth interactive story map on the Jarrell event: storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/...
Tornado Talk webpage on the event: www.tornadotalk.com/central-t...
May 1997 Storm Data publication: www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/orders/...
Bluestein and Jain 1985 paper on storm propagation methods: journals.ametsoc.org/view/jou...
Wakimoto and Wilson 1989 paper on non-supercell tornado formation: journals.ametsoc.org/view/jou...
Lemon and Doswell 1979 paper on tornadogenesis: www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff... 
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Seeing footage of Jarrell is very eerie. It just doesn't move. It sits on a few acres and just grinds them to dust. Tragic what happened to those poor families. RIP.
By the time it impacted the Double Creek Estates, its forward speed was about five miles per hour. You could basically jog faster than the tornado was moving at the time it hit the subdivision. It was basically a giant blender at that point, thoroughly annihilating anything that wasn’t below ground.
The 1957 Fargo, ND F5 tornado moved just as slow as Jarrell and didn't do the amount of damage that was done to the Double Creek subdivision. It wasn't just pounded by winds staying in place. It was winds going at an access of 300mph. Although there was no DOW on the scene that day. The footage and damage intensity shows it looked exactly like May 3 1999 Bridge Creek, Joplin, and Smithville. Jarrell was a Juggernaut.
I will watch it again. I think us lay folks may have a different idea than you experts when it comes to analyzing tornados. We kind of want to know why these tornados are so bizarre, when you want to know how these bizarre tornados even existed.
It’s sad because they could have simply walked out of the path.
The reason it would "stop" is because it had a tornado and then a noncyclonic tornado together as the main storm. If you look into the original meteorological information. Then if you keep looking at it, it also had many vortices swirling around it, so as the lRFD and rRFD would hit long and hard enough from one side that it causes the T and ncT to loop in on itself causing it to stop in place for up to 13 minutes and thats whats changed its direction, it did this twice before finally doing it again before dissipating.
It like dug into the ground and picked up sand which turned it into a sandblaster causing it to peel the skin off animals and people and destroy everything.
It was like the first one if its kind they never go the direction they go. Its been scientifically accepted it was 2.5 miles wide but with the surrounding vortices its believed to have been up to 4/5 miles wide. .
Also just a FYI from one tornado lover to another, the argument that it does or doesnt come from Indian legend about dead man walking tornados, a lot of people say it doesn't but a sequoia native did come forward to say it's true but hard to tell if true or not because a lot like to believe that the producers made it up
One of the most infamous storms of all time and from a meteorology standpoint quite possibly the strangest. All the usual rules went out the window that day.
I was a kid at the time in north Austin, I might forget something from my childhood, but this day I'll never forget
I am that person who has loved meteorology since I was ten tears old (that was in 1973!) but was told it’s “not a career for girls!” (Can you imagine that being said now?) I became a paralegal (safe for females, apparently), but I continue to love learning about the atmosphere and weather on a technical level. Thank you SO much for uploading these videos. You know, you just can’t find people who want to discuss things like wet-bulb temperatures and pressure gradients in the legal world.
Thank you for watching! Times sure have changed; my graduate school class at OU was about 3/4 female. Can’t believe it was frowned upon back then; weather is weather, no matter one’s gender!
My grandmother wanted to be a pilot; my mother, a geologist. I might've been an astronomer.
As they say, "I'll be a post-feminist in the post-patriarchy."
Our middle school was on a Texas history trip (down from Plano) and stayed at a motel nearby Jarrell the very same day. I was 12. I remember being in the motel parking lot and not being able to see past the parking lot because the atmosphere was so black. Like walls of black surrounded the motel...like nothing existed beyond the black (still kinda haunts me to this day) The lighting was so intense and ill never forget the fear I saw in one of the teachers faces when we were told to go inside. There is no doubt we narrowly escaped this tornado and I am so lucky to be typing this now. Us kids had no idea the severity of it. Big thanks to the teachers for keeping us calm. God bless
Wow, that’s crazy; thank you for sharing.
Sweet mother it is here! I remember seeing the national news when this occured and the scenes of the Double Creek Estates neighborhood. The most complete devastation I have seen. Thank you Trey for taking the time and effort you put into this and all your vids.
Thank you for the kind words! The damage photos/footage from the Double Creek area is just nuts.
Now I understand what a gravity wave is and how it was essential to create this event.
Does the tornado spinning 260+ mph moving forward at 40 mph create the same inevitable damage such as structures having only the slab foundation as proof of structure, to a tornado spinning the same 260+mph moving forward at 3 mph, does the inevitable damage it causes to structures leaving the same slab foundation as evidence that a structures was there, with a tornado With spinning at such speeds?
The way you make your case study is sincerely the most comprehensive and thoughtful presentation I’ve ever seen. You should be a professor of meteorology, many students would learn so much from you and the knowledge you have is unparalleled.
Thank you for this video.
Thank you so much for the kind words!
Seriously, Trey - I know I'm just probably another voice heaping praise on your wonderful work, but I am truly thankful for the content you're creating. No need to bore you or anyone else with my life history and fascination with severe weather, but I just want you to know that all the time and effort you put into these breakdowns is worth it; I've been looking for this kind of content since I was but a wee lad. I'm so thankful that your channel exists. As soon as I can financially support it, I will.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones and hope you have a wonderful New Year!
Jeremy, I really appreciate the kind words; thank you so much! Really means a lot to me, and I'm so glad to hear you're enjoying the content. You take care, as well, and all the best for 2023!
I was in Austin that day. The humidity was oppressive; it was hard just to breathe.
I bet...temps exceeding 90 with upper 70s dewpoints is an absolute sauna.
aka NYC summer
@@patrykbors9243Just a regular spring day in Texas
I woke up this Wednesday, May 22 2024 and walked outside and the humidity hit me like a ton of bricks. After I ran a few errands, I came home and mowed my backyard (no thanks to King Ranch for this KR blue stem). The humidity was suffocating. When Is got about 3/4 done with my lawn, I noticed a thunderhead up North toward Gatesville. When I got done, I came in the house and called my sister who lives in Harker Heights and told her that we were going to have a tornado. She thought that I was crazy. Sure enough, as I finished taking a shower, it turned black as midnight. The wind started going like crazy and tornado sirens and cell phone alerts were warning of a tornado in my area and to take shelter. I thought that I was a goner. Then, the sirens went off again. The high winds knocked over a pine tree in my backyard, taking down my power line. Luckily, the tornado only knocked the tree over and blew some shingles off my roof, but the same system caused tornadoes in Belton and Temple, doing some severe damage. I was without electricity for 52 hours.
It almost seemed like some sort of freak accident. The damage that tornado did was unbelievable. Possibly 320+ mph winds near the surface.
Its max speed was recorded to be 261MPH. What made it so destructive, however, wasn’t just the wind speeds. What made it especially destructive was the fact the tornado slowed down to about five miles per hour when it went through the Double Creek Estates, basically sitting on top of it for several minutes. It was effectively a three quarters of a mile wide blender that puree’d the subdivision.
@@Caddynars it wasn’t recorded. The minimum threshold for F5 at the time was 261mph. So it’s been reported as at least 261mph.
It seems like many people overlook the fact that the tornado sat on some county roads for a bit just tearing up asphalt and caliche. It seems like that is a big reason things were scrubbed so clean. Rather like a commercial potato peeler I encountered once, only in reverse. With the peeler the inside of a large pot was abrasive, and the potatoes were spun in there until they had no more skin. This tornado with very high winds and abrasive rocks scoured foundations and cattle clean. Maybe the pros believe the asphalt and gravel were immediately taken away from the area, but I'm not sure I believe it and I have never heard anyone put forth such an opinion. Research idea anyone?
@@russelpolk8152 actually most everyone in the weather community understand that the slow crawl exasperated the situation. However I don’t believe that it was an overrated F3 as some have said. One look at that insane velocity in the upward movement and the multiple horizontal vortices tell me that it would have cause extreme catastrophic damage regardless of the forward pace.
It is interesting though I’ll give you that. Just sucks that we’ll never know the actual true wind speed and dynamics of Jarrell or any other high end event.
@@Caddynars stop spreading that BS rumor. There was no DOW on scene that day. The windspeeds were not recorded. And the 261mph were the initial required windspeeds in order for any tornado to be considered for F5 status back then. The Enhanced Fujita scale has thrown all that out of the window. But unless you know exactly what you're talking about, don't say anything at all.
Great analysis, Trey, as always! I love these events that aren't textbook, great opportunity for learning! Such a fascinating event.
Thanks so much, Rhi!
This was so incredibly informative. Your channel is one of the best out there. I learn so much, thank you!
Thank you so much for the kind words!
I was 3 when this happened. One of my earliest memories is of this event. We were living in Canyon Lake Texas. My dad was working in San Marcos and shot home when word of the F5 got to him. The system kept making tornadoes. He got home as the system went mostly linear and passed over us.
I was also 3 years old lol
Man, this is in depth stuff. I'm just now beginning to wrap my head around "normal" or classic supercell tornadogensis, but this is wild. I honestly have a difficult time visualizing what happened here.
Thanks for putting so much time into all of these!
Thank you! This was definitely a unique case, one where everything came together just perfectly to make a historic event.
The more I learn from watching your case studies and forecasts, the more I find myself revisiting these older videos. It’s amazing how much better I understand everything. I moved to Texas two years ago and live about a half hour from Jarrell, and I’ve been obsessed with the tornado ever since. We visited the memorial site last summer. Bittersweet, fascinating, and creepy.
Love hearing that, thank you! I’ve been through Jarrell numerous times before; it’s always fascinating but very eerie going through some of those tornado stricken areas.
This video is excellent. This is the level of detail I want to see of a severe weather event, especially one as historic as this.
Thanks so much!
What a phenomenal analysis of this event! Definitely the best meteorological overview of the Jarrell tornado that I’ve seen. Content like this makes me want to change my major to meteorology, haha. Thank you for all the work you put into these and looking forward to watching all your future videos! You are awesome. Stay warm!
Thank you so much for the kind words!
My guy always coming in for the win. Yet another excellent case study. Please keep up the good work, you are one of my favorite RUclipsrs
Thanks so much!
Oooh this is an early christmas present!!! Thanks for the video Trey.. Looking forward to watching this after work! Have a good christmas!!
Thanks so much; merry Christmas to you, too!
That opening clip of the jarrel tornado is the holy grail clip. I came across it once online and it shows the tornado over double creek estates. I saved the video but now when I try to access it it says its private. I believe KWTX had the clip on their channel at one point in time.
Here's where I found that clip; Angel Escobales, Jr. has a lot of good Jarrell footage on his channel: ruclips.net/video/N_NFPVHHCZY/видео.html
Try the Deadman Walking documentary too.
Great video! Would love to see a case study on Terrible Tuesday outbreak of 1979.
Thank you! It's on my list!
New subscriber here thanks to Max. Love this case study. I lived in Austin at that time and remember the heat and humidity. Started sweating just thinking about going outside. 😀 I was going to ask if you thought todays models would have better predicted this event but I see you answered down below you didn't think so. That surprises me but just shows how unique and complicated this event was. Thank you!
Thank you so much! Yeah, this event was so nuanced and dependent on very fine scale details that, despite model improvements over the past couple decades, still can’t be resolved.
Hey Trey, love these videos. Will you be doing a Case Study on the 2013 El Reno EF5? Seems to be one of the most unique and powerful storms of all time. Would love to see a breakdown of how it happened!
Thanks so much! Yes, El Reno 2013 is on my list!
Well, El Reno 2013 is actually an EF3 since the damage that it mostly did was rated as EF3
@@someaveragemaxrubyfan8716 Officially yeah but it's pretty much ef5 in most people's eyes
@@someaveragemaxrubyfan8716 and that's exactly why the EF scale is flawed and should be revamped. There WAS a DOW on scene that day, and recorded winds at least around 295mph. Several carousel multivortex circulations. And just because it didn't hit a highly populated area it's considered an EF3....? Bullshit. Damage in a populated area as well as RECORDED windspeeds should always be factored in. So that "official" rating is based off of a garbage scale.
So keep that in mind every time you feel like you need to correct someone on this tornado's F5 (True) vs EF3 (trash) ratings.
@@wadewilson8011If it’s any reassurance to you, the EF scale is in the process of being revised right now. Tim Marshall did a blog post about what to expect, and said that we should expect the standard to be rolled out within the next few years.
we had another tornado in the region the other day. coming back to remember this disaster. I remembering being 9 or 10 and being outside and seeing this tornado in the distance. Nature is incredible
Wow, nice! Yeah, there were several tornadoes in close proximity to the Jarrell one as part of a localized outbreak.
It reminds me of the Canton, Tx tornadoes from a couple years ago. The EF-4. The storms overnight near Arkansas or Louisiana sent out an outflow or gravity wave and enhanced the storms
Yep, that case is on my list. Early day storms spit out an outflow boundary that really enhanced things.
Great breakdown, per the norm. I would love to see your take regarding the August 28, 1990 Plainfield, IL, F5 tornado. Another environment where storm motion was atypical and CAPE values were incredibly high. These rare meteorological "rogue elephants" are fascinating and your presentations are top notch! Thanks and have a Happy New Year!
Thank you! The Plainfield event is definitely on my list; it’s a really intriguing event, similar to Jarrell. Happy new year to you, as well!
No one got Plainfield correct. Even Chicago WGN TV weather man Tom Skilling admitted after the event everyone missed it. I guess until they actually find why tornadoes occur( why some supercells become tornadic and others dont, you'll have some misses
Most sinister tornado a stuff of nightmares, great video!
Thank you!
I'd like to see a case study of the Easter Sunday 2020 outbreak, seems to have been forgotten pretty quickly
It's on my list!
Definitely lived up to the name in terms of overall havoc wreaked. That whole thing was nuts.
@@ConvectiveChroniclesJust stumbled across your channel while researching the Jarrell, TX tornado and have subscribed.. The Murray county Ga tornado on easter 2020 missed my house by less than a quarter mile.
@@tmurph247 Thank you! Dang, glad you came out unscathed from that 2020 tornado.
I find low shear, high CAPE outbreaks fascinating. Amazing how 25 knots of shear can build a 250+ mph blender. 🤯 Looking forward to your 2013 El Reno discussion.
Agreed! Sometimes that high CAPE can compensate a little bit for the weaker shear, as usually there's a bunch of low-level instability to help stretch any spin in the low levels into the vertical.
The landspout characteristics, too. Geez, what an event! So many rare contributing factors for this; if there was a swiss cheeze model for tornados, this is it.
Hi Trey. New to your channel but loving your in-depth analysis. I've read most of what's available about the event that got me interested in severe weather, which was the Red River outbreak of 1979. Would love to see that added to your list, though I'm sure the line is long. Cheers, my friend!
Thank you so much; very happy to hear you're enjoying the videos! The 1979 outbreak is on my list!
I've always been interested in this tornado, yet could never find any info on it! Great video!
Your video was SUPER GOOD, GREAT!
I grew up in Miami, "The Land of Hur-
ricanes, and their spawned Tornados.
Ever since I got my first Smart Phone,
"Jarrell" became my favorite twister, and had remsinef so ever since!
I have never encountered such a
"night mare-disturbing", frightening, and, above all, SCIENTIFICALLY INTRI
GUING, phenomenom---of any kind!!!!
Sir, your research and analysis is so
good, that it has, finally, taken me to
the comprehension of how the uniquely intriguing Jarrell Tornado could have formed !!!!
I'm going to watch this video over and over, as I did learn a lot of Meteo-
rology from it !!!!
Your video is also, VERY USEFUL, for us, down here in Miami, Fl., as hurri-
canes always spawn, every time, quite a number of, BOTH, SUPER-
CELL, and NON SUPER-CELL SPOUTS and "SPIN UPS". This happens from quite outer feeder bands, to the very
rim of the Eye Wall !
Says who?
Says Dr. Ted Fuijita, who was brought fown here by FEMA immediately after
Cat-5 Hurricane Andrew !!!!
He said that about the Eye Wall there
was a wide "bagel ring" zone of very strong Spin Ups which were streched up substantially into Land Spouts of
"Jarrell-strength" gouging power. This led to the notorious quip of South Miami-Dade residents: "We've been
NUKED !!!!
Thus, your analysis here of "The
Jarrell Mystery" is MOST VALUABLE
PUBLIC SERVICE, as it proves that HORRID events, such ad Jarrell, CAN
BE CAUSED BY A CONFLUENCE OF UNUSUAL, SELDOM-OCCURRING CIR-
CUMSTANCES !!!!
Thank you, Sir !!!!
Thank you, YoubTube !!!!
Thank you so much for the kind words!
Thank you this! Great job on this!
Thank you!
Thanks for the upload
Your analyses are just amazing. I always thought that this tornado looked like a violent landspout, now I also understand why.
Thank you!
I love these case studies. It's helping me out with getting better with this. I would like to see more. Could you do the Dayton Tornado and also the Xenia Tornado. Also, could you do the Katie Wynnewood and Sulphur/Davis Tornado. Have you done a case study on the Greensburg KS Tornado.
Thank you! Those are all on my list!
Fascinating. Thank you!
Oddly, this tornado introduced me to my favorite band, Turnpike Troubadours, as their song 'Tornado Warning' played as I drove past Jarrell of all places.
Haha nice!!
I was a very young girl living about 30 minutes away from Jarrell, Austin area when this tornado hit. At that age, I couldn't comprehend the true devastation that it caused. It hurts thinking of my fellow Texans that survived this, and especially the ones that did not. Whole families were wiped out, out of the 27 fatalities..13 were children. Still heartbroken thinking of this Day.
Amen
this set up always confused me lol
nice this is one of the most interesting and tragic storms ive heard ab great pick!
Thank you!
Is this tornado somewhat similar to aug 28 plainfield 1990 as the environment for that tornado had little shear but a massive amount of instability? Also great analysis on the Jarrell tornado.
Thank you! It is somewhat similar, although the environment in the Plainfield case was a bit more supportive for supercells (deep layer shear was much more favorable).
Very interesting! I have been curious about the SW motion or apparent motion. Another interesting tornado was April 27, 1927 Rocksprings, TX F5 that killed 73. It moved SE over 60 miles and ended somewhere between Uvalde and Brackettville.
Hi, really enjoy your videos and learning a lot from them, especially your Skew-T guide. I'm trying to get a handle on the concepts of troughs, short-waves and "forcing" - I'm wondering if you have any recommended reading materials on this or maybe videos? Maybe a topic for a future video? Thanks again
Thank you!
Here are a couple good articles to start with on longwaves/shortwaves/troughs/ridges:
www.weather.gov/jetstream/longshort
www.weather.gov/jetstream/basic
www.weather5280.com/blog/2015/04/07/the-importance-of-shortwave-troughs-and-how-to-identify-them
www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall14/atmo336/lectures/sec1/p500mb.html
I do have a series planned on weather map analysis, which will include a discussion of troughs/ridges, fronts, shortwaves, etc.
@@ConvectiveChronicles Awesome, thanks for this. Looking forward to the video too!
Great info 🌪️
Thank you!
I've just started watching your channel. I really appreciate your indepth look at the conditions which cause severe storms. If possible could you provide us with the actual words and then use the abbreviations? Very green subscriber!! Thanks!
Thank you! Sure thing; I also have a Skew-T and Hodograph series that goes over the diagrams you see, as well as a lot of the abbreviations like EML, CAPE, etc. that I use at the following link: ruclips.net/p/PLnjboQ2ku8GDI9DGcqR8d9sr0sZKhH-qX
We`ve had some devastating tornadoes in Louisiana that luckily hit forested areas and the damage was unreal. It`s hard to believe how powerful they can be. I`ve seen forests of both pines and oaks cleared away. There`s a sign near Winnfield about the historic damage done to a pine forest. The trees were simply gone and it was a mile wide clearing. I think it destroyed a million dollars worth of timber which was huge back then when it happened. It was very historic and record breaking at the time. One removed a few acres of old oaks and hickories about 1 1/2 miles from our home, weakened as it hit our home and property, then took out another forested area about 3 miles away. It damaged our home and outbuildings with my friend and I inside. We skipped school that day and heard about the weather situation on my portable boombox in 1980 while camping. We had to run to my house and got there just in time to get inside before it hit. So we got caught. Ha!
I've been watching and studying the effect of outflow boundaries in the monsoon and observing similar interactions between close storms, though nothing tornadic or landspout material yet. Interesting to see those mechanics partially play out in this example.
Absolutely; outflow interactions are a huge player in landspout formation and/or storm rotation during the monsoon. I’ve seen a few cases of some suspicious “spinnies” when mature storms interact with outflow.
The jarrell tornado actually was multi vortex and it looked like a person walking, people called it the dead man walking tornado.
Yes, hence the image in the thumbnail. The Jarrell tornado started off as a rope, then morphed into a multivortex and finally into a wedge as it was at its peak intensity.
Okay! WOW! This explains all my questions as a new weather nerd!
Thank you for watching; really happy to hear that!
This outbreak had a pretty profound impact on my life - I was a youngster living in Cedar Park close to the F3 track that day - and I appreciate seeing all the meteorological nuance that actually played into it. A 'super land spout', incredible. Thanks for the great work, and all the time and effort you put into your case studies!
Thanks so much! Wow, can't imagine what that day must've been like for you; that Cedar Park tornado was a beast.
@@ConvectiveChronicles The day was one of those eerie, oppressively hot and still 'tornado days' as my midwestern relatives call it, and mom called to warn us as she drove home from some event, seeing a funnel cloud over US-183, and got us in the laundry room (most interior room in the house). We were fine, just a bad storm, and it wasn't until I saw one of our local grocery stores torn up the next day that I think what happened really sunk in. Then the news showed the video, and the slabs... It lead to a life long passion for severe weather and studies in meteorology, but to this day I will go into a sort of anxious but excited 'storm mode' when things look particularly bad nearby.
Hey Trey, love your vids and watch a lot of them while driving my truck (i know...shhhh). After a 3rd time watching this I got a feeling this wasn't such an anomaly when i consider my experience living in FL 27 years and studying it's summer storm patterns, there are similarities. For instance when the Bermuda high is in place and weak, there's hardly any prevailing winds at any levels, but the daytime heating combined with endless gulf moisture and weak cap makes storms you can set your watch to. The trigger is the Seabreeze convergence from one, or both sides of the peninsula and when those storms pop, their corresponding gust fronts prompt new storms, and that cycle keeps propagating until the CAPE is lowered by dusk. In Jarrell's case, the insane CAPE due to landlocked region and abundant gulf moisture is similar - copy/paste the Seabreeze with the cold front / dry line as initial convergence until the more dominant downdraft gust fronts take over the show (this is what i meant previously when saying these storms create their own weather). I totally agree with your theory 100%, i just think if we put on the sub-tropical relativity hat, and that would include water spouts being quite common, then land spout genesis potential could have been more expected. Especially when colliding and intersecting gust fronts create very unpredictable scenarios real-time. I just didn't see much situation parallels comparison so i thought to throw it out there. Just my crazy thoughts at 3AM.
First, thank you for watching the videos! I am from Arizona, so I know very well about how things like convergence boundaries and outflow can influence storm formation/behavior. I think the difference between a case like Jarrell and a run of the mill thunderstorm case in Florida or Arizona is that you'll often have very pulse-type, outflow-dominant storms that don't last long or get quickly undercut by the surging outflow. Jarrell was a case where updrafts continued to propagate along the boundary, and the dynamics at play plus the extreme instability allowed the initial storms to ingest that spin along the boundary to become supercells (non-outflow dominant). Jarrell definitely had hybrid landspout/supercell tornado characteristics initially. Not every updraft along a boundary produced a landspout, so it does take a certain set of circumstances to get a landspout; Jarrell just happened to be an extreme case where updrafts along the boundary became supercells and used the favorable spin along it to aid in the tornadogenesis process in a big way.
@ConvectiveChronicles speaking of propagation of storms, there's a scenario I wish I could see you break down sometime; Isolated supercell storms that seem to have completely opposite paths and no discernable steering mechanism. Again much thanks for the great detailed work you do on YT, the layup of informative data in each video creates a virtual classroom for us all. 😀
Nice case study.
Thank you!
Way gnarly with an explanation far beyond my high school 'education'! Thanks for helping expand my mind...🇺🇸 😎👍☕
You bet; thank you for watching!
I love watching videos like this would like you to see you do a case study of the 2019 memorial day outbreak
Thank you; it’s on my list!
Great analysis, thank you. I would be very interested if you were to assess the 8/28/90 Plainfield F5 storm (if you're able to pull the data from that far back). My understanding is it was also a high cape-low shear event.
Thank you! Plainfield is high up on my list of case studies to do next.
It’s been 26 years (and 1 day) since the tornado
Damn interesting!! Thank you for this one. I live down the street from the damage path. Can you do a case study on Moore 2013? My first chase!
Thank you! Moore 2013 is high on my list!
You should consider doing a case study of the February 22, 1998 tornado outbreak in Florida. Very interesting dynamics in Florida that night.
It’s on the list!
wow, so this storm was more of a freak than i already knew about. my heart goes out to the families of the people in Double Creek Estates
I live in Waco. That storm literally developed right over my house. I chased the Spring Valley and Moody tornado. Had a basketball game that afternoon otherwise I would have chased to Jarrell.
I have been obsessed with Tornados for as long as I can remember. By the time I was 8 or 9 I was telling everyone I "wanted to be a Tornado Chaser when i grow up!"...I would have my grandpa (i was raised by my grandparents) take me to blockbuster video to rent all the tornado documentaries they had, several times over, lol. At the same time I also had an immense fear of severe storms/winds and would panic during severe weather (i am from Fort Pierce, FL and SE FL has it's share of bad weather including Hurricanes which I have rode out Hurricanes Jeanne, Wilma, Matthew and Irma) but i eventually got over my fear and now get excited for storms. Despite my lifelong love of tornadoes....I have not YET ever even seen a tornado in person! Tho I know i will one day. I have to. All that being said...this was a very great informative video. The Jarrell Tornado has always been one of the most fascinating tornadoes to me especially because of the very unusual conditions in which it formed under.How it was basically one of the worst tornadoes ever and yet it was never supposed to have even happened. Not to mention the eerie "dead man walking" photo. Everything about this tornado is just so unique and it's likely we may never see another tornado like it+form under those same conditions ever again in our life time.
Thank you! That's awesome you were able to turn your fear of storms into a love for them!
Interesting? Yes. When you take this video for what is intended it is a fascinating and detailed scientific look at Jarrell. It's kind of like the NTSB breaking down an airline crash. But it's hard for me to separate the analytical from the terror these images bring. Jarrell is near the top of historic and visually stunning tornados and of course the result was heartbreaking. It is the true meaning of unsurvivable.
Just curious, what is the significance of a deep moist layer vs shallow? Does it make a any impact for the type of tornado like wedge vs skinny?
You can think of that layer as the "fuel" that the storm is ingesting. If there's a lot of dry air aloft (reducing the depth of the moist layer), the storm will feed on that dry air, which tends to reduce the robustness of the updrafts. But, if that moist layer is deep, storms will have much more fuel available to them, and more significant hazards are likely.
@@ConvectiveChronicles gotcha thank you!
Is Greensburg on your list or have I just missed it?
You haven’t missed it…I haven’t done it yet, but it’s high up on my list.
Could the low pressure system that formed have an effect on how strong storms and tornadoes were that day? Looked like they formed right with the low moved southwest.
The low likely provided another impetus for storm initiation ahead of it along the front, but it likely didn’t have an impact on the actual strength of the storms.
Could the Jarrell tornado's level of damage been more related to it's very low forward speed (~5 mph) of movement across the land, instead of extremely high cyclonic wind speeds? It was able to churn over a given area for a long time relative to tornadoes moving at 30+ mph. I have come across videos suggesting this could have been the case.
I think it was a combo of both.
Makes me think of Skip Talbot saying that if one of your ingredient's numbers is off the charts, all bets are off. It can even make up for low numbers in another parameter
But why would a tiny shower in the forward flank intensify a storm? Doesn't cold rain cooled air kill storms usually? In the last event you said there so many supercells that couldn't reach their potential due to them all stealing energy from each other so that's why I'm curious why this time the shower turned evil 😅
There's still a lot we don't know about storm mergers, but there have been several cases where little showers or storms have merged with an ongoing supercell, resulting in a ramp-up in tornado production or, in the Jarrell case, a possible intensification of an ongoing tornado. It has to merge optimally though; there are also cases where a merger kills the ongoing storm or at least decreases its tornado prospects. It's not a matter of rain-cooled air; think of the little showers as storm "food," but the main storm has to "eat" it correctly (in my experience, that's when a shower merges in the forward flank region...if a shower merges in the hook region of the storm for example, that might impede tornado potential because the mesocyclone area would start to get cluttered/the flow of warm/moist air into the storm would be impeded).
@@ConvectiveChronicles Okay thanks for this explanation! I'm sure a lot of people wondered the same so thanks for taking time to mention this! I guess we'll never know it ALL 🤷🏿 😏 but at least there will always be something interesting new to learn!
Yeah this is still one of the craziest almost one of a kind set ups. Trey what you think on this.....cause I do kind of wonder in a way in today if this could event be properly forecasted because of how insanely unique this was. I mean I am curious in a way if let's say SPC put out a outlook on this and in the morning if this could still be warned ahead of time that "strong tornado can be expected". I think that a set up like this while as you shown would probably still get a moderate risk but as you said I think just the insane meso and honestly in this case miscroscale dynamics for the tornadoes would be damn near impossible still to properly forecast. It would be one of those "well there's a guidance for a event like this so tornadoes are possible at least" but that's about the best one could do.
I think in all honestly this is one of those RARE and I mean RARE cases it could come down to chasers on the ground reporting stuff into the NWS or at least the NWS offices in TX just tornado warning the entire storm regardless just because of the couplets in the velocities and just playing it safe. This is still one of the craziest and rare set up one still can find and while the zippering effect" of cold front and dry lines and now better understood as this event and other events kind of have show they are important to watch.....this event is still the unique outlier of the bunch. I think it's fortunate you had even a couple chasers down on this event to even capture the tornadoes on video. I mean this is still the mid-90s and while chasing was kind of in full swing and helped thanks to VORTEX it still was more of a niche-y thing to do that was kind of strictly for us meteorologists sprinkled with more enthusiastic videographer/photography chasers. Still a crazy tornado and easily one of the more craziest tornadoes over the last 40 years. Easily based off damage it still would retain a EF5 rating.
I'd say 1997 was the late 90s but I agree with everything else you said.
@@kimberlycampbell1100 hehe the 7s usually are late ...mistyped
I honestly don't think anyone could've forecasted this ahead of time, even today. There were such nuanced, microscale factors that had to line up perfectly, and none of our current models can resolve those kind of things yet. I think the SPC and NWS offices did the best they could, calling for large hail/damaging winds and an isolated tornado or two near the boundary. That's what the weather data said, and that's what should have happened...but a very unique set of circumstances came together to turn this into the event it became. Just a slight shift in the orientations of the boundaries, placement of the new updrafts along the boundary, etc., and this would've been a ho-hum severe weather day in May in the Southern Plains.
@@ConvectiveChronicles Yup I think this would still have been a damn near impossible thing to forecast or even have in the convective outlooks. The microdynamics on this....even the best radar would have a hard time seeing it cause you are only seeing this scan to scan.
I was hoping you would discuss why the tornado went from very weak to very strong and why it moved so slow.
Pretty sure I covered that in the video.
Good lord. That deviant motion.
Yep...about 100 degrees to the right of the mean flow. Nuts...
You are very smart! Geeze Louise…
I wonder if that tornado counts as hybrid tornado
It definitely had some characteristics of both supercell and nonsupercell tornadoes.
@@ConvectiveChronicles So Jarrell 1997 starts off as a landspout then it become violent as if it did interacted with the meso ?
@@someaveragemaxrubyfan8716 It appears to have begun similar to a landspout, where an updraft becomes colocated with a low-level swirl (in this case, it was an established low-level mesocyclone, which is not present in a classic landspout case). So it was sort of a hybrid.
I was a HUGE weather nerd as a kid and I watched the weather channel religiously from march-june every year. I lived in Waco in 1997 and I remember being kind of disappointed that we didn't get hit very hard (lol dumb kid). They did blow the sirens but the storm was already south of us. I figured it would be a "wow that's cool we got a little basic tornado outside of town in a field" afternoon because that's how it started out. Then it just kept getting stronger and bigger and it was down hill from there. Luckily this part of central Texas isn't super prone to F5 tornado shenanigans. Which is a good thing since basements and storm shelters also aren't very common here.
But why the slow progression? Why did this tornado move at such a slow speed?
The lack of flow aloft to steer the storms
I hope you updated Chrome
This tornado was like the butterfly effect in action
Trey Greenwood is very good at these YpuTube videos, and I watch many of them. I hope he presents at conferences and such. I like Cameron Nixon, too, and Rich Thompson. Trey Greenwood is currently my favorite. I like Reed Timmers. Trey Greenwood is overall my favorite..
Thank you very much!
It really seems like someone in that estate somehow managed to piss off a particularly vengeful wind god who just decided to absolutely scour them off the face of the earth.
Thinking about those poor families. They could have gotten in a car and left the area, too bad they did not realize this.
You ever thought, when you click the frames, back and forth, one frame, people were alive, next frame, they were not, -- alive, not, alive, not, alive, not.. :(
I think there a few factors of it being F5. 1) it was moving so slow than the average tornado speed it had time to churn and create more damage than just at one stroke. I’ve read a damage survey to where it said that it couldn’t take an F5 tornado to create that kind of damage and it was possible that an F3 can create that going by the structure of those homes. Also, I’ve read more into it and said that the houses in the double creek subdivision were just wooden frame built houses with pneumatic driven nails into the concrete attached to sill plates instead of anchor bolts. Most of them didn’t have underground storm shelters due to the geography of the area because of limestone that was underneath the subdivision. And even if they were above ground storm shelters, most likely it would still not hold. Also, it mentions that this event and May 3 1999 tornado were responsible for creating the EF scale that we use today. That’s just my opinion but anybody can correct me or add anything to this.
All great points. Eyewitness accounts do state that the tornado slowed down a bit as it approached the Double Creek Estates area, and those poorly anchored homes stood no chance with such a slow moving tornado, even if it wasn't truly packing F5 winds.
@@ConvectiveChronicles www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-C13-2da667805224aca0ceb7fdce95ee09d6/pdf/GOVPUB-C13-2da667805224aca0ceb7fdce95ee09d6.pdf
Here’s where I read the in detail damage survey from a structural engineering perspective if that interests you!
@@dark_seph2222 Thanks! I love going over damage surveys and seeing what they found from an engineering perspective.
@@ConvectiveChronicles Also, here’s an interview with the person who published the paper discussing it with someone who did a similar but more generic case study on the Jarrell 1997 Tornado: ruclips.net/video/D5PZLpk_E7c/видео.html
And that lack of windshear that day is what proved meteorologist everywhere WRONG!
Excellent review of this one of a kind storm! Really interesting how it propogated southwestward with time. One fussy suggestion though? Try not to say "kind of" and "sort of" as much when narrating. Had to have been done in the hundreds of times... Like fingernails on the chalkboard, it is!
Thank you. I think those are my fillers for “uh” and “um,” I’ll try to work on it
Really?? That’s what you have for a comment after that amazing in depth explanation of the famous Jarrell tornado. Come on man….really unnecessary. You can tell he put a lot work into this analysis. Be better
So what he’s saying is the most unconventional/unfortunate set of perfect circumstances converged and the worst F5 in history emerged. Basically the underdog with broken legs who shouldn’t have been in the race to begin with somehow won, and not only won but broke the record.
That's not a bad way to put it
So dont sleep on high cape days huh?
High CAPE days with a boundary in play can break all the rules and do some crazy stuff!
No sound
Hmm, sound is working for me
@@ConvectiveChronicles I'm an idiot i had it connected to a bluetooth device
Ah, gotcha
@@santaclaus8878 happens to me too
Grosso 🙈🙈🙈🙈😓😓😓🥰🥰🥰
Someone needs to make tornado top trumps
You see the legs inside the tornado?
Indians have a saying about those!..
Still surprised how perfect it formed like look at this ruclips.net/video/ePATTCJhUek/видео.html
Why this tornado got an F5 rating I'll never know, the F5 rating for this was way too high. An F3 could have done the same damage this tornado did as scientists and construction engineers proved.
The ground scouring and homes swept completely clean would say otherwise.
@@ConvectiveChroniclesthe homes were not well built and not well attached to the foundations