I was watching another El Reno video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhFw0t6f20Y) and someone in the comments said there are headlights that may be of Samaras' car.
There are no public images or videos of what happened, as you may know.
So I decided to make a map for the 6:21:12 moment and measure if it's actually possible.
Map base and GPS positions were taken from Skip Talbot's videos
There's still no Google Street view on Reuter Rd, so here I extrapolated from visible tall poles as I checked the distance between them (300ft).
And indeed I got the same distance as GPS locations show in other analysis videos, roughly 1/4 mile at that moment.
Robinson and Samaras, and a giant sub-vortex in between - all inside the tornado cage
Even though it may look like as cars are moving on Jensen Rd, the cars' headlights singular dots and the tornado location leaves little doubt - the cars here are next to this vortex.
It actually shows here that Robinson's car was going through heavy downpour (https://youtu.be/MxgU1QcFMJM) , making his headlights dim in contrast to bright lights of Twistex Chevrolet.
And as you may remember, Samaras transcripts said that there was no rain... which meant they were caught right next to the middle of the storm.
There was one public image that shows Samaras behind Robinson, with something like a funnel next to the road.
Is it a tree to the left? Or a sub-vortex coming for Samaras?
In the next TEN seconds as the storm made a sudden turn North right towards the Reuter road, this sub-vortex morphed into the actual eye of the tornado, letting Robinson escape but cutting off all chances for Samaras.
The sub-vortex became the main vortex
In fact, while the storm wasn't moving towards him for a moment, Robinson made most astonishing shots of this monster in its full power...
[(C) Dan Robinson](https://preview.redd.it/rwzjrswo1qg7
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first storm chaser to be killed by the el reno tornado took this photo
https://preview.redd.it/2wrg4ft16w261.png?width=748&format=png&auto=webp&s=63b1a1d44c736ec0155cd9afe7b7aa07343d9473
same tornado , it then killed tim samaras 5 minutes after
red is the city limits , blue is the metro area.
el reno was hit 3 times by this tornado , the metro area of el reno did not get hit by it , however the RFD winds did.
el reno spot 1 = EF0|edge
el reno spot 2 = EF2|edge
el reno spot 3 = EF3|core
el reno metro = TSD
I was recently looking through this sub and was blown away by the high-fidelity plots of various tornados. What made these plots so interesting to me is that they tell a much more complete story than just a single number rating on the EF scale. Also, the plots can potentially be used to answer a question I've always had; Which tornado is the strongest tornado in history? For the past month u/joshoctober16 and I have been collaborating to answer that question, starting with the four most infamous tornados to hit the Oklahoma City and surrounding area – the 1999 Moore F5+, 2011 El Reno EF5, 2013 Moore EF5, and 2013 El Reno EF3+.
Here are the paths of the four tornados in question
Individual view of 1999 Moore F5+
Once the damage plots were made, the next step was summing the areas of each respective EF rated windspeed. Click Here for Areas
This data was then used to calculate the total tornadic damage produced by each tornado, or the tornado damage rating. The tornado damage rating was found by summing the product of the area by the square of the velocity of the wind speed for each respective EF rated area. The unit was adjusted so that a value of 1 is equal to 1 acre of land experiencing 100 mph winds. It is important that the damage rating is correlated to the square of velocity since the force of wind can be simplified as KV^2, where K is a constant. See here how the force of wind is correlated to the square of velocity. This chart shows how much force an object would experience at each EF rating’s windspeed. See here
The plots were also analyzed to find each tornado’s rate of damage, average windspeed, EF5 Area, total area, measured width, length, average speed, ∆ area/min, the average width, equations used. Other metrics used for the comparison include official max width, duration, max measured gust windspeed, cost, and Josh’s 0-10 star rating of the most catastrophic damage created by each tornado. The following table shows the final values of the above metrics for each tornado. Table of Results
Results
1999 Moore F5+ Highest average windspeed, largest EF5 d
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note 3 areas got rated 2+ ranking in the ef scale lower then the wind speed says
and 6 areas got rated 2+ ranking int he ef scale higher then what the wind speed says.
2 small spots of ground scouring were found , only around 2-10 meters wide however.
what the damge path would look like if it would of hit a city, or area base on wind speed.
highest winds were at 130-150 m/s
edit (this whole time there was a little mistake in the wording for the 3 photo)
I rewatched the NatGeo documentary today, and I am absolutely fascinated by this erratic tornado that duped even the most experienced chasers and left 4 (including Tim Samaras and his son) perished in its path.
The Wikipedia article says that the tornado was rated an EF3 based on surveyed structural damage, however the size (2.5 miles wide) and measured intensity of the storm would put it in extremely rare EF5 territory. Is there any reason for this, as I thought the Enhanced Fujita Scale ratings were based on wind speed only? And is the rating of EF3 controversial in the community?
I feel like that since tomorrow if the five year anniversary I'm just wondering what your story is. You can share your story if you actually were in the area or just watched the coverage on television.
This article from Wunderground is one I came across today while researching the El Reno tornado of 2013, which claimed 4 storm chasers' lives. We all know of this infamous tornado, which was a whopping 2.6 miles wide(the largest in recorded history). Surprisingly, such a massive and dangerous tornado only claimed 8 lives and injured 151 others. It was also only rated an EF3. What many people don't know, is that hundreds of people could've easily died in this tornado.
The El Reno tornado was traveling down I-40 heading directly towards Oklahoma City. OKC freeways were extremely congested to the point where thousands of people were trapped in gridlock traffic. Had the tornado continued on its path it would've hit these freeways directly. This would've easily cost the lives of 500+ people, making the El Reno tornado most likely worse than the Tri-State Tornado, which killed 695 people and injured around 1000.
But what is the point of all of this? These traffic jams were created by a combination of rush hour traffic, and people fleeing the storm. Hundreds, if not thousands of people were mislead by a local TV broadcast which told them to flee south of the storm; terrible advice. A car is one of the most dangerous places you can be in a tornado because it can be easily flipped over by the winds of a tornado. The only place more dangerous is a mobile home. Due to so many people fleeing this storm, they ultimately trapped themselves and were sitting ducks to a violent tornado. It's an incredible miracle the tornado weakened and faded away, with its 295mph winds silencing before it reached OKC.
The main point, the main lesson we can learn from the El Reno tornado, is that we're lucky, and people still have huge misconceptions about Tornadoes and severe weather. We dodged learning a 500+ fatality lesson by pure luck. One thing that amazes me, is in the era of information, hundreds of people lived uninformed of the dangers of leaving when a storm is coming, and almost contributing to a tri-state tornado 2.0. The people who fell victim to the tri-state tornado died because the lack of information, good structural buildings, and lack of meteorology research. The people of El Reno and OKC had a warnings, storm spotters, and shelters, yet they disregarded these things.
To conclude: NEVER EVER EVER get in your car a
... keep reading on reddit ➡However, Doplar radar had it with winds of 290 MPH close to the ground. It just never hit anything to support EF-5 structure failure like Joplin.
Google Earth Early damage path isoline ive made.
El reno Tornado family , yes more again got hit.
Newest NWS map of this tornado.
The dead man walking, it appeared multiple times in this tornado more then 3-4+ different times.
Outline Texture with its center shown.
(Green is the first map)
(Red is the simple new map)
(Blue is the complex new map)
(Black is the map ive made base on damage indecators.note that the RFD makes it hard to point out the edge)
it is noted that the green starts earlyer because of a small tornado that did damage at the start.
[Edit to show how the ef scale would be for the wind map.](https://preview.redd.it/slj300jpr7321.png
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