Tornado family

Often mistaken for single long track tornadoes, a tornado family is a series of tornadoes which occur along a similar path. Spawned by the same supercell, these families can cover a short span or a vast distance. Sometimes evidenced by breaks in the damage path, expert analysis is necessary to determine whether or not damage was created by a family or a single tornado. In some cases, different tornadoes of a tornado family merge, making discerning whether an event was continuous or not even more difficult.

Some tornado damage remains a mystery even today due to a lack of evidence. The Tri-State Tornado was one such tornado. It could either have been the longest single tornado recorded, or a family of tornadoes. New, ongoing reanalysis indicates that it was one continuous tornadocite web |last = Doswell |first = Charles A., III |authorlink = Charles A. Doswell, III |coauthors = C. Crisp, R.A. Maddox, J. Hart, R.H. Johns, M.S. Gilmore, D.W. Burgess, Steve Piltz |title = The Tri-State Tornado of 18 March 1925 Reanalysis Project: Preliminary Results |url = http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/ams/AMS%20VP/Storm%20Conference/NESC%20Presentations/32ndNESC_Presentation/Banquet/Doswell.ppt |format = Powerpoint Presentation |accessdate = 2008-03-09 ] , however, many other very long track tornado events were later found to be tornado families, notably the Woodward, Oklahoma tornado family of April 1947 and the Charleston-Mattoon, Illinois tornado family of May 1917.

References

* The Tornado Project (1999). The Tornado Project's Terrific, Timeless and Sometimes Trivial Truths about Those Terrifying Twirling Twisters!. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.

See also

* Tornado outbreak