Top 10 Tornadoes Ranked by Highest Wind Speeds in theory YouTube

Way back in 1968, the Weather Bureau was surveying the damage caused by the 1968 Charles City Tornado. During their survey, they discovered extremely deep trenches. The tornado had pierced into the ground, and the ground scouring was so intense, the surveyors estimated the wind speed of the tornado to have been 528 miles per hour. Okay, they did later revise the wind speed down to 300 miles per hour, but still, for a second they thought maybe a tornado here on this planet produced 500 mile Which gets us to today's video. Which historic tornadoes have featured the highest potential unofficial wind speeds? You see, when it comes to any given tornado's power, there are two categories. There's official wind speed, which is the wind speed that assigns the tornado its Fujita rating, EF0 through EF5. And then there's another category, the unofficial highest potential wind speed. So the Fujita or Enhanced Fujita Scale is based solely on wind speeds measured via damage. So if an 800 mile per hour mythical monster tornado occurred in the middle of the desert, and it didn't destroy anything, it would only be like an EF1 or something, right? And this fact is pretty controversial amongst tornado enthusiasts. They're like, the hurricane scale is based off of wind speeds, radar-indicated wind speeds. Why can't tornadoes be based off of radar-indicated wind speeds? Well, you see, there's a problem, okay? First of all, there's not really a reliable way to measure wind speeds over 200 miles per hour. If you're going to put like a wind measuring device inside of this, yeah, it's going to get destroyed. And when it comes to radar-indicated wind speeds, well, the areas of rotation in tornadoes are too small, and radars are usually too far away to get an accurate measurement. You could talk about Doppler on wheels, we're going to get to those later. It's not like every tornado has a Doppler on wheels right next to it. So, you know, you can't use that for all tornadoes. So the only reliable way is to look at the damage. But there are several other unofficial ways in estimating a tornado's wind speed, whether it's through analyzing movement of pixels in a video, or using data from a nearby much more reliable Doppler radar on wheels. And that's what we're discussing in today's video. We're doing a top 10 list ranking tornadoes by highest potential unofficial wind speeds. But before we get to number 10, guys, spring is here and summer is quickly approaching. So it's about time you freshen up your style. And you can do so if today's video sponsor Into the AM. Into the AM is an online clothing brand that features some of the coolest graphic t-shirts out there. Seriously, these designs are sweet. I mean, look at this dude, look at this guy. Some of them even glow in the dark. And now that it's spring, they have recently released several new button-up designs. These button-up t-shirts feature lightweight premium performance fabric. I happen to be wearing one right here. They got four-way stretch, a nice relaxed fit, and UPF 30 plus sun protection. When you've got pale skin like me, you're going to need that sun protection. You can get 10% off these cool button-up shirts or any graphic t-shirt on their website via the link in the description, intotheam.com slash SWEGLE. Or you can use promo code SWEGLE, S-W-E-G-L-E at checkout. Again, for 10% off site-wide, go to the link in the description, intotheam.com slash SWEGLE, or use promo code SWEGLE at checkout. Into the AM has been a big supporter of the channel, so be sure to check them out. Thank you so much to Into the AM for sponsoring the video. The first entry on today's list is a bit of an enigmatic tornado when it comes to highest wind speed. There's a large range with this tornado. We're, of course, talking about the May 27, 1997, Gerald, Texas F5 with the highest possible wind speed of 298 miles per hour. The story of the Gerald tornado is not a typical tornado story. For one, it moved in the opposite direction of like 90% of all tornadoes, traveling from the northeast to the southwest. It also had a very dynamic life cycle. Starting as a small little rope tornado, perhaps an EF0, you know, destroying a couple, uh, whatever, hay bales. It went from this and it transformed into a massive mega wedge. And in the middle of that, it looked like a scary monster in the sky. And during this mega wedge portion, it's possible that it had wind speeds near 300 miles per hour. Due to its proximity to I-35, the tornado was heavily filmed, and today it still has quite a reputation amongst the tornado enthusiast community. Now, while the tornado did not directly strike the town of Gerald, it did strike a subdivision just to the northwest, the Double Creek Estates. The damage caused by this tornado over Double Creek Estates is some of the most intense damage ever surveyed. The damage was so intense that it actually didn't look that crazy. In fact, the only evidence that a tornado had been there were the dozens of slab foundations. When it comes to residential tornado damage, this is about the most intense you can get. And this damage easily gave the Gerald tornado an F5 rating. On top of the clean foundations, the tornado also removed concrete from the street. This takes some pretty intense winds to achieve. There's just one problem with the Gerald F5, and that is that its forward moving speed was super slow. So as it went over the Double Creek subdivision, it just sat there for several minutes. So people are like, wait, maybe it didn't have super high wind speeds. Maybe it had like F3 level wind speeds, but since it was so prolonged, that's why the damage was so intense. Remember, this was a unique tornado. It was going the opposite direction. There was some weird meteorological stuff going on with this tornado. Due to all these factors, it was extremely slow moving. Then again, the damage was so intense and some of these homes were well built. So maybe it was pretty close to the 300 mile per hour range. In reality, it was probably in the mid 200s, maybe upper mid 200s, you know, like 270. But still, it remains one of the most powerful tornadoes on record. In the aftermath of the Gerald F5, 27 lives were lost. All within the Double Creek subdivision, a very high fatality number for such a confined space. There were also 12 injuries, which is unique. Usually with tornadoes, you have a lot more injuries than you have fatalities. Like usually it's like 10, 20 times more injuries than fatalities. But with this, you actually had more fatalities than injuries, which really goes to show that surviving this monster was almost impossible. Moving on to number nine, and that is the April 3rd, 1974 Xena Ohio F5 tornado with an estimated peak potential wind speed of 305 miles per hour. We're already in the 300 mile per hour plus range and we've only just begun. The 1974 Xena F5 was part of one of the largest tornado outbreaks in recorded history. The infamous 1974 super outbreak that featured seven F5 tornadoes. Absolutely insane. One of the most insane meteorological events ever. Overall, there were at least 149 tornadoes resulting in 335 fatalities. But the strongest of the outbreak, and of course one of the strongest in recorded history because it's on this list, was the Xena Ohio F5. This tornado tore through a large portion of the city of Xena, as well as the nearby community of Wilberforce, just to the southeast of Dayton. It was an extremely intense wedge, and was also one of the first tornadoes to ever be filmed on home video. Here is said footage captured by Bruce Boyd. So how did it receive its estimated peak wind speed of 305 miles per hour? Well, the damage caused by the tornado was incredibly intense. In fact, Ted Fujita himself, the man Fujita, Fujita scale, enhanced Fujita scale. He initially gave this tornado an F6 rating plus or minus one, which means it could have been an F7. Of course, anything over an F5 rating really doesn't exist because you can't measure. I mean, F5 is like clean slab damage. So unless a tornado tore up the slab and threw the slab, you really can't measure anything more than that. So he eventually downgraded it to an F5. So what was so insane about this damage? Well, out of the 150 tornadoes surveyed by Fujita and his team from the University of Chicago, the Xena F5 was considered to be the worst. Taking a look at some of this aerial damage photos, you can clearly see several clean swept foundations. There were also some super well-constructed commercial buildings that saw heavy damage. This was a multi-vortex tornado, meaning that there were several inner vortices inside the main tornado. And it's likely that these super high 300 plus mile per hour winds came from one of these specific sub-vortices just tearing through Suplin, tearing through like this specific area of homes right here and causing absolute devastation. These sub-vortices drilled specific areas of the city. With older tornadoes, it can be difficult to really know how intense they were. Survey methods were not quite as robust as they are today. But still, I mean, Ted Fujita surveyed hundreds of tornadoes up to this point, and this was the second most intense, according to him. The most intense we'll get to later. Next up with number eight is a much more newer, much more recent tornado. In fact, it only occurred last year. And this is, of course, the May 21st, 2024 Greenfield, Iowa EF4. Now, officially, according to the survey done by the National Weather Service, the tornado had a peak intensity of 185 miles per hour. But a Doppler-on-wheels mobile radar unit measured a wind speed of 318 miles per hour, being one of the highest wind speeds ever officially measured on Earth. Doppler-on-wheels are radar units that can be pulled by a truck, making them very useful for getting up-close measurements of tornado events. And the radar imagery from these looks absolutely insane. I mean, the tornadoes almost look like hurricanes in these imageries. But back to Greenfield. So most of the tornado's path was over a large rural area. Only toward the end of its life did it strike the population center of Greenfield, Iowa, tearing a path of destruction right through the town, claiming five lives in the process. It was most intense, however, out in the country. In fact, Reed Timmer himself filmed some incredible footage of this tornado, with dozens of little inner vortices destroying windmills. But let's talk about that Doppler-on-wheels 318-mile-per-hour measurement. So the research team of Karen Kasaba and the inventor of the Dow himself, Joshua Werman, set up camp in Greenfield. And ultimately, the tornado would come within 270 meters of the radar. While looking back at the data, there was a brief instance where a 318-mile-per-hour wind gust was measured. This wind gust occurred at 341, and it likely only lasted for a second. So you might be like, why is it only an EF-4? Well, that 318-mile-per-hour wind gust didn't cause much damage. It probably just was up in the air and hit the ground. It didn't do any damage. Remember, the Fujita scale is a damaged-based scale. Now, it's possible that maybe in the future, Dow data could be incorporated into official tornado ratings. So maybe this tornado will get upgraded in the future. It's also possible that this tornado could get upgraded in the future due to damage. Meteorologist Tim Marshall suggested that the National Weather Service adopt an estimated wind speed on damage done to wind turbines. If it takes wind speeds over 200 miles per hour to destroy a wind turbine, just like the Greenfield tornado did, then that would upgrade the tornado to an EF-5 rating. We'll just have to stay tuned to see if it changes. Tornadoes have changed in the past, guys. There have been tornadoes that were F-4s or EF-4s, and then two years later, they were like, oh, just kidding, it was an F-5. Actually, usually the opposite happens. Usually, there's an F-5 from 1820, and they're like, no, it was an F-3. Anyway, we're moving on to number seven, the May 11, 1970 Lubbock, Texas F-5, which could have featured a wind speed of 318 miles per hour, just like Greenfield. We talked about the Xenia, Ohio F-5 and how it was one of only two tornadoes to ever be given the mythical F-6 rating from Ted Fujita. Well, this tornado is the other one that briefly had an F-6 rating. In fact, if we go back to the original document put together by Ted Fujita himself on the Fujita scale, an F-6 would require wind speeds of 319 miles per hour. According to his survey team, the Lubbock, Texas tornado may have reached 318 miles per hour. So this could have been an F-6, but not quite. But since this was such a powerful tornado, and since it hit such a large city, the damage was absolutely incredible. In fact, it was the costliest tornado ever recorded at one point, causing $250 million worth of damage. Late in the evening at 935, this tornado touched down and tore through the city. A quarter of the city was heavily damaged. 9,000 homes were destroyed with 26 fatalities and 1,500 injuries. 10,000 cars were destroyed. 10,000 cars, that's a huge number. And 119 planes were destroyed because it also hit an airport. It's probably why it was such an expensive tornado. And 80% of the glass panes in the downtown district were blown out. Some of the most intense damage surveyed include clean slab foundations, a tank thrown over 2,000 feet, and a twisted distortion seen in the frame of the Great Plains and Life building located downtown. Similar to Xena, this tornado had multiple vortices, and it was these sub-vortices that caused the most intense damage in various parts of the city. Now we're getting to some of the big ones, some of the craziest weather events to have ever occurred on this planet. Number six may be one of the most famous tornado events of all time, the May 3rd, 1999 Bridge Creek Moor F5, with a peak estimated hypothetical wind speed of 321 miles per hour. This monster tore through the southern suburbs of Oklahoma City, causing $1 billion worth of damage, claiming 34 lives in the process. This tornado featured the very first tornado emergency, and was, in many ways, a worst-case scenario. The tornado initially made landfall in Grady County, about two miles southwest of the town of Amber, around 6.23 p.m. After moving 6.5 miles, it progressively increased in intensity to F5, eventually hitting the town of Bridge Creek. After varying in intensity from F2 to F5, it moved into Cleveland County, and just before it entered the city of Moor, it again reached F5 intensity. By 7.30 p.m., the tornado had moved into Oklahoma County, ravaging Midwest City, Dell City, and southeastern Oklahoma City, before fading away just beyond Midwest City at 7.48 p.m. 8,000 homes and 260 businesses were damaged or destroyed. Several well-built concrete foundation homes that were completely destroyed in Moor warranted the F5 rating. The Emerald Springs apartment building also received F5 damage, with estimated winds over 260 mph. While the suburb of Moor, Oklahoma, gets most of the attention when it comes to this event, the extremely high 321 mph wind measurement was actually taken near Bridge Creek, early in the tornado's life. Similar to the 2024 Greenfield, Iowa, EF4, this wind speed was captured by a doppler on wheels. Initially, the peak wind speed was 301 mph, but after some math and measurements, the peak wind speed was revised in 2021 to have actually been 321 mph, making it the highest unofficial wind speed ever recorded with instrumentation here on Earth. Now, I did say that the Bridge Creek Moor tornado was the highest unofficial wind speed ever recorded with instrumentation here on Earth, and I bet many of you are wondering, why is this not number one? Well, the rest of the list is based off of weird hypothetical speeds captured in weird, unofficial ways. For example, let's move on to number five, the 1995 Pampa, Texas, EF4, a classic 1990s tornado, a very photogenic tornado as well, as it occurred near sunset on June 8th, 1995. The Pampa EF4 was a classic drill bit tornado similar to the Isley Manitoba EF5. It featured incredibly fast wind speeds in a very small area. It didn't cause enough damage to earn an EF5 rating. In fact, it missed the city of Pampa. It mostly hit a commercial district, some warehouses, but some researchers believe that this tornado may have had wind speeds over 320 miles per hour due to video evidence. Yes, so a local sheriff named Randy Stubblefield filmed much of the tornado's life, and there's one particular moment in the video that shows a truck flying at a high velocity. When Randy is zoomed in up on the base of the tornado, you see all this crazy debris flying all over the place, and the movement of this debris was heavily studied via photogrammetry. Researchers watched the pixels, and they were able to measure wind speeds over 320 miles per hour for three seconds. They essentially like looked at the pixels and did a little math and measured how quickly the debris was moving. Pretty incredible. Photogrammetry evidence of the Pampa EF4 was enough to convince tornado historian Thomas Grazoulas. He even stated in his 2001 book, EF5 slash EF6 Tornadoes, that if an EF6 had ever been filmed, it would be of the 1995 Pampa EF4. Speaking of four, we're moving on to number four. The Tri-State Tornado. The deadliest tornado in American history with at least 695 fatalities. This tornado lasted four hours and traveled 219 miles through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. Those are the tri-states right there. Everything about this tornado is heavily disputed, and I just realized that the 100th anniversary just happened. Anyway, everything about this tornado is heavily disputed. Was it one single tornado, or was it a family of tornadoes produced from the same supercell? And was it really an EF5? Well, this tornado did cause quite a bit of damage throughout different towns along its path, and there were lots of photos taken of said damage. And modern researchers and scientists have studied the photographs and have unofficially given the Tri-State Tornado an EF5 rating with estimated wind speeds well over 300 miles per hour. A lot of the homes back in the day were not built to last, so some of this evidence is kind of sketch. But there were several well-constructed commercial buildings that saw heavy damage, like schools and downtown districts. But it all happened so long ago, so we will never really truly know how powerful this tornado really was. But I mean, this tornado lasted for like four hours. So I bet there was probably at least a second where an inner vorticity was over 300 miles per hour. Probably. Number three. Number three is an interesting event. It's the June 20th, 1931 Lubin-Poland F4 tornado. That's right, a European entry on today's list. I know, very unusual. Actually, we have another one kind of coming up. So there is some data that suggests that this specific tornado may have featured wind speeds near 324 miles per hour. Look at that on Wikipedia right there. 246 to 324 miles per hour. If you want to talk about intense damage, this tornado featured a lot of it. From well-built brick buildings completely destroyed to even chimneys being thrown by the tornado. Oftentimes, the only remnant left from a tornado is the chimney because the chimney's built out of brick and it's strong. So if the chimney got destroyed, you know that there was some intense winds. Overall, six fatalities occurred and there were over 100 injuries. Now, much of the documentation of this tornado comes from a Polish scientist by the name of Dr. Gominski. Probably pronounced that wrong. He was kind of the father of Polish climatology and he estimated in 1936 that the wind from the 1931 Lubin tornado produced a dynamic pressure equivalent to wind speeds between 246 miles per hour and 324 miles per hour. Now, I personally, I'm a little bit skeptical about it. I mean, having wind speeds over 300 miles per hour in Poland sounds pretty outlandish. But having a Polish tornado featured in today's video is pretty interesting. So that's why it's here. Number two. Number two, I think a lot of you saw this one coming. It is, of course, the May 31st, 2013 El Reno EF3 with a potential peak wind speed of 336 miles per hour. Holy cow. Perhaps the most insane tornado event ever documented. The El Reno EF3 has continued to be a mythical weather event among tornado enthusiasts. We'll get to that 336 mile per hour wind speed in a second but this tornado is also the largest ever documented coming in at 2.6 miles wide. This tornado was so large that the scar could be seen from space. Look how large this is compared to Oklahoma City. You would not want that running through Oklahoma City. That would have been a terrible event. The El Reno tornado was a unique tornado in that it didn't really feature a whole condensation funnel. It was more of a messy cluster of inner vortices. And boy, did these inner vortices have some pretty high wind speeds. Now the EF3 rating is pretty controversial. A lot of people are upset that it has some of the highest wind speeds ever documented and that it's only an EF3. We should be thankful that it's only an EF3. Did you really want this tornado to cause enough damage that it would have gotten an EF5 rating? Do you really want this to actually hit the town of El Reno? No, of course not. So we should be thankful that such a large monster tornado essentially occurred over an open field. Even though it did not directly strike the town of El Reno, it still caused eight fatalities and 150 injuries. Four storm chasers died, including the Twist X team and several other storm chasers were severely injured. So 336 miles per hour. Where do we get that absolutely crazy wind speed? So similar to the Dow, the Doppler on wheels, there's another mobile radar unit, Oklahoma University's RAXPOL. From RAXPOL's analysis, researchers concluded that the peak wind speeds of some of those inner sub vortices were close to 313 miles per hour. However, in 2024, after revising the data collected by Howard Bluestein's team, new research indicated that the wind speeds may have been as high as 336 miles per hour, making it possibly the highest wind speed ever measured here on earth. Now, before we get to number one, I want to do a quick honorable mention, and that is the 1764 Waldreich Germany F5 tornado. I don't know how to pronounce that. I mispronounce a lot of stuff on this channel. Surely you know that by now. The rating on this tornado is controversial because it happened so long ago, but apparently there was a very powerful wedge tornado that tore through Northern Germany in 1764. And by chance, a local scientist, a Mr. Gensmir, surveyed the damage and left very detailed notes. He was kind of like a Ted Fujita back in the 18th century. Now, one specific note was a cobblestone mansion that was completely destroyed. This particular mansion was like a super well-built, overbuilt, very strong cobblestone structure. I mean, back in the day, they made things, you know, they made things to last, supposedly. Some modern historians suggest that wind speeds well over 300 miles per hour would have been needed for this to occur. But since it was so long ago, it's just an honorable mention. Finally, we have reached number one, the March 13th Goessel Kansas F5. Unbelievably, there is evidence that this F5 tornado may have featured wind speeds near 350 miles per hour. Yeah, 350 miles per hour, easily making it the strongest, most powerful tornado ever recorded by like 20 miles per hour. The Goessel Kansas F5 was actually part of an F5 tornado family. The parent thunderstorm supercell had dropped an F5 earlier over Heston, Kansas that led to one fatality. Interestingly, a satellite tornado formed near this F5 and eventually grew enough in size and strength that it essentially swallowed up the Heston F5 and this merger led to the mega Goessel F5. There's footage of this merger, by the way. Now, this new tornado was insanely powerful. After the event, the National Weather Service and Ted Fujita surveyed the damage left from the Goessel F5 and concluded that it may have been one of the most powerful tornadoes ever documented with wind speeds between 300 and 350 miles per hour. The biggest evidence for all of this was the ground scouring created by the tornado. So ground scouring are these massive trenches in a field that can be left by a very powerful tornado. Essentially, the tornado is tearing up the ground or like a sub-vortice within the tornado is tearing into the ground and depending on the severity of the ground scouring, you can get a rough estimate of how powerful the tornado was, i.e. how fast the wind was moving. One prominent example of this comes from the 2011 Philadelphia, Mississippi F5 that featured 1.5 foot deep trenches. The ground scouring with the Goessel tornado was crazy. In fact, at the time, it was the most intense ever seen by both the National Weather Service and Ted Fujita. Now, keep in mind, Ted Fujita had been surveying tornadoes for 30 years so he had definitely seen a few things, including many of the tornadoes featured in today's list. Perhaps the merger of the Heston F5 and the Goessel F5 somehow created for a brief moment extremely high winds with the sub-vortices, I don't know. But fortunately, this super powerful tornado occurred in a field and not over a heavily populated area, although it did still result in one fatality. But yes, that concludes today's list. I'd like to hear what your thoughts are on today's entries. Which tornado do you believe has actually had the highest wind speed ever recorded or highest potential wind speed ever recorded? Do let me know in the comments and don't forget about checking out today's video sponsor, Into the AM, promo code SWEGLE for 10% off site-wide. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time.