What Caused the Tri-State Tornado? - 100 Years After America's Deadliest Tornado

On March 18, 1925, a historic F5 tornado would carve a path of devastation over 200 miles long from Missouri into Indiana, becoming the longest-tracked tornado ever recorded and killing nearly 700 people. Although extensive discussion has focused on historical accounts of this catastrophe, comparatively little research went into analyzing its environment. But in 2013, a number of researchers published a paper which may hold the key to understanding this monumental storm. So in this video, as we near the 100-year anniversary of this event, we're going to dive into this paper and break it all down. And in doing so, we'll attempt to answer the question: What caused the Tri-State Tornado?

CREDITS

Research papers:
Maddox et al. 2013: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...

Henry (1925): https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/jou...

Changnon and Semonin (1966): Changnon, S.A., and R.G. Semonin, 1966: A great tornado disaster. Weatherwise, 19, 56-65

Book: "The Great Tri-State Tornado" by Justin Harter https://www.amazon.com/Great-Tri-Stat...

GIFS:
NOAA
NOAA GOES-16
NWS Paducah
NWS Chicago
NOAA CIRA Satellite Library
NWS
Pivotal Weather

Photos:
NOAA Digital Library
Muncie Morning Star
Jackson County, IL Historical Society
NOAA Photo Library
NOAA Central Library Data Imaging Project
NOAA Climate Prediction Center
NWS Heritage - Virtual Lab
AMS Journals - Monthly Weather Review
EJSSM Facebook Banner
Royal Meteorological Society - Wiley Online Library
Google Maps
NOAA NCEI Climate at a Glance
Getty Images
Pivotal Weather
NWS
NWS Paducah
USTornadoes Case Archive
Stormstalker.wordpress.com
Indiana State Library Archives
The Evansville Press

All footage and graphics without credit by Ethan B

Music:
"Pas de Deux" - Bird Creek
"Lights" - Patrick Patrikios
"Medieval Astrology" - Underbelly and Ty Mayer
"Sinister Cathedral" - Asher Fulero
"Melancholia" - Godmode

This video is made in memory of the tragic events from that historic storm one century ago. Thank you to all the researchers who have contributed to our understanding of this event, so that such a massive death toll may never be seen again.

And I'm very grateful to have you watching this today! I really hope you found it interesting; I've been working on this for over a month, and had been working on the idea of it since January.