On Today's Date: The Enigma Tornado Outbreak
Arguably one of the nation's worst tornado outbreaks still has many unknowns to this day, largely because it happened in the late 19th century.
From Feb. 19-20, 1884, 141 years ago, a swarm of deadly tornadoes ripped through the Southeast from Mississippi and Kentucky to the Carolinas and Virginia.
That much is certain. But it's called the "Enigma Outbreak" because there's no definitive count of the number of tornadoes or related deaths they caused.
Tornado historian Thomas Grazulis listed 37 "strong tornadoes" in this outbreak across eight states, what would today earn at least an EF2 rating on the Enhanced Fujita scale. (This happened 36 years before the father of the scale, Tetsuya Fujita, was born.) Some accounts have at least 51 total tornadoes.
In an era where weather forecasting was in its infancy without Doppler radar, radio or television, these outbreaks were far deadlier than today.
At least 180 were killed in the South, but that's likely an underestimate, given that it hit in more rural, sparsely populated areas that may not have reported at the time.
This outbreak would likely have been more of an unknown without the efforts of John Park Finley, whose pioneering efforts and detailed documentation of the outbreak laid the foundation for the future of tornado and severe thunderstorm forecasting in the 20th century.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
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