Hi everyone,
I wanted to revive this thread to ask some questions that have bugged me about this event. It's hard to get much information on the net about this tornado and I am curious to know why an official fujita scale rating was never released publicly. Also to those who have seen the official review was there any photos of the tornado? what about the damage? Aerial photos of the path? I know it was 1970 and in Australia but it seems crazy to have a rare event like this with such little ionformation. This is literally the most information I can find.
"The Bulahdelah Tornado was an intense tornado which occurred near the town of Bulahdelah (100 kilometres (62.1 mi) north-northeast of Newcastle), New South Wales on 1 January 1970, and is thought to be the most destructive tornado ever documented in Australia.[1] It is thought to be least F4 or F5 on the Fujita scale however no official rating has been made public.[2][3]
The tornado left a damage path 22 kilometres (14 mi) long and 1–1.6 km (0.6–1 mi) wide through the Bulahdelah State Forest.[1] According to reports, it threw a two ton tractor 100 m (328 ft) through the air, depositing it upside down. It is estimated that the tornado destroyed over one million trees.[1] The weather system that produced the tornado was a classic set-up for violent tornadoes, something somewhat rarely seen outside of the United States, Canada, Bangladesh, and adjacent areas of India". - wikipedia.org
How acurate do you beleive this information to be?
The synoptic charts posted above are impressive to say the least. How often would a setup like this or similar occur in Australia?