On April 28, 2002 an extremely long tracking supercell crossed three Mid-Atlantic states and produced numerous tornadoes. One of the tornadoes in question tracked for over 60 miles in Maryland and caused some of the worst damage that the state has ever seen. The damage surveyors head to the town of La Plata, Maryland, which has been hit the hardest. The scope of the damage that the surveyors find in town is incredible. The surveyors then come to an incredible conclusion, one particular brick building in town looks to have suffered F5 caliber damage, meaning that this tornado potentially had winds speeds upwards of 261 MPH.
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I may or may not have pronounced the town of "La Plata" incorrectly the entire video, and didn't realized it till after I recorded everything. If you're a local, I apologize, I'm not from Maryland 😅
Also If you've come to comment that this tornado was rated F4 and not F5, I'm fully aware. Watch the full video and you'll see it's all covered.
calling a tornado "visually unimpressive" is like calling bacon "bland-flavored"
I love obscure tornados like this
La Plata also had an F-4 tornado in 1926, killing 13 schoolchildren and 4 townspeople and injuring 35.
great discussion over this lesser known event
I actually looked this up yesterday
Edit: I love how people just mispronounce our MD names, Salisbury (which I live 30 minutes southeast of it) is pronounced Sals-berry, also Salisbury is a city, not a town
Probably wasn’t even a F4.
😵😮
Why do all the creator's that make tornado videos have to tell me how the weather was that day? I think we all know how tornadoes form by now, lets jyst get to the tornado. If youre not a weather geek no one cares about cape values, dry lines, instability…. watching for the tornado…….
You know as a Maryland resident myself and a weather enthusiast, I would say that was a bad tornado and it was a monster storm! And even tho I’m only 13 years old and wasn’t alive to see it, it was a bad day for Maryland and I’ve studied weather since I was four! So that’s 9 years of experience and I’ve seen a tornado in my own back yard too!
"Geez-O-Flip" should go down in tornado lore alongside gems such as "get my pants!"
From MD… remember this day clearly
This is a great video. I’m in MD!
Move to La Plata and this is all the locals talk about
I only know this one because of The Weather Channel's Storm Stories.
Great video! Thank you for covering this storm!!! The only other time I’ve heard someone cover it was the Weather Channel in their episode of Storm Stories. But really quick: it’s pronounced La Play-ta and Sals-berry. But other than that it was great!!!
I was living in Waldorf when this happened as a kid, i remember some minor hail and getting to see the sky turn green before getting ushered into the house by my mother as a warning had been issued. Not 5 minutes after going inside the tornado changed course and became the la plata tornado
I was there. Missed my house by 2 miles. I'll never forget driving down main street and the only thing left was a bank vault.
Helloi love your videos
Ive always been wanting someone to cover this as this happened in my state
6:13 you can't deny there's a bit of glee there, but…
And a flat realization at 6:40 that it's gonna do some damage.
Growing up in Utah/Idaho, I can't say that I've reacted any differently.
I remember this one; that same storm system had spawned an F3 about an hour from where I lived in Indiana. I kept tabs on it and that was how I heard about the F5.
ive heard speculation before in the past that researchers and the NWS have lots of pressure put upon them somehow or another through the large insurance companies that insure properties/land/belongings damaged by natural disasters, especially tornadoes, as the amount of coverage is usually determined by the severity of the event. i wonder if that could have had something to do with the strange way this storm was rated.
I always thought this tornado was freakish!
Especially even with its incredibly fast forward speed through La Plata (~60 miles per an hour), it still caused "Heavy F4 damage," as stated by the NWS in their 20 years later look back article.
* * *
"Due to the fast forward speed of this tornado, it had less time to dwell over structures & buildings, moving nearly a mile a minute (96.5 km/h), during its havoc in downtown La Plata; damage likely would have been more intense if the storm was slower." – This also sounds very similar to the 2021 Western Kentucky tornado, which also had about the same exact forward speed. Unfortunately, we didn't see the luck with that twister that we saw with the La Plata one; and it was quite a bit stronger and larger, too.
* * *
And the fact that another powerfully F2 struck the town just several minutes later, and nobody got killed by that is a miracle. Just imagine getting struck by a twister without warning, just to go outside to see another one going through your town in an area that nearly never sees tornadoes…
I'm originally from Calvert County, MD.
The Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant may have been half hour or so from my hometown of North Beach.
I did not know of the extent of the storm.
Though, I did know of it because my grandmother did live a stone's throw away in Crofton.
She told me about it, but I thought it was nothing considering I had not seen anything of substance on television or any other news outlets.
One of the biggest tornadoes I have ever seen came out over the Chesapeake Bay while me and my family were returning to Calvert County in a large fishing boat. Thankfully we were south of the storm as it came out over the water, but it still gave us all a good scare.
This tornado passed by a friend's house and missed his by about a mile or less. We sat on his front porch and watched it go by, wish we had gotten video of it 🙁
thank gosh i was not born during that time, i was born a few years after
La Plata was rated F5 at first but nws did a second survey giving it an official F4 rating. Technically this tornado is not an F5