Something curious I noticed about the Lindsborg/Salina tornado of 1973
For tornado history buffs.
Remarkably, two films exist of the Sep. 25, 1973 tornado. First, at Lindsborg, where we see it as essentially a wedge, before quickly weakening to a stovepipe. The Salina film picks up essentially directly after the Lindsborg film ends, showing the tornado still as a stovepipe, but then it further weakens, and by the end of the clip as it exits Salina, we see the tornado apparently rope out. But then there's more footage, showing what may be the supercell recycling.
Which brings me to my observation. The official path for this F3 tornado is shown as being one unbroken line that proceeds all the way to Kansas' northern border. That's a further 80 miles beyond Salina, or over an entire hour on the ground.
Not possible.
It's hopefully obvious from the film footage we possess that there had to have been at least two tornadoes involved here, and they are being counted as one path. I would be more comfortable assuming there were three tornadoes, given that the rest of the path is twice the length of the distance prior to Salina, but either way, we can confidently say it was at least two.
The folks who chose to count the entire event as one path clearly did not have the benefit of this film evidence.