On February 11, 1887, at least 6 tornadoes ripped across the state of Pennsylvania during this rare February outbreak. Since 1950 only 6 other tornadoes have occurred in the state of PA in the month of February.
The Weather Bureau’s Monthly Weather Review (MWR) reported 17 tornadoes across Parts of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland this day. Thomas Grazulis only lists one Ohio tornado and one Indiana Tornado in Significant Tornadoes. The focus of this Funnel Feature will be on the Pennsylvania Tornadoes. Those are the ones I have done the most research into while working on the Central Pennsylvania Tornado Database.
The tornadoes were spawned between 11am and Noon and were probably embedded in a Quasi Linear Convective System (QLCS). In other words, these were twisters embedded within a squall line. One of these tornadoes, the Tyrone Tornado, unfortunately, proved to be deadly, killing 5 Hungarian immigrants. This is an interesting event to look into because details on some of these tornadoes aren’t available as the newspapers only paid attention to the more significant tornadoes.
Due to lack of details, 3 of these tornadoes cannot be rated, although it is likely the Mercer and Tionesta tornadoes were likely Significant (F2 or stronger).