Alright, with #ERA5 reanalysis being extended back to 1950 today, figured I'd take an opportunity to plot 300 hPa, 500 hPa, 850 hPa, and MSLP/10 m wind for a number of tornado outbreaks in the 1950-1978 timeframe.

First up: 4/3/1974 (Super Outbreak) @ 22 UTC. 1/11

4/11/1965 (Palm Sunday Outbreak) @ 23 UTC. Just incredible dynamics here. 2/11

2/21/1971 (Mississippi Delta Outbreak + major Plains blizzard) @ 22 UTC. 3/11

3/21/1952 (Mid South Outbreak) @ 23 UTC. 4/11

5/21/1957 (Ruskin Heights MO Outbreak) @ 00 UTC. 5/11

4/21/1967 (Belvidere/Oak Lawn IL Outbreak) @ 23 UTC. Note similarity with 4/11/65 here. 6/11

5/26/1955 (Blackwell OK/Udall KS Outbreak) @ 03 UTC. 7/11

4/3/1956 (Hudsonville MI F5 tornado) @ 23 UTC. Again some similarities here with 4/11/65 and 4/21/67. 8/11

6/9/1953 (Flint/Beecher MI Outbreak) @ 01 UTC. 9/11

5/6/1960 (Prague OK F5 and Wilburton OK F4 tornadoes) @ 00 UTC. 10/11

Obviously this is mainly looking at the dynamical components of these events. Amazing that we're able to visualize this stuff at such high resolution all the way back to the pre-satellite era now. More to come later. All credits to @ECMWF and @CopernicusECMWF for the data. 11/11