Nonetheless, an inspection of newspaper reports and governmental studies published in the aftermath reveals successive, long-tracked tornado families striking Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, with an estimation of at least 51—and possibly 60 or more—tornadoes striking that Tuesday into Wednesday.
The outbreak also produced the deadliest individual tornado in North Carolina history, an F4 which swept through the Rockingham area, killing 23.
Detailed coverage in a Wadesboro-based newspaper provides an unusually (by 19th-century standards) precise survey of the movement and damage produced by three of those storms in the southern Piedmont of North Carolina.
This storm first formed in southeastern Union County, from a supercell that had produced significant damage in South Carolina earlier.
Tracking to the northeast, it crossed the Pee Dee River into Richmond County and produced sporadic damage until just southeast of Rockingham.
Severe damage was again seen in the communities of Keyser and Manly (presently at the northeast corner of the city of Southern Pines), along the southeast edge of Moore County.
The surveyor noted a path width of 1⁄4–1⁄2 mi (0.40–0.80 km), with the most extreme damage (and most deaths) in the Philadelphia Church community.
The scene after the storm, particularly the position of the prostrate trees, indicated a convergence toward the center, as if a vacuum was created there and the wind rushed in from either side to fill it.
In Tennessee the mid-latitude system associated with the outbreak generated severe thunderstorms that produced strong, destructive winds on February 19.
According to an article appearing in the Statesville (NC) Landmark three days later, the damage tally in Georgia alone was estimated to be $1 million, in 1884 dollars.
The precise number of tornadoes as well as fatalities incurred during the outbreak is unknown, but the death toll was variously estimated to range from 370 to 2,000 at the time.
A reliable survey by the Signal Corps in 1889 located 182 fatalities, and a reanalysis by tornado researcher Thomas P. Grazulis in 1993 counted 178 deaths.