Tornado Alley - Tracking One of the Most Destructive Forces in Nature
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- Опубликовано: 14 мар 2023
- Discover the history and science behind Tornado Alley, the region where warm and cool air collide to create ideal conditions for severe weather, leading to devastating tornadoes in the US.
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I’m a Midwesterner, I’ve been though five in my life. They ranged from zero destruction to “What town?” They are terrifying.
I’ve never been directly hit by a tornado but I’ve been a mile away from an EF4!
We had one here in Massachusetts around when I born and one tore a nice path through southern Massachusetts about 10 years ago. Glad they aren't common.
As a Midewesterner who is regularly menaced by tornadoes, I think the most terrifying thing is how arbitrary they are. A tornado can completely destroy a single house on a street, just level it to the foundation, and every other house on the street is perfectly fine. At least with a hurricane or earthquake, everybody knows they're screwed! :P
As someone who has lived on both the east coast and west coast of the US, I agree. Tornadoes scare the h3ll out of me. I'll take earthquakes and hurricanes any day over a tornado. My husband was considering a job in Oklahoma and I was like "no way!". Lol
They seem to have minds of their own, like how the Jarrell F5 just slowed to a crawl over the Double Creek Estates.
I always subscribed to the idea of Hurricanes being more dangerous because they can form tornadoes in their storms… but you have at least a week or so to gtfo lol… unlike tornadoes
I saw that in 2020 in Chicago with an EF1. One street would be fine, but the next block over would have all the trees, 100 year old maples, all broken at the trunks.
A tornado could destroy one house and skip over the house next door. So weird.
I've lived in tornado alley most of my life. They're creepy yet fascinating. The way the sky turns an ugly bruised green gives me chills every time.
Yeah, that's the memorable thing... that creepy sky look before /during the storm.
It's also pretty scary when the temperature drops 20 degrees in a second
and how you can feel the temperatures change in the gust of a wind, while watching clouds in one area blow away, and others not far blow towards you low and fast. it is awesome.
Literally my top natural disaster fear. NOPE
That pea soup color is horrid. I had a manager argue with me about it. I sat in the stairwell of the office building until it went away. There was a tornado nearby. This was in Virginia.
El Reno's 2013 2.6 mile wide tornado was a monster. RIP Tim, Paul, and Carl. =(
2.6 mile wide. The Mulhall, OK F4 of May 3, 1999 may have actually been larger.
❤️ I'm sorry.
El Reno was 2.6 miles wide
Correct: 2.6 miles. Not 4.
Still. It was a monster...
The deadly Greensburg KS tornado of 2007 is quite a story. It was a rare EF5 that was 1.7 miles wide (wider than the town itself) with over 200mph wind and stayed on the ground over an hour. Greensburg was hit directly and flattened, 95% destroyed and the other 5% damaged. They decided to rebuild their city as a “green” city and is now zero emissions and 100% powered by renewable energy.
While I'm not sure about all your facts here (100% renewable energy city? Pretty sure that is not accurate.) The Greesburg tornado was for sure one of the scarier ones as it hit the city after dark so the couldn't even see it coming.
Edit* City is a loose term Greensburg is not very big.
@@barrymak421 Not sure why you feel the need to crap all over my completely amicable comment. You must be a barrel of fun at parties.
BTW here’s a direct quote from the Washington Post:
“A decade later, Greensburg draws 100 percent of its electricity from a wind farm, making it one of a handful of cities in the United States to be powered solely by renewable energy”
I still remember Greensburg. The grain elevator on the north and the courthouse on the south where about the only things left (both made of concrete), minus a some buildings on the outskirts. I think their population is still only about half of what it was before the tornado. A lot of older people moved instead of rebuilding. Their main street is pretty nice. It's an almost "new" town.
Not 0 emissions that's not possible. Besides, only 700 people live there, and their population has been decreasing for twenty years
My father and I used to travel all over the ks area for his business. What was very eerie about that was we were there just a day or 2 before it happened. The same for Joplin. We drove through Greensburg again a month or 2 later and the whole place was gone.
"Tornado season" seems to be changing too. I've lived in Tornado Alley all my life, and tornadoes in December didn't happen. Now, late fall/ early winter and late winter/ early spring seem to be the worst times for severe storms, rather than April-July like when I was a child. February is reserved for severe winter storms, which also used to be a rarer occurrence here.
Historically that is incorrect.
The clip you kept showing is a really interesting one showing the record breaking el-reno tornado. The main tornado is the huge dark mass on the left which measured 2.6 miles wide, the tornado in the middle of the picture is a satellite tornado going around the main tornado. The el-reno tornado is also well known because it’s the one tornado that demonstrated the weaknesses in the ef scale and also the only tornado to kill multiple storm chasers, catching some of the most experienced chasers out there and for four chasers fatally.
There's a well put together documentary on RUclips about it for anyone interested. It's hard to watch but it's important to learn about imo
It didn't demonstrate the weaknesses in the EF scale so much as it demonstrated how people misunderstand it.
@@scarpfish erm your joking right? The F scale and later the EF scale was to estimate a tornados strength in how much it destroyed true? But this is not taking in account the MD radar readings. So the MD radar readings for the el-reno tornado was almost or just over 300mph but the tornado was given a rating of ef-3. wind speed of a ef-3 tornado is according to the ef scale? So you see where your comment falls short.
@@elsden722 On which RUclips channel? I'd like to see that.
@@mtbalandin9594 the EF scale is a damage scale, not a windspeed scale. The El Reno tornado was *capable* of producing EF-5 damage according to the measured speeds, but it didn't do any such damage to manmade structures (which is what the ratings are based on).
I saw my first twister, I was about six years old in Kansas and I will never forget the sound of it. All the neighbors would come to our house to shelter in our basement, because it was completely enclosed with a cinder block and concrete ceiling. I remember dad taking us out to a tree and wood fence that were completely imbedded with strands of wheat, imagine the power it took to do such a thing. And also seeing dozens of power and telephone poles snapped off at the bottom laying across the road. And I recall the stories of the devastation of people's homes and farms and a lifetime of work being destroyed in minute. I remember several twister parties, is what we call them, when everyone in the neighborhood would shelter in our house and a lot of people trying to not look scared.
@@BrainScramblies One time in middle school, my mom surprised the heck out of me by pulling me from school on a day where a tornado had passed over the store she'd been shopping in. It was awesome getting out of school early, but then I thought about the makeup of my school. We lived in Louisiana, and aside from the main building, most of the classes were held in various trailers. And even the main building had a ton of windows. Like...who built that thing? 😂 They must have forgotten that it was the south and tornados are popular, lol.
My guess...someone, somewhere, wanted to save money. I've never understood how building things cheaply to save money is somehow "better" than just building it properly the first time, but there's a ton of infrastructure horror stories that can also be asked that question.
@@BrainScramblies Thats what happens in a country where the rich pay nothing to support the citizens and infrastructure they utilize to make their obscene profits.
I live in Oklahoma, generally considered the tornado capital of the world. Tornadoes are a normal occurrence here. An EF3 tornado ripped through my neighborhood 2 weeks ago. Thankfully, no one died.
I am also surprised the 2013 Moore EF5 wasn't brought up as it was the most powerful tornado measured so far and would have been considered an EF6 if that classification existed.
You're thinking of the 1999 F5 Bridge Creek-Moore tornado, not the 2013 one. The old original Fujita scale which it was rated under had a theoretical upper limit on its 5 rating at 318 mph. The current EF scale does not so there is not and never could be an EF6 rating.
I can remember Moore in 2013 it obliterated a lot of my friends houses and I remember it taking several hours to get home from school and I lived 2 miles away.
@Scarpfish Unless we draw another arbitrary line. Ultimately we made all these scores up, so I propose E6 tornados have a minimum wind speed of 420.
Oklahoma has the more well-known tornadoes for certain, especially recently - Moore, El Reno for instance.
As @Scarpfish said, Moore 1999 was the 318 mph monster, Moore 2013, while violent and definitely worthy of its EF5 rating, was not spinning quite as fast
Kansas native here, tornados are no joke. Yes there are folks who love to see this kind of weather like that ( I myself am one) but they have no problems wiping out a town. Almost everyone here has some story about where they were about a certain storm from some year. Like the Andover tornado of 91, or when Greensburg was wiped out in 2007. It's amazing how nature can be like that. From March to June usually, y'all gotta be watching out for this stuff. Good work Simon, you did well on this 🙂
My brother and sister in law live in Kansas just a few miles from the Missouri border. I hope nothing happens to them.
I'm so sorry you're from Kansas. Had to drive across the state when I was moving to Colorado and it was just miserable. I saw signs for "Colby, Kansas, Oasis of the Plains" for like 8 goddamn hours. Mind you, this was day 3 of our move in a packed minivan with myself, my gf, two dogs, two shrieking cats, and all of our worldly possessions, so that was probably a contributing factor to the misery. I remember getting excited when I saw Pike's Peak and thinking "we're almost there" NOPE you can apparently see that mountain from a million miles away. Kansas tricked me, the bastard 😆
@@cleverusername9369Lol that I-70 drive isn’t for the feint of heart 😂. There are some pretty areas in Kansas but most who just drive across it only know it as the “state of endless nothing” or “purgatory” lol
Normal day for Kansas
I live in a tornado rich part of Canada. Spouse is from the east coast, her and her family would like to see a tornado. I explain to them it's better if they dont
Iowa here, now we not only have tornados, we apparently have to deal with derechos. This was still something that happened before, but now is becoming more frequent. Take a look at the derecho that hit Cedar Rapids in 2020. Straight line winds of up to 140mph. Very interesting stuff if you wanted to check out some more unusual weather patterns for the midwest.
I am from Cedar Rapids and was at work when Derecho happened. That was a carnival ride i did not want to ride that day. To tell the truth i would have rather dealt with a tornado than 150+ mph straight line winds. I am municipal employee and some how we managed to keep water flowing to our residents. My family and I were lucky in the fact that we were without power for only 4 days. we had friends that were out power for over 3 weeks
But more to the point of tornados, let's all not forget Fredricksburg here in Iowa. it is about 30 minutes north of me here in CR and that town does not exists because of an EF5 tornado that happened. that was just a few years before derecho.
@@khigginbotham2003 ten days no power for me!
And yeah, tornados just delete towns. It’s terrifying.
Are you sure they are happening more frequently, or are just being named and reported more frequently?
@@markrobinson9956 Unless you live in the area, please just don’t.
Grew up in Iowa City, but I guess I know my place now. I'll consider myself sufficiently chided and will now remain silent.
I lived through the EF4 tornado in Dixie Alley you were speaking of. I will never forgot how loud it was and then…silence. I opened my back door and it was like a bomb went off. I volunteered to clear a lot of trees out and it took us hours and hours.
I live in Dixie Alley as well and I couldn’t agree more an EF4 missed my family’s home by a 100 yards (so close it killed a man just across from our home) in 94 and the sound terrified me for years. I think I probably had post traumatic stress syndrome for a while. I was just a 6th grader and it didn’t help that we were in an El Niño and we had tornadoes all across north Alabama that year. We have had a few in Arab, Alabama since then but non as close to me personally that I could here it. Does it sound like a freight train??… well I guess but I tell people it sounds like a tornado and you will know what that sounds like when you here it.
Survived an EF4 in Pennsylvania of all places. Yeah. You never forget.
Actually just lost the house me and my family were framing ourselves for my fiancé and I to what we believe was a small tornado. Here in central Texas when you get knocked down you get back up. So we salvaged all the lumber we could and framing is already underway again.
I'm glad everyone is ok and I hope your getting back up isn't too delayed. Stay safe
I hope insurance is being cooperative
I remember hearing the term "scouring" back in the '80s, which means when F5 tornadoes can actually rip the asphalt pavement on streets and houses concrete foundations from the ground. Incredible.
Dixie alley native here. I've also lived in Oklahoma and currently live in Illinois. I think tornados scared me more in Mississippi than anywhere else. It's much harder to see where the danger is coming from due to the terrain but they were far more common in Oklahoma. Which is saying something cause they are VERY common in the deep south.
Lol I can tell you have lived in these areas. To our own detriment we always wanna go watch em.
I recently moved to Illinois, kankakee county and i am TERRIFIED if a tornado happens since there is so much open land and i dont have a basement 😢
Another thing is that tornadoes in Dixie Alley can form anytime day or night. Nothing like getting work up at 7am for a tornado warning, which happened where I live in December
I'm native to a state in the southeast, and I'm convinced that the frequency of tornados here, even in just the last 20 years, has risen noticeably. I don't recall ever experiencing even one tornado as a child, but as an adult, I've been through many. While most of the tornados that have struck my area weren't considered devastating, it's still an alarming trend.
A lot of very weird weather ☁️🌡️
I live in SW Missouri where every spring storm is a threat, but I've also noticed that more tornado causing weather has been forming to the southeast in the past decade or so and carrying on to your area. I think "tornado alley" has expanded in size during my lifetime, having experienced it for over 40 years now.
Dixie alley…
Tornado alley is shifting east. It's a known change due to climate change.
Yea no sh*t, precisely what scientists predicted if carbon emissions and fossil fuel extraction wasn’t stopped.
I played golf near Huntsville AL outbreak in the 2010s in the mid-2010s. Tree lines were flattened and the sod had been ripped off the course in many areas. The damage was incredible. As an American who lives in tornado alley, you've done a great job, Simon. Someone from the UK who can cite accurate facts on tornadoes, you've clearly done a lot of work to keep the video accurate.
I survived a tornado as a child. It was terrifying and has left me absolutely fearful of any severe weather. More severe storms have been producing tornadoes in my area in the past decade and it has me nervous about being hit by another tornado
As a child, I lived in a part of Canada that does see tornado activity, albeit infrequently. An F3 touched down in our area one evening and absolutely obliterated the area around our house, though ours was left largely unscathed. That's the crazy thing about these storms. Stand in the middle of a road, look at the house on your right. Pristine. Look to your left, absolute destruction.
Having lived in Xenia Ohio for over a decade, I can honestly say, the scars and fear of tornadoes is ever present. Some people get jumpy, but others are numb to the sirens.
I get nervous and jumpy
One of my good friends lived through the tornado of 74, and she still gets incredibly antsy when the weather starts to get bad.
@@LadyofShallot21 Its totally understandable. Its a terrifying thought. Its called "land of the devil winds" for a reason. Evidently another tornado had happened in 2001 with a similar level of destruction. But I didnt hear as much about that one. But knowing that its happened before, Im sure you can imagine the anxiety of someone moving there hearing the horror stories. Still, the community did make an amazing recovery. Rebuilding after such an event must take nerves of steel.
@@BrainScramblies I know right? They always tested the sirens on the first monday of the month, probably still do. First time I heard it, it was rainy, and windy. We lived in an apartment building that had a basement with the washers and dryers. I was down there all alone thinking everyone was dumb. Turns out, I was just ignorant. Lol
It's pretty crazy how a single, cataclysmic event can shape the culture of a town still 49 years later.
Couple of small corrections: some tornadoes can spin clockwise, though it's extremely rare with parent tornadoes and tends to happen more with satellites.
Also, I'm pretty sure "non-fatal fatalities" are impossible.
3 of the 7 tornadoes that hit Grand Island, Nebraska on June 3, 1980, rotated counterclockwise (called anticyclonic).
If you have never heard the sound of a tornado siren going off at 2 in the night, consider yourself lucky. Surreal experience every time
I NEVER wake up.😮
Its happened way too often with me. Especially since all of the local towns and military base has their sirens audible from where i live
Almost 40 years old born and raised in Kansas. I've been through some close calls, and watched them form as well. Truth be told, it's weird when I go a year NOT hearing the tornado sirens lol.
I live in western NC and in 2011 I was fresh out of highschool and working nights at Walmart. One night on my way to work the sky was full of low storm clouds that were bristling with near constant cloud to cloud lightning with no thunder, there was no wind, and it was unnaturally quiet. When I got to work I stood by my car admiring the spectacle for a few minutes and then as the wind started I walked to the store. As soon as I got under the front walkway cover the sky opened up and it began pouring rain and small hail and blowing hard wind. A tornado funnel formed nearby but it never touched down because the mountainous terrain usually breaks up funnels before they can touch down in this area.
I’m a resident of the Moore area and these days I think it’s important to note that OK at least we have become acutely aware and prepared for tornado season. I haven’t seen many tornadoes but I HAVE seen my tornado shelter many times. I had a close call 5/20/13 but the damage wasn’t too bad for me our house and our neighbors stayed standing
That one was a monster. Hood to hear you weren't too badly affected.
I live just south of OKC (near where the strongest tornado ever recorded hit about 10 years ago) and we were just hit by 5 tornados in February. Tornados are frightening, but I've lived in the heart of Tornado Alley my whole life and while a direct hit by a tornado is devastating, even for a small one, the area of devastation is usually limited. The 5 tornados that hit here a few weeks ago tore up miles of power lines, sheered the walls off barns, tore mature trees up by the roots, and even though the largest tornado was only a few miles from my house, the damage at my house was trivial. I'd rather live in Tornado Alley than hurricane prone areas. Remember folks, close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades.
I'm so happy to live in Michigan. No hurricanes, earthquakes or volcanoes here. Just weird lake effect weather
Resident of joplin Missouri and know first hand how bad they can get, 2011 is considered one of the biggest tornados to hit. It destroyed half of the city with an EF5 tornado
I would have loved to be the author of this episode as Meteorology is my passion and my degree. Major nitpick though, tornadic formation is so much more complex than as described, but the biggest factor to their formation is wind shear. Wind shear by basic definition is the change in wind velocity with height, and, for tornadoes, directional and speed shear are needed to get rotation within a parent thunderhead. I could go on as I was fortunate enough to learn from some of the best experts in the field and got to talk with famous researchers from across the globe. Love the show and keep it up!
I used to live in Colorado Springs on the east side of Cheyenne Mountain, and one of my favorite things to do was to chill by the pool and watch storms develop and pass overhead heading east towards Kansas, producing tornadoes. They were always many miles away and it was safe, and absolutely nobody lives out that way, but I tell you, there's something majestic and frighteningly beautiful about watching a massive supercell miles away dropping tornadoes, funnel clouds, and microbursts. I've got some really spectacular photos of storms. The storms are one of the few things I miss about CO, along with legal weed and beautiful scenery. Shittiest people I've ever met though.
I had a coworker at Werner Enterprises who drove out from West Memphis to Illinois. He said the worst part about driving at night was using the lightning light to find twisters on the horizon.
Tornado Alley (really most active from Apr-Jun) is pretty much from central NM to the border Mississippi and then all the way north into Canada. It’s a huge swath of the US.
Dixie Alley (typically Spring/Fall) is from LA to FL and north to around South Carolina.
But then there’s also a tornado season in the mid Atlantic (usually at the height of summer from July-Sep). I’ve experienced quite a few in northern VA. And there was an EF5 that hit La Plata, MD, which is really rare.
It's getting worse every season in Alabama. When I was a kid they were pretty rare but by the time I was an adult, I'd been through so many that it just became an accepted thing. We lost power for a week during the 2011 outbreak and were extremely fortunate compared to others- the destruction looked like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. The scariest thing about the tornadoes around here is that they have a habit of spinning up in the middle of the night when everyone's asleep. Add in the massive number of old, huge trees that can be ripped up and thrown about like projectiles and the damage potential gets insane. We have sirens but they're so old you can barely hear them (I prefer NOT to hear them because the sound creeps me out, tbh). If it gets too stormy, I grab the husband and the cats and go to my dad's because after a particularly bad tornado in the 1990's, he decided to have a storm shelter dug under the back yard. A LOT of people have done the same in recent years.
We joke with each other not to sleep naked during tornado season because chances are you'll end up outside in the middle of the night, one way or the other- either because you had to run from the tornado or the tornado took you outside on its own.
I was in Tuscaloosa the day after it got battered because I had recently moved back to Decatur and I was bringing things that had been donated and as much 2-stroke oil as my friend and I were able to find (we had been in touch with some of the rescue crews and it was apparently scarce down there due to the sheer numbers of chainsaws being used). I drove by the apartment complex I had lived in which appeared untouched, but literally directly across the street where a sizable subdivision once stood was just...gone. it looked like it had been carpet bombed...and just like you mentioned I saw ENORMOUS oak trees that had been ripped up from the ground and thrown through houses. It was a sight that I will never forget.
I have sort of a love/hate thing with severe weather. I'm a NWS Skywarn Storm Spotter, yet I'm terrified of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Living just west of Xenia, OH, knowing it had an F5 tornado, thrills me no end (not!).
I lived in Topeka, Kansas for three years, having moved there about 9 months after the June 8, 1966 tornado that was the first to do more than $100 million in damage. There was still a lot of evidence of the tornado when we moved there - one of our favorite hamburger places was in a brand new building that had been built right next to the tornado's path, and the trees there had been stripped of their leaves, leaving a string of gnarled stumps and branches. We lived in a mobile home, so we were very aware of weather forecasts, and my mother always had a bag packed in the corner of the kitchen since my sister was a toddler at the time. We lived across the street from the local tornado shelter, and we could get there within minutes when necessary.
One of my earliest memories was of my first tornado warning. I was 7, and less than a year earlier, my family had moved from California to northern Alabama. One day, during the usually brief period of time between when the school bus dropped me off at home and when my mom arrived home, there was a storm in our area. I turned on the TV, and the only thing on was coverage of it. All of the sudden, a tornado warning was called for the area where our house was. Since I'd never experienced one, I was pretty freaked out. However, the meteorologist for station I was watching was fantastic. He calmly gave easy to understand information specifically for kids who might be home alone, in addition to the other info he gave out. By the time my mom got home, I was in the laundry room, with pillows, bottled water, and a radio tuned to the station owned by that TV station. She had been delayed by the storm, and she was surprised that I'd managed to handle the situation so well. If it hadn't been for that meteorologist, though, I'm sure I would had a complete meltdown.
As someone who's lived in a Flood Plain, In Hurricane Country, experienced an Earthquake and a Tornado. It's amazing just how powerful and destructive nature is.
My parents randomly happened to drive through Xenia a few days after the big storm there. They were impressed by how severe the damage was.
One thing not mentioned in the video: if tornado alley moves eastward, it's moving from a region of relatively low population density, into a region with much higher population density.
Xenia in 74? That was a bad one.
Hello, Simon! I deeply relate to this topic...I survived the 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak as a toddler, riding it out in a basement. I lived in Dallas for many years, and it gets quite turbulent down there. I'm now in Yukon, OK, because I'm some kind of freaking masochist. Two weeks ago, the tornado sirens were blaring for an HOUR as a strong (and fast) storm front came through Canadian County. Why the hell am I here? It's complicated...mainly driven here in search of affordable housing and career opportunities. OKC is a vibrant, diverse city, though, and the people seem chill. Don't tell anyone, lol.
It's seriously boggling my mind to listen to a Brit who lives in Prague speak about my home state of Kansas. What a world we live in!
As someone who has survived two F5 tornadoes in “ Dixie Alley” first one in the 1974 outbreak in Alabama and the second in 2013 in Arkansas they are the most devastating and scary forces of nature ever created. God bless the survivors
3 members of my family passed away in a tornado in May 2011, in Alabama. It was devastating. Thank you for covering this.
I knew people that died in that series of storms. I’ll never forget that day. I was a student at University of Montevallo at that time and lived in Jefferson County. It barely rained in Hoover that afternoon. We got the bad storms that came through early that morning near Cahaba Heights. It was devastating and so scary as I had no power since the 5am storms and was relying on family to text me about updates and warnings.
Here in Arkansas tornadoes are fairly common. I remember the 2011 Super Outbreak.
I was going out to dinner that first night and saw Reed Timmer blow past me flying towards Mississippi. That Super Outbreak was wild af. I'm about done with warnings for this spring though, I'm ready for us in Dixie Alley to be done and for them to go back west lol.
Iowa here! Tornadoes are a regular for us. Been through a few myself. Nothing bigger than an F3. Stay safe people
I was born and raised in Oklahoma, tornadoes are such an odd thing to grow up with. I was absolutely fascinated with them, I wanted to be Gary England (if you know, you know) but obviously I knew they were terrifying and dangerous as well. I remember May 3rd 1999 very clearly, I was most upset that we couldn't fit our horses into the storm shelter and that we were going to have to rebuild our new house my parents had been building with their own hands. We got lucky that day! But I have many memories over the years of close calls and even more of helping clean up the devastation. I've lived in the PNW for 10 years now, I strangely miss the electricity in the air during a tornado day and I definitelymiss the thunderstorms. However I don't miss worrying about my loved ones and animals being sucked up by hell from the sky yearly 😅
"Hell from the sky", lol 😂
Gary England is such a Legend...
Was caught inside, and I mean actually 100 percent inside, a tornado at a Home Depot in College Park, Maryland that killed two people (~20 years ago). Those little corrugated tin roof tiles were ripping off like popcorn, and I could literally see the inside of the tornado swirling through the holes in the roof. How I didn't shit my pants right there, I don't know. Sounded exactly like the proverbial freight train. Everywhere I looked around me, I saw saws, hammers, wrenches, and a 10-ton AC unit was ripped off the top of the building onto the ground. Honestly thought I was a dead man. Home Depot is not a good place to be in a tornado.
That's wild lol
I was trapped in my car during a tornado. One of the single most terrifying experiences of my life.
When that tornado cleared all those trees in the Great Smokies, there was a dad and son up a mountain hiking. Can you imagine? You're on a damn mountain and a tornado hits? They survived with minor injuries and had to hike down over all the fallen trees. They were missing overnight if I remember correctly.
I used to live in Tornado Alley. Joplin, Mo. I live in the Northeast US now, in an area that rarely RARELY has natural disasters. Love it here. Don't miss Tornado Alley.
One of my favorite photos from the 1974 Sayler Park Tornado that hit Cincinnati's west side was taken from the vicinity of McMicken Hall at the University of Cincinnati, and shows the massive height of the tornado, dwarfing the bulky 15-story Marquette Manor apartment building and the hill it stands on. Compared to the tornado, the quite substantial apartment tower looks tiny in that photo.
Tornadoes originate in the cloud layer; only the ones that reach all the way down to the ground, cause enough damage to measure on the EF scale. So yes, any tornado significant enough to make the news, is going to be quite a lot taller than any building you care to name.
Q: What is the similarity between a divorce and a tornado? A: Someone gonna lose a mobile home.
As a Nebraskan just down the road from Grand Island where the night of the twisters happened basically everyone in the alley has a story. That being said as I've gotten older the frequency seems to have gone down (at least in my area) with an uptick in straight line wind storms which are just as bad if not worse, got to see a tree hotdog a Ford mustang in one even
I was living in Chicago in 2020 when an EF1 went through the far northside. I was most of a mile from it's path but the tree in front of my apartment building still looked like it was about to snap and fall on us. It knocked down power lines, trees and ripped off awnings for about a mile before going out over the lake. No injuries but a lot of cars damaged, including one crushed by a tree and live power cables sparking on the streets.
And we were very lucky. The same derecho that spawned that tornado had spun others in Iowa where it did a lot of damage. We also had no warning. It touched down well into the city. We had gotten warnings on the severe weather and knew it was gonna be rough, but no warning of the touchdown itself. No sirens at all. Like I said, we were VERY lucky.
I live in Illinois and several years ago we actually had tornado and blizzard warnings at the same. I rescued my little dog at the gas station that night, he had been abandoned there. We should have stayed home but I’m glad we didn’t.
there was a sudden burst of tornadoes in december a couple years ago and i remember being at work (in nebraska) just huddled with customers in the stockroom while storm doors absolutely rattled. honestly the first time in my 26 years here where I actually thought a tornado might hurt me
Nothing was as crazy as when 2013 Moore tornado hit the schools while the kids were there. I still get emotional thinking about it man. We watched it unfold live and there's nothing you can do. Schools full of kids. Two of them nailed by a damn F5. El Reno was bad also - that one was headed straight for me (it was at night) but it turned south right before downtown OKC and headed into Moore. Had to say 'I wasn't going to die today' while driving on several occasions and make evasive maneuvers. One time I had to drive on the wrong side of the highway for a couple miles near Haskell, Texas (after stupidly driving into a green wall cloud) to get to safety. This one time near Sayre, Oklahoma we had to dodge into a truck stop - My pickup got hit right on the hood by one single hailstone about the size of a baseball right before we got to cover. Then proceeded to watch a smaller, probably F1-F2, touch down about a half mile in front of us while parked in relative safety. I hate these storms so much. The worst part of living in Oklahoma.
I was living in Grand Island, Nebraska on June 3, 1980 when the town was hit with 7 tornadoes in about 3 hours. A fun night that was.
I’ve been really interested in tornadoes ever since I saw the movie “Twister” when I was a kid. Awesome seeing you cover Tornado Alley is one of your videos!
Omfg yes I saw it when I was young and became obsessed with tornados, like it was literally all i wanted to learn about and all I talked, thought, and read about lmao
we've got cows
I nearly studied meteorology because of that movie. We watch it fairly regularly in my house. If my mom is going through cable channels and sees it, she'll switch to it immediately. We do poke fun at the inconsistencies (2 lane roads becoming single lane, cracked windshield that is then not cracked, etc), but we do like it.
@@SolaScientia I’ve seen Twister enough times to know exactly what small mistakes you’re talking about lol. For me, this movie manifested in an lifelong interest in weather/natural disasters, which turned into a career in disaster relief/management.
@@Tom-kq3ng Yep, lol. We'd put it on all the time when my sister would come home to visit from college. We'd time it so when she walked in it would be playing somewhere in the first half. I don't do anything so good as disaster relief/management, but I definitely pay close attention to the weather and have a plan for all my cats and the like.
I track weather daily and whenever there is a slight risk issued from the NWS I go live. I will be live tomorrow as there is a good chance we see a few tornado near the Dallas TX area. Stay safe out there and great video!
Yeah, landed near Ft. Worth. Over here in Arlington, we got hail and sirens for 20 minutes. Didn't see it, though.
This video's thumbnail is the most newsworthy thing that's happened to Nebraska in years. While growing up in the midwest, I remember taking shelter in basements & cellars during storms, & riding by damaged areas.
It just occurred to me that tornadoes are not as commonplace in other parts of the world. I never really thought about it much, but growing up with them I never considered they weren’t as common everywhere.
I've lived in central and northern Illinois my entire life. We do get tornados but thankfully not as much as some of our neighbors. Something I have been noticing more and more over the years are micro bursts. These things are quite terrifying as its just an extremely small area but incredibly powerful wind. Out of no where during a regular storm I've seen these just completely rip out a neighbors whole tree 10 foot hole roots out and half the lawn peeled up like a sticker. Lightning is another problem I've had in Illinois I've had lightning come down my chimney attracted thru the metal fans for the fireplace arc across my living room blow up our TV arc to the land line phone and fry mine and my next 4 neighbors up the street phone lines. Took the phone company over a week to rewire everything for all of us. Have had thunder so loud its shattered windows and my mother had lightning strike the sidewalk in front of her blowing it to rubble. My point being don't ever underestimate the weather no matter where you live its unforgiving if you do
I'm curious, what is a non-fatal fatality?
I think he meant to say non-fatal injuries/casualties. I googled 'non-fatal fatality'; found nothing
Like an injury. In the EMS world all injuries and deaths are considered Casualties
He said "3100 non-fatal fatalities"
@@Dethflash probably a slip in the script
I've lived in Oklahoma most of my life, and most other Okies can attest that we develop almost a 6th sense for tornados. We can feel the difference between a strorm and a tornadic storm almost without fail
One of the many factors that makes tornadoes so common in North America is there is no east/west mountain chain to contain the cold air moving south from the arctic. Take out the alps in Europe and there would be probably be more European tornadoes in France and Germany and the Czech Republic…
As a storm chaser of tornado alley, that was a nicely done video.
It was?
2:15 - Chapter 1 - How tornadoes form
4:10 - Chapter 2 - How tornadoes are ranked
6:25 - Chapter 3 - The american central plains
8:10 - Chapter 4 - Dixie alley
10:05 - Chapter 5 - The 1974 super outbreak
12:45 - Chapter 6 - Significant tornadoes & tornado alley
15:25 - Chapter 7 - Is tornado alley moving to the east ?
17:10 - Chapter 8 - Are tornadoes getting more violent ?
9:45 Non-fatal fatalities?
When I was growing up in PA there was a small one which tore down some hundred+ year old oak trees yet didn't damage the house at all, not even the shingles. I traveled about two miles, skipping around pulling off a school roof as well as the roof and wall glass of a nearby grocery store.
My dad grew up in northeast Oklahoma and relocated to northwest Louisiana when he married my mom. We were always fascinated by his stories of tornadoes. In the 90s, we'd have a tornado every other year in our area. Nothing too damaging or deadly but starting about 2005, the number of tornadoes in nw la had doubled. By 2015, they had quadrupled in number. Now each year starting in late March, we get dozens. I live directly on the board with Texas and just about every storm comes with a tornado watch. I can't emphasize enough how many tornadoes there are now compared to the 90s.
Arkansas, East Texas, and Louisiana (ArkLaTex) are now part of Dixie Alley and now Tornado Alley. I think we're screwed.
From personal experience, I can definitely see the shift to the East happening. I grew up in mountainous southwest Virginia and, while we would get a ton of thunderstorms every summer (as well as hurricane remnants), I was told as a kid in the 90s that we would never get tornadoes because they couldn't touch down in the Appalachians. That myth was shattered when I was in HS in the late 2000s and one touched down about 20 minutes from my house. Since then, tornadoes and similar storms (like the massive 2012 derecho that slammed the area) have become increasingly common. They don't seem to be as deadly and destructive as the ones further south and west, but their more common occurrences is a concern
I'm northeast o fyou in the Blue Ridge, and we're seeing way more watch/warnings now than 25 years ago.
ex-Georgia native here, and I concur. Even within my comparatively few years alive (23), Georgia's weather has increasingly become volatile. The yearly average of tornadoes per year keeps going up and shortly before moving north in summer last year, every other day, not even joking, there were severe thunderstorms and not a few tornadoes. Two weeks before moving, me and someone else in the house got struck by a lightning surge from a strike across the street. January of 2023 also saw Georgia get slammed by a lot of tornadoes way out of season for the area. It's scary
The glade spring tornado.. tore that town up. I never saw how many people were actually killed but it was so unexpected. It’s true that they have a hard time moving through the mountains but that stretch i between saltville and glade is uncharacteristically flat.
An under discussed topic! I've always been so fascinated in it as living in the Ozarks tornadoes are such a different beast than the flat lands of the plains
In 2008 I was in a MO National Guard unit that was preparing for deployment. We were at Camp Crawford, just outside of Joplin MO. The last week of April we got hit with a very intense storm that managed to have sunshine and hail big enough to injure people at the same time. We left Crawford a couple of days later, on April 28th.
On May 10th an EF 4 tornado (with some smaller friends) ravaged the city of Joplin.
We went on to Camp Atterbury, near Edinburgh, Indiana. I remember sitting in the DFAC at Atterbury watching news footage of the Joplin recovery effort, in complete disbelief.
We trained there until June 1st, when we headed overseas to Germany for one last stop in our pre-deployment training.
On June 3rd, an EF 3 tornado hit Camp Atterbury directly, including major damage to the buildings we had been housed. There were few injuries from the storm, thanks in part to the concrete block construction of many of the buildings, and to the fact that our former buildings had not yet been reoccupied by a new unit.
I remember sitting in the barracks in Germany looking at images of the storm. At this point, we couldn't decide whether we were the luckiest, or most unlucky group of soldiers in the Army.
Fortunately, no outbreaks of tornados in Bavaria right after we left...
I just love natural disasters, not because they bring devastations, but instead because the bring us _down to Earth_
I was in north Alabama for the April 2011 super outbreak. We didn't have power for over a week, and we weren't even close to the worst hit area. We deal with tornados a lot and normally it's just another thing, but that was one of those most terrifying days of my life.
I live in Decatur which was mostly untouched, minus the loss of power for a while, but the days after those tornadoes I doubt I'll ever forget.
A friend was using the storefront of his business as a donation drop-off point and I was going to take whatever we were able to muster down to Tuscaloosa that evening. After making a few calls to some of the rescue crews working down to ask if anything (other than the obvious) was needed and we were told several times that the 2-stroke oil needed to run the chainsaws was becoming quite scarce so we went around and found as much as we could (to the point that between it and so many people bringing donations that I had to borrow a larger vehicle). I had recently moved back to Decatur from Tuscaloosa and knew it had taken a shellacking, but I still wasn't prepared for what I saw. I drove by the apartment complex that I had lived in which looked completely untouched but literally directly across the street where an entire subdivision once stood looked like it had been carpet bombed...all of the dozens upon dozens of houses were just gone. Hell, everything was gone. I saw ENORMOUS oak trees that had been ripped out of the ground and thrown through houses. I know there were people that unfortunately last their lives, but from everything I saw I'm still honestly surprised (and thankful) that there weren't more casualties.
I live near and work in Bowling Green Kentucky and will never forget the tornadoes of DECEMBER 10/11 of 2021. One was a EF2 and the other a EF3.
Two things made them extremely scary. 1: They literally went through the middle of town. (Bowling Green has a population of 72000)
2: They went through at 1:10 a.m.
16 fatalities and 63 injured. This was part of the worst December tornado outbreak ever.
Been a tornado geek for over 20 years, and I will be going chasing in May for the first time. Hope to see a tornado, but over open land and not causing destruction.
One of the most powerful tornadoes in recent times was probably the Smithville tornado of April 27, 2011. It sucked the earth away, peeled asphalt off roads, flung a car a mile and it bounced off a water tower, and swept a large funeral home completely off its foundation and into the nearby woods where all the trees got sandblasted to their cores by the debris.
Oh yea, and its forward speed was over 60mph. It did all that in mere seconds.
Most of the folks I know agree tornado alley has shifted east. Kansas and Oklahoma haven't been receiving the same kind of storms in the same areas any more. Could just be the current weather cycle as well.
9:44 "they caused314 fatal fatalities and over 3100 non-fatal fatalities" Uh, Simon? That's amazing
Oh! I thought I was the only one who heard that. I was very confused...
@@cynthiahabersat4481 I went back in the video because I was like, what did he just say?
Same
The author of this script really did a terrible job. Can’t help but wonder if anyone actually proofread this.
Tornados LOVE flat land.
I lived in Oklahoma for 15 years and Texas for 30 years. What to do during a tornado is drilled into you in Oklahoma. The weatherman excel at watching for tornados. Tornado tracking is a real thing with minute by minute updates. Everyone has weather radios and everyone looks nervously up at the sky in the spring when dark clouds are building. Many, many people have storm shelters- either above or below ground. After the 1999 tornado, we bought a shelter and placed it in our garage. It was bolted into the foundation and could hold about 8 people.
When we bought a house in Norman Oklahoma it had an underground shelter. BTW the University of Oklahoma in Norman has a national tornado research station.
Moore Oklahoma, adjacent to Norman, was hit by tornados twice while we lived in Oklahoma. Norman was supposedly blessed by an Indian princess - the blessing was supposed to keep tornados away from Norman. Well a tornado hit Norman about three weeks ago. It flattened a house about 600 feet from a rental house we owned and we have about $4000 worth of tree limbs etc to pick up. We may also need to replace our roof- groan.
Even without tornados, spring storms and winds damage roofs constantly in Oklahoma. This may be the 3rd or 4th time we’ve had to replace a roof in 20 years.
Anyway- one reason there may be less deaths in Oklahoma is because Oklahomans are very prepared for tornados.
@kim buck: Totally agree with your statement about the media in Oklahoma, and the Tornado tracking they do.
I've been fascinated by tornadoes since my child self saw the movie Twister. Still one of my fave to this day. I do live somewhere where these don't usually occur however, which is southern Québec in Canada. Though growing up, I remember being able to see a few formidable storms that leaves the very air around you looking dirty yellow or green. I was outside in a safe spot when there was a lot of lightning. I loved it. Looking at the sky... is one of my favourite thing.
Though last may, in 2022, I remember. We got issued a Tornado Watch. The whole greater Montreal area, and much of the surrounding suburbs and even farther. I remember taking it seriously, because as the nerd that I am, I already know some of the do and don'ts of a tornado coming in my area. And the comments on the news outlets on social medias, oh my god. Quebecers have a certain type of cynicism and sarcasm in their tone? I don't know how to describe it, but I feel that mindset is very peculiar to us, and makes us different from other french speaking folks and the rest of Canada. Let's just say they did not believe sh*t and they were intent of being the most sarcastic and vile they could about it for some reason.
In the end Montreal was spared. But if I remember well, we got tornadoes in Quebec that day. And strong winds did occur. A woman commented how a tree fell on the road in front of her as she was driving in the countryside (and people "laugh" reacted that, as if she lied, lol?). My parents had recently moved to the countryside north of the city when the 'rona hit, and they were without electricity for days. Another friend of mine, a bit farther, was celebrating her daughter's birthday with her family and the house got severely damaged by winds and hail.
People here are so not used to think these can be a possibility that I fear they might not even move if hell broke loose.
I also remember, and I think it was an EF3, that tornado who got through parts of Ottawa and neighboring Gatineau on the Quebec/Ontario border in 2018. I have friends there, they got lucky.
I think most folks should at least know a couple of things about these twisters, at the very least, where is the best thing they can do if one comes their way. Have a plan, even if it sounds absurd. Please.
There seems to be a number of tornado alleys in the United States. Considering parts of the American Southeast get hit frequently hard by tornadoes.
Yeah we have Tornado alley from Iowa over to the rockies Dixie alley Which is Tennessee Arkansas Mississippi Alabama And then the Ohio river Valley / Great Lakes alley Of Illinois Indiana Ohio Kentucky
It's the geography. No other place on earth has a major mountain range that can cool and dry the air in a place where it can collide with very warm and wet air from a tropical sea, the Gulf of Mexico in our case. Bangladesh has a similar geography and they do get a lot of tornados. But while they have it in an area the size of Wisconsin, we have it in an area the size of half of Europe. The sheer amount of room just ramps up the numbers.
COW!
ANOTHER COW!
Another cow…
Another cow
I remember when Hurricane Hugo hit. A tornado touched down a block from our house during the storm. It ripped trees out of the ground and lined the creek bed with them but somehow didn't damage a single house.
I recently made an Excel sheet of U.S. tornadoes based on F/EF rating going back to 1980. Out of more than 48,600 tornadoes only 22 were F5/EF5. About 1 in 2200.
My Father's home in Aurora was taken out during the "Joplin Tornado" Warnings were ignored, people went about their days because there were several false alarms through the day. The local high school was mid-graduation ceremony when it hit.
Joplin was the very first Tornado I ever chased. Coming out from NC I really thought I was the smartest in the universe to get on the storm for my first time! Chasing into the city I got stuck on 26th street and witnessing the devastation in front of me really took the wind out of my sails. I stayed for 5 days helping to do S&R, clean up - whatever was needed from me all over that area. I saw things I never thought I would see - a lot of things I never wanted to see. Took me a few years to get back out after that, and I won't chase into populated areas to this day. I don't ever want to see that again, I still feel for those people.
I’ve lived in a beach town called Santa Barbara, California an hour and a half north of Los Angeles my whole life. We’ve had 3 tornado warnings in the last few years. The only I’ve ever heard of here. It’s jarring to get the emergency alert on the coast of California.. earthquakes, fire and mudslides are good enough. Now tornadoes apparently.
I live in the Midwest and you can't keep me inside during a spring or summer thunderstorm. I've seen a few tornadoes from a distance. I helped with the recovery in Stockton and Joplin, MO. They still excite me.
I took a picture last March in 2022, of the Alabama sky at about 8AM, noting just how dark it was. Not long after starting my shift, a tornado alarm went off. I work a hybrid schedule now, but worked 100% from home at the time, so I went into the windowless main bathroom...and sat on the closed toilet, lol. I realized then that I had NO tornado plan, whatsoever. Like, life doesn't stop when yours is ripped apart, I would still need money to do things if my life was up-ended. So, I first went to the front door and put on some shoes, for if I needed to navigate debris. I then went to my bedroom and packed a bag that straps over the chest and put my phone, purse, and charger in it.
I returned to the bathroom and thought that if the toilet, sink or tub went flying, I'd still be in danger. My younger brother used to be my roommate and I still have a lot of his stuff I need to send him to his new residence. But, within that stuff was a hard hat from his prior job at a plant. I put the hard hat on, put my backpack on, and went and sat back down on the toilet. Now, you might question why there, of all places, and not a closet. Well, except for the front door closet (and thus, very close to the exit of the home), all of my closet doors slide on just a track at the top of the door frame. A tornado could make laughable work out of that as even me, when still trying to be very careful, have pulled those flimsy things off the track. My two bedrooms have windows and my living room has patio doors. My main bathroom is the room furthest into the interior, though my bedroom's bathroom is also very similar and has no windows, so I figured either of the two would be safest. I might switch my spot to the front closet anyways, due to less porcelain, lol.
I say all of this because you find out in moments like that, sitting on a toilet while a tornado alarm blares, just how royally screwed you actually are in such situations. If you don't know which way the tornado is heading, trying to get in your car to outrun it might put you in its way. You might find yourself stuck in traffic if others are doing the same thing. I took the risk of moving around so much during the alarm because I live in a mid-sized city and tornados don't hit too often here. It is NOT impossible for it to happen, hence why I decided to suit up, in case that day was the day I was proven wrong. But me being in Montgomery, where buildings can help slow down the formation of a tornado, makes me safer than small towns with low buildings that are just cannon fodder for a tornado.
Also, writing this has reminded me that I might need to make a permanent bug-out bag. Even if I don't leave, it's not great to run around packing a bag when a tornado could be barrelling down on me. Also, I remember that day that a co-worker of mine was trying to sell her house and yes, a prospective buyer was there! She said both of them had to seek shelter in a closet when the alarms went off 😂.
The rattling off of numerous tornado outbreaks in recent history should have probably been cut down to half just to keep the flow going. Also, the writer for your script probably should have contacted someone like Pecos Hank (well known tornado chaser and RUclipsr) for better information on tornadoes.
Thank God someone else said this. I saw so many positive comments on this video that I thought I’d lost my mind…
The increase of December tornados (and being violent too) has really cement to me that these tornadoes are changing with climate change. As someone who has lived in Kansas for her whole life, which is lately getting notorious for the bipolar weather we get weekly during the winter months, it's definitely a concern that I wish more people gave thought to.
Simon and my favorite scientific topic?
Bring it fact boy! 🎉
One of the unmentioned characteristics is how sudden and fast they are. You do get some idea one is coming just due to the nature of how the systems that spawn them are up in the sky. But in the blink of an eye the sky can go dark, the funnel blast through, and then it's calm and sunny.
With all the negative attention being paid to the Gulf states like Qatar and Dubai, you should do an episode on Oman. While not perfect, it managed to avoid many of the excesses of the other Gulf states. At the same time, it is very modern. And it went from being one of the poorest nations in the world to very wealthy in about 20 years, but it kept a great deal of its culture, rather than burying it under glass and steel. Nor did it bury its culture under religious fanaticism. I’ve been there, and I was impressed by how it really felt like old Arabia, unlike the other Gulf states. I’m glad places like Dubai are being held to account, but I’d like to see something about the one country that avoided all the excesses of the others.
My American is really showing today. I was very confused how Qatar and Dubai got into the Gulf Coast States...Wrong side of the planet... got it.
BTW, instead of spelling out the acronym, it's NOAA...Like Noah's Ark. It works on a couple of levels.
There's also an ice storm alley. It stretches from southwest Missouri to New Hampshire. Northern Kentucky and Western Virginia form the southern border of ice storm alley. The exact boundaries of ice storm alley are not well defined but it's generally considered the parts of the upper Midwest, mid Atlantic, and northeast where ice accumulation occurs at least 2 days a year. Michigan has the highest number of ice storms of any state. Pennsylvania is another state that gets a particularly large number of ice storms. A major ice storm in October 2018 caused power outages of over a week in western Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Thousands of flights were canceled. All train service on the northeast corridor in Maryland was suspended for 2 days as crews cleared fallen trees from the tracks. Virginia alone reported more than 100,000 traffic accidents some of them fatal. Interstate 81 in western Virginia was virtually shut down for an entire day as crews worked to remove wrecked cars and trucks.
I grew up in central Oklahoma and was there for the May 3rd tornado of 1999. OMG I've never seen anything as terrifying, destructive, and just soul crushing...
Reminder that I've seen British people on TikTok saying Americans can't build houses because they get destroyed by tornados lmao
Live in North Central Illinois and weve had a VERY active season so far this year.
Idk if people not from tornado alley will understand this but the smell before a tornado is almost indescribable.
My grandparents and mom(as a child) drove through that super outbreak. Of course, they didn't realize the scale of the outbreak as they were driving through it.