They start in the clouds and form a wall cloud as in the name is a wall of cloud dropped down from the storm cell/front and a funnel will either snake out or will form a big cone before sucking up dirt and debree along with the storm form a hook on radar that is easily spotable
To answer your question at 13:52 theyvstart at both the air and ground when one forms the clounds begin to visibly spin and the same time dust and dirt on the ground form a dust cloud then the two funnels meet eachother near the middle
I grew up in the US Midwest and tornados are no joke. As a kid we weren't scared of monsters in the dark, we were terrified of being awoken by that errie tornado siren.
@@ryenbowyer7352 I almost got caught outside because I was in the backyard storage shed listening to my music and only saw it when I got up to close the building door after it slammed open
I saw a picture of someone's home that was destroyed by weather like this. He still had a sense of humor. He wrote on the sign, "Home For Sale. Some Assembly Required." LOL!
it really sucks, but to be fare most of the homes arent even made to withstand f4 or f5 tornadoes, which imo should be a priority if you live in an area where it could happen
For the Joplin tornado: There was a reporter who was on site immediately after the tornado hit. She said she got PTSD from being there and for weeks after she would try to sleep but could still hear the search dogs barking in her head every time they found a body.
I spent my birthday helping with the search and rescue for Joplin. I definitely understand what that reporter is talking about. It is something you can never forget. You could never imagine the destruction and sadness until you see it with your own eyes. I have the utmost respect for everyone out there who helps in trying to predict and warn everyone of these storms to save lives.
I helped clean up the greenbrier nursing home after the Joplin tornado, (still live between Joplin and Carthage Missouri) there’s still nights though rare that I hear the beeping of the bed alarms that let you know someone isn’t in their bed
I grew up in Virginia and a tornado traveled up a creek bed a little ways behind our house. A car from a few streets over ended up in a tree between our house and our neighbor's. Bit of a shock to walk out the front door and see it hanging out like a tree house from hell
I remember when I was young hearing on the news about a, I can't remember if it was a baby or a toddler that was found in a tree about 3 miles from it's home. Had some cuts, bruises but was fine otherwise. I've forgotten a lot of the details but that part always stayed with me.
@@celticwolfsong1373 yep, and more recently there was a four month old in a car seat found in the fork of a tree (in Tennessee I think) also unharmed.
The worst part about a Tornado is the absolute quiet right before it hits. I'll never forget my first Tornado. The sky completely black and not a sound to be heard, no dogs, no birds, no bugs, nothing.
The one memory i think I'll never forget is when the wind switched directions as an F1 dropped literally right on top of my car. It was blowing west then it stopped. And then the wall of eastbound wind and the sound of a train. Ive never cowered in my car that hard. Thankfully i live in the mountains so any tornadoes are pretty rare by me. The only one worse wasthe F3 that hit my neighborhood when i was a baby but i have no memory of it being so young
My wife and I got to the basement about 25 seconds before the Joplin tornado hit our house dead-center. To this day, we get emotional if we speak about it and weather events cause us a great deal of stress and anxiety. We climbed out and started helping look for others. It was like being in a war zone.
@@billolsen4360 I just moved into a mobile home in a state that gets real tornadoes. Luckily I’m married to a concrete man who will make us a shelter. The way the weather is intensifying, you can’t be too careful.
Tx resident of 26 years now been a witness and uncomfortably close a few times … it’s an experience that you’ll never forget, the air around you gets dense like there’s this pressure pushing against your lungs and things get absurdly dark, the sirens will go off as the most insane black clouds block any form of light getting through, the ground will begin to rumble while the siren put the fear of god in you, I’ve watched trees and street signs get bent sideways and torn out of the ground as I’m stuck on the highway watching it form, cars and trucks where losing their grip sliding off the road, some where pulling over while others where just desperately trying to drive past it before it came whirling through which is a decision your forced to make while in a panic, you’re truly at the mercy of Mother Nature and you can only go as fast as she’ll allow so it’s either find shelter or step in the gas … I had to pull off into a target to seek shelter as I was in traffic and I remember telling myself that day that ain’t no fucking way I’m dying in a target 😂 …
One thing that people don't usually mention is all the animals/birds, etc. killed in these tornadoes; pets, wildlife, and farm animals are so vulnerable. They often have nowhere to hide, and I find that heartbreaking.
It's funny you mention that. My uncle owns a farm and he built a shelter for his livestock and horses. He's the only one I've ever known that had one. It's actually amazing. It's basically an underground stable.
I've lived in Tornado Alley most of my life. We just had a "tornado emergency" here in Nebraska a couple weeks ago. Tornadoes that occur at night are by far the scariest.
I live in iowa, now, but I spent most of my life in omaha nebraska. The tornado the wiped minden iowa off the map, I saw out my back door. It was HUGE. We headed for the shelter once we saw it. It was terrifying.
I live in Arkansas, so I don't get the tornados themselves, but I do occasionally get the periphery storm cell, and few things are worse than being woken up by ear-splitting thunder and the tornado siren shortly afterward. The disorientation after getting woken up is the worst.
Fellow Nebraskan here. We had a tornado a few weeks ago that made top 20 deadliest tornados due to it's wind velocity and it was a mile long. EF4 and destroyed a ton of homes 20 minutes away from me. Horrifying
Scariest live footage I've ever seen of a tornado was Joplin. In the news footage, you can see the tornado in a wide shot over the town, and it literally looks like the sky has bent to touch the Earth. The anchors literally fell silent from shock. Absolutley horrifying.
I live in Iowa, and when Joplin got destroyed my friends & I all crammed ourselves in my car and went there for a week to help with the cleanup. Yes, we found bodies... or at least, we found what had once been bodies. Looked like someone had shoved some poor fucker in a sandblaster, and stripped all their skin off. I still do not regret going down to help, though. Best part was reuniting a super-sweet elderly couple with their wedding photo book. I still remember the hug I got from the wife ❤️
My husband was in St . John's Hospital. Our children and grandchildren were visiting him. I said "Rain is on the way. I think I will head home". The family left when I did. A little over 30 minutes later, the tornado hit. It took 2 days to find my husband. He survived, but never fully recovered.
@@tr4nsg0th1cai hate that I've seen pictures of that. very luckily not of humans but of livestock that were skinned from the sheer force of wind 😷 i cant imagine how traumatizing it was to see it irl
I live in the KC metro area. I remember the devastation of Joplin. Many of us sent supplies and help to the people of Joplin. Imo worst tornado ever bar none
So both of my parents lived through the Xenia F5 when they were teens, and my mother described the experience as follows: - the weather had been beautiful earlier that day. - dark fingers reaching down from the sky (multivortex tornado - meaning it had more than one funnel inside the larger funnel) - roaring sound like a freight train, eventually so loud you couldn't hear yourself screaming - wind that takes your breath away - doors slamming - ears popping from pressure change - roof peeling off like a tin can lid - after, she said it smelled like a lumber yard from all the wood (trees and houses.) Took the house from over their heads but left a dollar bill sitting on her brother's dresser. (My uncle used to joke that it told them to keep the change. 💀) Only parts left of the house were the hallway and closet. Their neighbors only had the toilet on the second floor - pipes and all. Whole process only took a minute or so. The shock after can do some weird stuff too; apparently my mom was more concerned about how upset her mom was going to be about the mess than about the fact that she and her brothers didn't have shoes lol. The Red Cross at the time was instrumental in getting them back on their feet, though. My dad was downtown taking shelter in one of the elementary schools and got whacked in the hand with a flying brick that almost took his finger. He was always less descriptive with his story but that's probably for the best.
The 1999 Moore tornado almost killed me when I was 7 years old. My mother, my 2 younger siblings, and I were all at home while my dad was deployed overseas for military work. It was a small 3 bedroom home with no basement or shelter. We huddled in a broom closet for hours listening to the tornado sirens and the local weather radio. As a kid I had no concept of the danger we were actually in. The tornado ripped through town just half a mile away from us, but we were ok where we were. I remember the next day when we saw the damaged houses I asked my mom why none of the flattened houses had closets where people could hide, and she explained that the tornado was just too strong for the closets and destroyed them too. That's when it sunk in for me how close we came to dying that night, and it was the first time I ever felt that recognition of my mortality as a kid. Things were probably even worse for my dad. The only information he had overseas was the news reports because the phone lines in my town were all damaged and not working. He spent multiple days thinking his entire family was killed. I don't remember exactly how we got the news to him that we were ok, but as a father and husband myself now I can't even imagine how stressful that would have been.
Incredible story, I'm glad you all came out of it ok. Moore hit me like a ton of bricks when I was a kid in Nebraska. I had never understood why my dad wouldn't let me watch the weather outside with him when it was bad until I saw the devastation in Moore on TV. I had a lot more respect for tornadoes after that.
For hours??? That tornado was in Moore for maybe 5 minutes. It was bad, yes but hours is a stretch. I’ve lived in del city most all my life and we got part of it, tornadoes don’t last hours in the same area. It hits and continues, it didn’t circle Moore for an hour 😒
@lovemygolden8935 right lol to be fair as a child they prolly thought it was longer and are counting the warnings and time. We had a night one last night and it lasted about a hour but it was multiple nados and time outside the shelter but ready to get in and such
I was in the Tuscaloosa EF4 in 2011. I was a week from graduating college. It came about 500 yards from my apartment. The ceiling and the walls were shaking, my ears were popping from the pressure. While it only blew some windows out in my complex, all of the homes and trees around it were gone. The most eerie part of it - the silence, both before and after. Still have a little bit of PTSD even now when a tornado watch is announced.
I was in the Blountsville 2011 tornado. my family and I hid in the bathroom it went right over us. All that was left standing was the bathroom we were in. I was 10 at the time, and I'll never forget the sound and my ears popping.
I was a bit further away from it, but I remember being in our shelter just waiting to see if it hit us or not. And after the fact, my family and community went and volunteered with relief efforts, and I’ll never forget the destruction I saw as a kid. Stays with me to this day
The best scene in Twister, (Hands down for me.) is near the end of the movie, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt's characters try to find any shelter from the F5 chasing them. They open the door of a tool shack, only to find out it contains a crapload of sharp, rusted blades, which causes Paxton's character to say "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?"
@@celestia486 I Won't lie, towards the end when the F5 to me seemed to be targeting Helen Hunt's character especially, kind of similar to the shark from Jaws: The Revenge.
2:07 If you were wondering, this is what the "Dead Man Walking" phenomenon looks like. It's when a tornadoes winds are so fast and powerful it begins to rope apart while still maintaining integrity and speed. It is only seen in the most powerful tornadoes and is very rare.
@@alonsobeltran3844 Twin tornados would be two separate super cells producing two different tornados next to each other. Dead Man Walking is technically a multiple vortex tornado. So, one tornado that is so strong it has multiple vortexes coming out that is then reabsorbed by the main vortex.
I'm a trained storm spotter in Alabama. So yeah, a bit of a tornado geek. Tornadoes start as a direct result of various, specific conditions coming together. There are a lot of things going on there; it's a very dynamic process. You have hot moist air butting heads with cold dry air, wind shear and several other factors. The reason we get so many tornadoes here in the deep south and in the plains is because of the warm, moist air (that rises) coming up from the Gulf of Mexico colliding with cold, dry air (that falls) coming down from Canada. This causes instability. Throw in some wind shear and rotation develops. That's a very basic description of the process, but you get the idea. Here's some fun trivia for ya! Here in Alabama (and probably much of the deep south, in general), it's very humid and green and lush with much vegetation. But that's only because of the Gulf of Mexico. If it weren't for the Gulf, we would be desert.
This is why the argument “build your homes with stronger materials.” Or “build your homes better” literally doesn’t matter. When that’s coming at you, your home is gone, no matter what it’s made out of.
yeah, the only thing that "survives" those is usually the concrete bases of the house, and last I checked making entire houses out of concrete isn't exactly ideal for several reasons
There was a tornado in Jarrell Texas, it was the same storm of that famous “the dead man walking tornado” picture. It was so powerful it was pulling asphalt off of the roads. I think that puts in perspective how powerful tornados are. The town that got it, house foundations didn’t even exist after the storm. Sad stuff
When I was 5, my family got stopped in the middle of a highway because of a tornado. My mom was an EMT at the time and told us to get to the ditch and hold on. She had my little sister with her and told my oldest brother to help get me and my other brother. On my way to the ditch the storm actually lifted me 3-4 feet off the ground and my brother grabbed my arm and pulled me to the ditch. We then watched the car rise and fall on the road. I was young enough to barely remember/believe it, but my mom and brothers always bring it up during bad storms.
That first tornado you noped on looked like it was maybe a mile wide. The biggest recorded was 2.6 miles wide (4200 meters). As for the damage . . . The worst tornadoes don't leave heaps of debris behind. The wipe the earth clean. They even rip the asphalt off roads. They shred everything. Fastest winds 300 mph (500 kph). All houses today are vulnerable to tornadoes. Brick and stone don't stand up either. My grandparents survived the Waco Tornado. It lifted a few blocks before their house. They thought it was a normal storm. Then grandpa went downtown to buy a cigar . . . and became a rescuer. I've seen two in person. One day I was on watch on board ship, the only person in that small town waterfront at the time. The funnel formed, but didn't touch down. It dissipated. Nonetheless, while it was developing, I was deciding my escape route should it sink the ship. I also saw one up close, a classic white stovepipe. My car was broken down. I came out from under the hood and looked up, and there it was. That was an 'Oh shit' moment. Fortunately, it was running parallel to the highway, about 50 yards away, and was very small, only about 10 m in diameter. It dissipated as I watched. Tornadoes start in the clouds, with a rotating wall cloud. It sends down a condensation funnel until it reaches the ground. As it picks up debris, it changes from white to black. When you said, "Why isn't it number one?" all I could do was shake my head, knowing that we hadn't reached the Tri-State Tornado yet. I predict we're going to have worse though. If an EF-5 hits a major city, it's going to be much worse.
As a American who lives in tornado and alley and who slightly obsessed with them it so funny seeing how someone from a foreign country react to something that is just a fact of life here makes me realize how easy it is to view something has normal your just used it.
Where im from in the Midwest we had tornado warnings every day in the first town I lived in we had tornado warnings almost every day, so when I moved a town over (with way less warnings for some reason) anytime we had one I was like yeah whatever who cares as everyone else was freaking out, but after a recent tornado that basically wiped out a town kinda near us there’s been tornadoes left and right here, it’s kinda weird and concerning honestly, there’s just so many lately and even if they don’t form fully they’ll be above our homes and stuff, this is the first time I’ve ever been scared of the tornadoes
tornado ally here as well! Had a tornado warning going just the other day. Touched down 15 miles outside of my part of town, thankfully it lifted before it got into town
I live in a part of Ohio that always has tornado warnings every season. We don't necessarily have a touchdown every year, but we do get them. Yay Clear Fork Valley 😂.
"If you see the dead man walking, you will soon be dead" A native American myth referring to the look of the formation of multi vortex tornadoes, that tend to form EF 4's and EF 5's, as such, seeing it in person likely means you don't have long to live.
I am born and raised from Kansas, lived here for my whole life. Everyone here in Kansas knows once the sky turn bright green, you get your ass inside, that’s when it’s about to get real and devastating.
Yeah, Oklahoma here, and it’s a weird green/yellow and a smell that’s kinda like rain but not quite the same.. and everytime I’m like dammit not again. Lol
Jarrell resident here. While we had the F5, in total there were over 20 in the area along the 35 corridor. The F5 scoured the earth about 18 inches. It also hit a scrap metal yard essentially creating a blender for everything it ate. Body parts of humans and cattle were everywhere. You don't forget that smell. Sad fact... we STILL don't have a tornado siren... We've had a few in the last couple of years too. There's no warning system, which is wild.
I was in the Joplin Missouri tornado in this video. I lost everything it took hours to get me out from under my house. The scariest thing I've ever been through. But the thing I remember the most about that day was the way the people came together to help each other. I'm a 58 year old woman from Chattanooga Tennessee and I'm one of your new subscribers. I hope you know how great you are. Your so funny. Please keep doing what your doing. Prayers and love from Tennessee
I’m in Dallas. We had a Drum Corps contest like they do every night, in a different cities. They were selling t-shirts to help Joplin’s High School Band buy new instruments because the band hall got hit and destroyed all of them. I still have my shirt and I made it a shirt I sleep in! I’m glad we could help them rebuild.
There's a reason the EF5 is called the Finger of God. My grandma and grandpa were in the Tri-State Tornado. My grandpa said he remembered standing on his front porch watching it move over the farmland. The tornado hit my grandma's childhood farm...she said she remembered she was in the kitchen with her mom, when her dad ran in from the field yelling that they had to take cover and as he picked her up it hit. She said she remembered them finding her under the front porch, the feathers had been sucked off of their chickens and her dad's wedding ring was sucked off of his finger. Somehow they lived through it.
and also why one person who described the nuke as looking into the eye of God or something similar, when something that powerful is basically staring you down its not to far off to say its something of the BIG G himself
From around May-June (right now) in the states you can search for live storm chasers around 10pm you're time, almost any day and ride along with your choice of tornado chases. Today, May 6 is going to be huge around 5-9pm CST. If you're interested. Be careful doing any reactions though. I hear they are pretty strict with their copyrights.
@@MoreAdamCouser yeah, I've seen a few myself, had my barn blown away. The worst was witnessing the devastation in Jarrell, TX in 1997. I grew up in the town just north, and was headed to work that day when everything went crazy. You just become used to being weather alert living in tornado alley. Not to jinx myself, but my house has made it 115 years!
RyanHallYa’ll is pretty good. Helped me prove my previous jobs bosses wrong fron last year’s Hurricane. Alot went home against orders on the east coast here and the ones who stayed had damaged vehicles from the winds
I was a Paramedic for St. Johns hospital back then. I remember driving into Joplin that evening and my heart sinking when I could see the hospital from the complete other side of town. What was once the homes and businesses of my home town were reduced to splinters. And seeing that St. Johns regional medical center had taken a direct hit chilled me to my soul. It took years for the nightmares of that night to stop haunting me.
I have a friend whose 8 year old son's life was taken in the 2013 Moore, Oklahoma, tornado. He's still obviously very devastated. Victim's name is Christopher Legg
I’m so sorry. If anything good came from that, it was the determination of people in the state to build storm shelters for local schools. There is now one on my town’s school.
Canadian here, did trucking across the US last year in the mid west. One night round 11pm i was driving down some back road in my Rig and unbeknownst to me cause the darkness, i was driving a few miles ahead of one. I only learned of it the next morning driving back the other way and seeing the destruction. Locals were talking about what time it went through and it was only minutes after i drove past.
Many years ago I'm driving through Kentucky on a stormy night. Suddenly an announcement came on with a tornado warning for the area I was driving through. I just picked up speed and kept driving. What was I supposed to do? I was in the country I didn't know the area. It was really quite frightening.
I live on the border of North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. We are currently watching tornadoes on TV in Oklahoma RIGHT NOW!! You learn to be very weather aware living in "Tornado Alley", but we don't fear tornadoes in general. A lot of people have tornado shelters now, and if you don't, most people have a plan to stay safe in such instances. But since tornadoes hit very targeted, relatively small areas, most people have never even seen one in person. We prepare, shelter and pray when necessary, and help our neighbors when tragedy strikes. It's just part of life, here.
I also live on the Ok/Tx border and have lived between OKC and here my whole life. Most of us don’t fear but greatly respect tornadoes. You’re correct, they’re very targeted and most never see one. There was a small one 1/2 mile from my house a few years ago and we had no idea till a friend called to check on us. They do some really strange and odd stuff to the things they suck up and sling out!!
I would say those "a lot" people who are fortunate enough to have shelters are primarily in the cities.. Outside of the cities, not so much. They're too expensive.
@@Gutslinger there is or were programs through Texas and Oklahoma, funded by FEMA that would rebate up to 1/2 of the cost for cellars & was easy to apply for. That did allow “a lot” of people to have them put in. I’m not positive it’s still available but might be worth checking into if that might help.
Storm Chaser and Oklahoma resident here! I loved this video! It is truly scary to see the power that makes you feel helpless but also feel curious about a storm at the same time. It’s also refreshing to see someone from a different region branch out to explore and learn about weather from different parts of the world. Some residents here in the states barely scratch the surface on tornado knowledge so, good on you! Also, don’t worry about the cursing. It’s our native tongue as well. 😊👍
The way the Joplin tornado goes from a whispy, barely visible tornado to a monsterous wedge in the span of 5 seconds is the most insane tornado footage I've ever seen. I highly recommend trying to find the footage.
I was born in Joplin... we moved to KCMO when I was an infant and still live here. Now I live about a mile from where the Ruskin F-5 Tornado flattened the Ruskin Heights area here in KC on May 20th, 1957. 44 dead, as high as 531 injured. I don't tend to sleep much on nights when there are tornado watches in effect.
I agree !!! My niece worked at the hospital in Joplin, but Thank God was not at work. My family and I drove to Joplin and went to see the empty hospital. I will never for that sight. I just have no words to describe it.
American in the Midwest here. A tornado never really sneaks up on you these days. You typically know there's a storm coming and they ring to tornado siren when they want you to start paying attention. If you're in the path of a likely tornado, you get alerts on your phone, and at that point you're probably watching storm coverage. You hunker down in your basement and hope you're not hit. Not fun, but there's no surprise about it.
That isn't 100% true. Just last year a short lived EF2 dropped in central Knoxville, TN, and only a watch was issued. There was no warning, at all. Weather stations had to confirm after the storm ended that a tornado occured, both with historical radar data, and damage analysis. Tornado Alley may have the benefit of having all eyes on it during storm season, which helps with warning times, but Dixie Alley isn't so lucky. Thankfully, no one was killed, but the apartment complex that was hit, had large sections of the roof torn off. Bottom line, these storms still do have the potential to catch you by surprise, even if you're paying attention, I would know, I was in Knoxville that day, and was paying attention, and didn't learn of the tornado until a day later.
Not for us I'm in Michigan near Ohio and i.was out in my yard with my toddlers feeding my goats 2 summers ago and it got dark and one went through my yard between the house and where we were. We were hiding under the barn in mud. Everyone told me it sounds like a train and I legit was waiting for a train whistle sound that is not what it sounds like it sounds like a roar. We had no alerts and no warning
They can still sneak up on folk, especially if they hit at night. But I'm Very, very thankful for modern radar and reverse 911. We can *barely* hear the tornado sirens in our rural area, so if we didn't watch the news that's the main way we catch the Warnings.
Really surprised that he didn’t mention the El Reno Oklahoma Tornado in May 31st of 2013, even though the damage scale from that EF5 was basically what you saw out of an EF3. But that one was significant since it was one of the deadliest/costliest storm chasing wise. The erratic movements caught even professional storm chasers from Discovery and The Weather Channel off, and they either died or got severely injured, plus it was rain wrapped meaning usually storm chasers had a corridor between the rain wall and the vortex to escape, but the rain wall was actually the edge of the tornado. It was the widest tornado ever recorded too.
i think if anyone tells this guy about el reno, his brain might explode lol especially since she was as wide as or wider than the length of manhattan considering the size of the ones he’s reacted to so far and how mind blown he was by those sizes, i hope he reacts to el reno eventually
I just left a comment wondering the same thing, then seen this comment. There were 3 storm chasers together (2 were father and son). The tornado unexpectedly shifted in their direction. The Chevy colbolt they were in was absolutely mangled into a small ball of metal. It’s devastating. I believe there were 5 others who would die in their vehicles as well, including a mother and her baby. I’ve experienced many tornadoes living in Oklahoma, but this one in particularly stands out to me because it was so close to me and my babies. We lived in a shelter at the time and I remember holding them tightly under a table begging the universe, god, or anybody who could hear me to protect us. It gives me chills to even think of it. to this day I’m absolutely terrified of tornadoes. My anxiety is always so high this time of year.
@@OofAvocado Thanks for telling me this story. It's really interesting hearing other people's perspective living in Tornado Alley, since I live in the Pacific Northwest area. With the 3 storm chasers, 2 of them got blown out and the other one (I think the son) was left inside the metal ball of the Chevy. I know all of them died. Stay safe out there.
Back in the early 2000s a tornado curved around our city. It was far enough away that my parents decided we'd just go to bed. The wind knocked a large oak over in the yard in the middle of the night, and it nearly landed on my bedroom. The branches left scratches down the wall and cracked my window. Few years after that a tornado hit my hometown. It was a really bizarre and surreal experience, going up for the holidays and seeing an empty block of concrete where the gas station used to be. Buildings that had been there for my entire life were just gone. Tornadoes are just something else, even from a distance.
The eerie calm before they hit gets me everytime. The rain just stops... lighting starts strobing like a wack rave... wind picks up, then the sound of a train barreling across the land can be heard even over the rain, if it starts back.
I remember when i was at school during a tornado, it never hit us, but it almost did. It was raining hard and you could hear the wind slamming against the roof. But then it all just stopped, and everything was just eerily quiet, too quiet. The air started to smell of wet flowers and a loud roar was heard as it passed over our school. I like to think God blew it over our school, because if it hit, at least a couple thousand of us wouldnt be having a good day
@@rdmfeyna-sleep yep, for some reason in my part of MS it seems like we get them at night more frequently. I forgot about that, pretty and eerie. Last one I got woke up in the middle of the night to the house shaking/vibrating from thunder and then strobing lightning before my alarms started going off. Really crappy wake up call 😂 especially when you are home alone with the dogs (husband working in another state).
@@RAZORBACK_BELIEVER God I hated when they hit when I was in school! You were very lucky/blessed. The way tornados "jump" over buildings definitely seems like a divine intervention, especially when it misses buildings full of children. So glad ya'll made it. Not sure I've paid attention to the scent in the air, interesting observation. The stillness just makes my skin crawl with anticipation...
@@mouse9884 saturday night, in Arkansas, we had a tornado hit one of out fellow cities school that I have friends and family go to. Luckily, since it was the weekend, no one was there. Im glad you are safe when your tornado hit your school. As for the smell, coming from experience since ive been in at least 20 tornados, they usually smell like wet flowers because of the plants and stuff that may be in the tornado (if you live in a rural area like I do). But it always depends on what the tornado hit, if you have a good enough sense of smell, you can tell what the tornado hit. You can smell dead things in a tornado if it hit animals, or people. Tornados are pretty much nightmare fuel if you even look just below the surface.
I'm a trained spotter here in the Kansas City area. We moved out East to Syracuse, NY for a bit. They hadn't experienced them before, so there were no alerts, just the TV. Hubby & I jumped in our old truck and started chasing. I finally got thru to the local TV stations (thank goodness for conference calls!), explained who I was, where I came from, etc. and was immediately patched to the weather depts. It's a very hilly area, but we knew what to look for. We successfully (? is there success ?) "caught" 3 heading towards the area. We got lucky that they just passed thru farmland! The news channels mentioned us, and gave us so much praise, but hey... at least we knew enough to chase those things and report everything to them!
Syracuse definitely has experienced tornadoes over the years,nowhere near the severity experienced in the Midwest, but there were plenty of tornado watches and warnings from my childhood there.
I lived in Moore, Oklahoma and have first had experience of tornados. The EF4-EF5 in 2013 destroyed my childhood home while I was visiting with my husband and son. We were lucky to have had a neighbor with a storm shelter. Hearing it go overhead while holding my son then seeing my (former) bedroom completely gone afterward is something I still have nightmares about. I can confirm these storms are as terrifying as they look here.
Me too ✋🏼 as a okie I can confirm, 2013 was one of the worst years for me I was only like 9 or 8 years old I'm 20 now and still have ptsd I feel like I can hear sirens all the time even though I know I don't, my farm was swept way and I haven't have farm life since.
As someone who has lived and still lives in tornado alley (like the early 2000’s Moore tornado and being near the Joplin tornado), please never live here unless you are ready to face the consequences of the storms that come with living here lol. - Also, fun DISTURBING fact: . . . . . . . . there have been stories of tornadoes of having such high vacuum levels that not only do they suck you and air out of spaces, but people seeing the the literal lungs of people sucked and expelled out of bodies from them. If the twister is bad enough, not matter WHERE you hide (crawl space, basement, tornado shelter), nature will not hesitate to kill you in the most gruesome of ways possible. If a single straw of hay can puncture through a tree/glass from a tornado, that same blade can kill any being in its path. - Alternatively, it’s not uncommon to see the bare remnants of a car or large animal in a tree twisted like a meat pretzel after severe twisters.
Hey, we can help with "how tornadoes form!" Meteorology is one of our favorite special interests! 😊 So, tornadoes are not like "dust devils," where warm air from the ground being warmed by sunlight creates a spin. Tornadoes (as well as derechos, which are the extreme thunderstorms that the phrase "raining so hard it's falling sideways" originates from, since their windspeed on a straight front is comparable to hurricanes and tornadoes, which wings the rain so hard it seems to be falling horizontally instead of down) come from what is called a Supercell. Now, what is a supercell? Well, hurricanes form over water, right? So they get warm and gain enough energy to spin. Well, supercells are similar, but instead of forming over water with pure warmth, they form over land, and wind shear is the key ingredient. Wind shear keeps the two extremes of the storm separated (the cooler air with rain, and the warmer air above it.) So if the wind shear lands at around 20,000ft, or roughly 6 km since you're not American, and it's sufficiently strong, that's when you're cooking a supercell and not your average thunderstorm. Now, supercells have something called a "mesocyclone." Think of this like an intake valve: if the shear is good, then this cyclone draws warm air from the ground and up towards the updraft instead of it getting countered by the cooler downdraft. So this is where the heat that Hurricanes gain over the Gulf of Mexico is substituted from, it takes the warm air from the ground and adds it to it's own stock. So, we've got a rapidly-spinning thunderstorm now. Now we just need it to touch down. This is where the surface comes in clutch again. In this specific step, you can look at lighting as an example: in order for lightning to touch the ground, you need a charge in the sky, but you also need the opposite charge from the ground. This is why most "downward" lightning is actually shooting UPWARD, not downward, because basically what the ground starts doing once it's charged is "reach" for the charge in the clouds, not the other way around. This is why if you're in a thunderstorm and your hair starts to stick up for no reason, you need to get indoors immediately: because while dirt or other ground can sometimes shoot blue "streamers" in preparation for a strike, if lightning is contemplating using YOU as a rod, your hair will start to stand up from the static charge trying to go upwards. So, Tornadoes form from not just the spin in the storm, but also gusts from it beginning to spin on the surface. If the wind spins in the right direction, this allows the wind at the top to spin all the way down into a continuous funnel. Now you got your tornado. Pretty crazy planet we live on. 😅 -🖊️/🍻
Dude, pictures of lightning step leaders are so cool. The 'zzzt-crackle!' sound it makes when the charge from the clouds meets the step leader it's picked followed by the explosion of plasma is Insane! The old saying, "When thunder roars, go indoors," holds truth, because if you can hear a storm, you're already within striking distance. For those wondering why, lightning can strike up to 10 miles away from the parent storm.
Canadian here, my house got hit by a tornado in barrie 2021 . It was terrifing as we had no warning one minute calm eating lunch , next minute chairs flying and windows breaking . We were blessed no one died especially because three kids got sucked out of their house and flung across to a feild
Oklahomans watch weather channel in the spring like our favorite sports team is playing, and we have multiple trackers for each news station throughout the state. Our weathermen and storm trackers have probably saved 100s if not thousands of lives.
That's what makes tornadoes terrifying. It can go from calm skies to a few minutes later. It's rain and then a couple minutes, after that. It's a tornado throwing your car, if not your house.
My mom told me a story about when she was visiting family in Iowa when I was an infant. They were all out enjoying the day, completely clear blue skies, not a cloud in sight. Suddenly the sky turned completely black and my great aunt who was living there for a long time was just completely calm and said that it was time to leave, like it was nothing. She could have been telling people to come to the table for dinner, it was basically just any Tuesday to her
People don’t realize the weather America be goin through 💀 shit sucks at times. Earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes. We got it all! Even volcanos!! And it’s not like tornados are infrequent. It’s an entire season of like April to June Julyish
Grew up in Indiana and in April 3-4, 1974, the most F5 tornadoes ever recorded in a single outbreak. Now live on the East Coast. The difference between a hurricane and a tornado is that you have longer warning for hurricane and time yo prepare your house, pack and leave. With tornadoes, it can be only minutes.
They’ve been appearing more and more up to December because it’s still warm instead of being cold and snowy. 2-3 years ago I was driving home when the wind picked up all of a sudden (it was dark so I couldn’t see anything in front of me). After I passed that area my phone started going off telling me there was an active tornado in my area and I realize I just passed it. Luckily it wasn’t a big one but it still did cause some damage to some buildings.
the wreckage and aftermath always shatters my heart, homes, businesses, lives all destroyed in a matter of minutes those who survive have to live with that trauma and try to rebuild from everything they lost it is so devastating. I remember watching storm chasers as a kid & as scary as the tornado itself is, it’s the destruction it leaves behind that’s really impactful to me personally. Fascinating but horrific weather phenomenon truly, I’m so glad I don’t live in flat land areas but I still have seen my fair share of tornadoes where I live throughout my life. the sound too if you have ever heard one in person it’s the most insane thing my ears have ever listened too.
I recall a tornado hitting my hometown when I was only 10 & it took so many of my classmates homes as well as took a whole mother and her newborn baby that lived only two streets from me and carried them threw them into a field, completely different directions several miles from where it lifted them. They both passed & the sadness that filled my hometown after that tornado was so intense. :( a memorial was there for years and they never rebuilt the house that once stood there. Just drove by not but a few weeks ago and there is a new house there now, I’m almost 30 it’s insane how time passes and things change but moments or horrors like that live with you forever.
The one in my town goes off 3 times a day to tell the farmers start time, lunch and stop time. Freaks me out everytime lol. Now I worry I won't take it seriously if a tornado comes during the times they regularly set it off
@@jennahall4045 are you sure the tornado sirens are going off to alert the workers that it is lunchtime and or the end of the day? Because that's not what tornado sirens are used for in any way shape or form and they can't just be accessed by a random person.
The Weather Channel did a series, Tornado Alley Real Time, featuring four tornados. The Joplin, Moore, Tuscaloosa, and Hattiesburg. They contain amatuer, storm chaser and news coverage in real time as it occurred during the tornados. While they can be hard to watch, the heroism and community you learn about during the interviews is truly inspiring. I'm one of your recent subscribers and just wanted to say hi. Your reactions are hysterical, great job.
I'm reading this while my television has the local meteorologist showing the storm approaching us here in Oklahoma City this channel has about a dozen storm chasers out giving live updates
@@ClefairyRoxAnd one for the EF-4 tornado that struck Henryville, Indiana on March 2nd, 2012. People who have a sense of Gallows Humor say that the reason why Henryville was hit by a tornado is because a crew from The Weather Channel was in the area that was lead by Jim Cantore. Legend says that if you see Jim Cantore in your town; bad weather is bound to happen, so either take shelter or get out of town.
Adam, my mother was born and raised in Moore. When the sky turned green, the family hit the rootceller. The only safe place is underground. It took strong men to hold the door closed. I wouldn't live in Tornado Alley for anything. The Midwest is getting smashed right now. There's so much rain, because of the tornados, that parts of Texas are underwater. If you feel like praying, do it....they need it badly. Google. Glad you're back. I've missed you.
I live "up" in New England, and while tornadoes are rare where I live, we still have the saying in our family "when the sky turns green, it's about to get mean!" Two of the three scariest things I've ever seen in my life were the times I've seen the sky turn green before a funnel forms. No photo or video can really convey what it's like, it's so otherworldly it hits you on a primal level, where your whole body tells you "something's not right." My heart goes out to anyone and everyone who lives through this regularly.
My mom lived in Enid as a child, she told us(kids) she had seen three tornadoes on the ground at the same time…I think that’s the only thing she was ever scared of.
Native Oklahoman here, and I gotta say the Oklahoma footage I all watched in person on TV, some of it close to me, but I did not receive any damage thankfully. The second tornado shown, the Moore tornado, the 20+ lives that were taken. were actually children that were trapped in a school. That is why that is one of the most well-known tornadoes of Oklahoma because it took such precious lives from us. I don’t know when this video was made that you were watching, but we recently had two EF five tornadoes. 11 years after that one even though it said there hasn’t been one since, there has now been two this year.
So, as an "Army brat" growing up on military base in the Marshall Islands, Typhoon Zelda hit Thanksgiving of 9th grade. It spawned tornados that destroyed several buildings. We watched as people's patios were just blowing through the streets. Thankfully, no homes were destroyed. Army base housing was made of giant bricks and were very strong. A few residents lost their roofing, but that's it, no fatalities. Only cheap business buildings were destroyed and being Thanksgiving, they were all closed. Name of the place was Kwajalein and it was Thanksgiving of 1991 I think.
I live in north Louisiana and recently, throughout the spring and early summer months, we get lots of tornados! The only one that I’ve ever been unlucky enough to be in was in the spring of 2019. Two people tragically lost their lives when a tree was thrown onto their house. Also, our local college’s baseball and softball fields were destroyed, as was one of our local high school football fields. My boyfriend at the time was sleeping in his house when the roof was ripped off and he was nearly sucked out of bed. Another friend of mine was living in a trailer (the worst place to be when tornado hits for anyone who didn’t know) and she could literally see the walls BREATHING!
Texan here. We don’t have basements usually as our water table is too high. Some older homes may have outside storm shelters, although they tend to harbor flooding or snakes. We usually hide in the bathroom closest to the center of the house. No sirens near us because we live in the country. We’ve had tornadoes hit as close as mile from our home. This weekend we literally out ran a tornado. A friend of ours wasn’t so lucky but he survived and has video of his truck being spun around and an RV being flung into him. So glad he had a newer truck with side airbags. In America every state has a form of severe weather. West coast has earthquakes. The north (from east to west) get severe snowstorms and cold. Midwest is known as tornado alley for a reason. We’ve had three tornadoes this week in north Texas! East coast and south also get hurricanes. The best you can get is picking the desert of New Mexico or Arizona, although when I lived in those states as a kid my mom would hide our shoes to keep us in our own yard because temps would get over 110 F in the summer and the sidewalks were too hot for bare feet. So we all pick the weather we are most comfortable to handle and shake our heads at everyone else saying, “I could never live there!”
Tornadoes are terrifying but fascinating at the same time. I lived in Oklahoma for four years on an air base in my early 20's and saw a fair share of storms. One of the locals told me that "if it looks like it ain't movin', then it's coming straight towards you. Get out of it's way." I truly miss living in that state.
I lost two friends to the Joplin tornado. Last we heard, they were taking their dogs to a back hallway (there was no basement, if I remember correctly) and were going to try to ride out the storm there, the way they always did when there were tornado warnings, but no one had any idea how big this storm was. We thought they’d just lost power as the storm passed through. It took several days to get confirmation that they were gone and not just stranded in a neighborhood without power. Even the hospital was torn just about in half in Joplin. I think, afterward, it was the only building still recognizable in the whole neighborhood because it was big enough that it didn’t get leveled. Where do you go for help when your local hospital’s been hollowed out by the same storm, you know? To this day, I can’t think about Joplin without getting really angry. It just wasn’t survivable once you were in its path. In the video footage of Joplin, you can see the path it tore through town as it picked up strength and debris and speed, and grew wider as it moved. I’ll never look at tornadoes the same way again since Joplin.
Watching and hearing about tornados from people who experienced them and their consequences, I can't help but be reminded of a video Kurzgesagt did, the "What happens if you nuke a city?" video. The events aren't quite the same, but the devastation is eerily similar. The police are scrambled, local hospitals and fire rescue could also be as helpless as anyone else that got hit. Infrastructure is down.. The help that comes comes from other cities and it may not be able to take a direct route if roads are blocked by debris... it's all quite chilling.
@@dragon_nammi we have drills and plans. In the May 3 tornado we learned how valuable tires are. Some emergency vehicles couldn’t get places because of all the nails in the streets. Now, they are prepared. Since Oklahoma is an oil and gas state, it isn’t hard to get dozers in asap. Everyone has a pickup truck and neighbors will haul people to hospitals. Farmers bring their tractors to help. Neighbors help neighbors. Typically, neighboring emergency personnel do not wait to be called. They just go. Yes, hospitals do take direct hits, but there are plans set in place in that scenario.
The 1991 Wichita/Andover F5 destroyed the block behind us and everything south of that. I was 12 years old and it was insane. After the tornado passed through we went outside and you could hear hundreds of gas lines hissing from the houses being torn away from them. We found shoes, clothes and a toothbrush on our roof. The roof of a trailer house was in our backyard. Our entire neighborhood was blocked off for months. Red Cross was there and served us sandwiches and gave us flashlights, since the power was going to be out for a while. I remember taking baths at night with flashlights :) Nobody died in my area... but there were deaths in Andover.
Midwest lady here, and Tornadoes are the worst. I will never forget where a school in Iowa was wiped out, during a school day. It still makes me cry, and breaks my heart over and over for those babies. RIP angels.
@@Hiraghm I was at my friend’s grad party when the greenfield tornado was going to hit. I also remember waking up in the middle of the night to sirens, looking out my window and my heart just stopping when I saw the night tornado, I swore everything was going to be destroyed but luckily enough it didn’t hit my town but it did hit the next town over. Pretty sure that same night and earlier that day, I watched the thunderstorm rage from inside of a car, it was horrifying and no matter how much tornado training I had, having one right there made me forget everything. I think they’re still trying to rebuild Greenfield today and parts of other cities it hit, but my family and I were all in different areas when it occurred and was supposed to hit our town. My little brother gathered the dogs and took them to his friends house and my mom and her employees hunkered down at work. It was one of the most terrifying moments in my life knowing everything was possibly going to be ripped away from me in that instant.
Tornadoes are often formed from the cold air coming off the Rocky Mountains that hits the moist warm air from the Gulf Ocean that comes up through the south and hits in Tornado Alley in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and the south. Lots of storms with hail hit that area every spring/summer. I’ve been through bad winds and large hail but never a tornado, thank goodness. I had a friend who saw damage from a smaller tornado that went from Ohio through northern Pennsylvania and saw houses gone but the wood pile stacked next to the house untouched. So weird. The debris flying around kills. That’s why a lot of US homes have basements.
My family was in the May 3, 1999 tornado and I still remember this day as if it was yesterday. My family was at home watching it live the day it hit, we lost everything. All we had after it was over was the clothes on our back. Luckily Oklahomans look out for their own and we had many friends and family (that were unaffected) help us that day. Luckily my family sustained no physical injuries, however me and my sister suffer PTSD from the emotional/mental impact this had on us. I was 13 and my sister was 11 at that time. To this day, I thank all the storm chasers and news stations as well as emergency personnel etc that did their best and more to try to warn/help as many people as they possibly could. This sounded like you were standing on tracks with a freight train barreling straight towards you at high speed. The tornado itself was so wide and it was so dark and since it occurred during the evening it made it worse. My family did not have a shelter at home, so we had to hide in a closet and hope that we made it out alive. Afterwards, with word coming in from neighbors etc, the portion of our neighborhood began the roughly 2 mile trek to a church that had opened it's doors to survivors but it was still rough due to the amount of debris etc thrown about. So starting @ 21:41-21:45 you can actually see my family's rebuilt property towards the bottom left corner of the video.
Thank god there were people and systems set up warning people about it. Tornado warnings/broadcasts used to be illegal since it was thought that it would cause too many people to panic.
And my graduation almost never happened, in bridge creek, bc the night before we had 4 different tornadoes forming over the town, and if all 4 merged, it was said it had potential to be worse than may 3rd, and you could hear the concern in David payne voice. This happened may 11, 2023
I grew up in the Midwest. Many of the homes built back there have basements you can go to. We are also drilled and warned about tornados from an early age at school with tornado drills. Tornado prone areas have tall loud horns that alert people when there is a tornado spotted. Things will get really quiet, the the sound of the winds, the twirling of the wind sounds like a train approaching. Scary stuff because they can just come on, and then disappeared, just like that. had a friend that lived in Joplin in 2011. She lost her house, luckily her family was ok. Just lost everything they owned. :(
I grew up in the Midwest. I used to sleep straight through any storm until I was 6-7. That one night I woke up to hearing the tornado sirens going off. I opened my door and my dad was immediately waking everyone else up, as I never woke up to it before and he was unsure if it was real until he saw my bedroom door open,we went downstairs to the basement and we were put in the shower just in case. Thankfully it didn't hit our house, but it was 10ft from our house. We went outside in the morning and saw trees down in the woods behind us. Haven't slept through a storm since. Still absolutely love thunderstorms and tornadoes, but definitely effects my sleep
Washington, Illinois November 17, 2013... Tornado reached its apex over my house, felt the suction as it went over, almost burst my eardrums from the pressure, and live with PTSD from it... Still here, and it has gotten easier over time, but something I will NEVER forget...
I think I’d literally have a heart attack if there was even a close call with a major tornado. I have been terrified of them since I can remember, and I grew up in a state that rarely had an F1. Bless you and yours, so glad you survived.
My Lil bro was born during the 2011 outbreak. The hospital he was born at was in the tornados path, but the storm turned last second. I can recognize one of the buildings in the moore footage
3:40 For our friends watching from across the pond… 210 miles per hour is equivalent to 338 kilometers per hour. The EF5 Bridgecreek/Moore tornado had the highest recorded wind speed at 321 miles per hour (517 kilometers per hour). 3:40 The 212 kilometers that was shown on the screen at that time was the conversion for the 132 miles to tornado traveled across the ground. One last interesting facts for friends… the widest tornado was recorded the 2013 El Reno tornado which was recorded at 2.6 Miles (4.2 kilometers) wide! It’s honestly hard to even conceive of. It’s so wide it’s probably also easy to misinterpret until it’s too close to escape.
1:00 that is what is known as a “wedge” tornado. Those are when the tornado is wider than it is tall, and they can get pretty big. The largest tornado ever documented hit just to the south of El Reno, Oklahoma in 2013. It was 2.6 miles (about 4.2 km) wide. Also 14:00 typically a tornado starts with rotation in the supercell that reaches down to the ground, however, water/groundspouts exist, as well as gustnadoes. Swegle Studios has a good video going over tornado terminology where he explains what different types of whirlwinds and how they form.
I’ve lived in Kansas USA my whole life and been through a couple bad tornadoes in my area. Although they’re super terrifying and can cause awful damage, tornadoes are one of the natural disasters that can be really well predicted. Obviously it’s not easy to predict exactly where they will form, but the weather conditions have to be very particular in order to birth a tornado. Us locals can typically tell day to day if it feels like “tornado weather,” and radar/ weather warnings tend to be very reliable for big storms like these. The time of year is also a good predictor for tornadoes, as most fall within the April-June tornado season. I couldn’t imagine living in an area where earthquakes are common because there’s not really a way to know when one will happen or how strong it will be.
I live in an Earthquake area and I totally agree with you, I wish we could predict them the same way we can with other natural disasters. Obviously I wish more people were able to find shelter and know about tor warnings, but at least most of the time there is some heads up if you're paying attention. Here you're just shit outta luck if an earthquake hits, you just have to hope you're in a good spot and react quickly enough once it starts.
When I hear about hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, etc. I think about the natural disaster risk I have living in Oklahoma and choose it over the others. Tornadoes are quite surgical so even if one comes directly at you, there's a decent chance it will shift slightly and you'll get only minor damage or even none at all (maybe a fence blows over). We had a small tornado hit my workplace several years ago after business hours. The storage facility behind us had several buildings destroyed, then the air conditioners were pulled off the top of our building as it hopped over, then destroyed a church across the street. Hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires are so all-encompassing that you are affected at least in some way if you are in the area it occurs. You either face hours of battering winds and torrential rain, building damaging shaking for miles and miles, or risk miles of fire burning everything as it expands. Being in this part of the country means we have to deal with tornados, but not any of the rest of those. I'll stay here, thanks.
I've lived in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area for 70+ years. In that time there has only been one earthquake that affected my life - 1989 Loma Prieta. Most quakes are so small we never feel them. We just hear that the sensors picked up something. Deadly destructive tornadoes on the other hand, happen EVERY year. Granted, not in every city every year, but the visuals are terrifying.
While not on this list, I lived through the Parkersburg, Iowa tornado in May 2008. My first thought upon seeing the damage was "this looks like a warzone". Every time a tornado siren sounds it brings back memories. One thing nobody ever mentions is the air pressure change is enough to cause your ears to pop like in a jet.
I live in Moore, OK and have been through both the May 3rd 1999 F5 (320 mph winds) and the 2013 F5. Still alive and kicking. As I'm typing this, we are under a grave tornado threat once again today, and I'm watching the weather.
Native Oklahoman here - The same day as the Wichita F5 (April 26,1991), an F5 outbreak hit the Tulsa area. I lived a mile south of where one of the F5 tornadoes hit. Fortunately, we only lost a couple of dead trees, and our home and barns were not damaged. Then during the May 3,1999 F5 tornado that hit Moore, I was finishing my sophomore year at the University of Oklahoma. I stood with several of my friends on the balcony of our house and watched as the storm passed through Moore. We couldn't see the tornado, but we could see the storm clouds. That was a very sobering moment for us. I lived my entire life in tornado alley, and have had several close calls with smaller storms. Springtime is interesting in these parts.
I live in TN, and back in 2018 one of my good friends' mom passed away in a tornado. It wasn't a particularly strong or long drawn out storm, but it was just strong enough to come down on their home and sweep it off its foundation. She was going down the stairs to get into the basement as the tornado ripped apart the house. Everyone else in the house was downstair's already and survived with minimal injuries. Almost the entire high school went to her funeral. It was an extremely sad day and I still keep in contact with him.
When I grew up in Kentucky I fell in love with tornadoes. Every tornado season we would have maybe two or three times when we had to run across the property to the storm cellar with the most exciting time being when a tornado went practically right over the cellar (didn't touch the house at the other end of the property, thankfully.) Now I'm in school for meteorology! The movie Twister was a huge inspiration for me, too. It made me want to chase tornadoes and really get to know and experience them.
I grew up about an hour and a half from joplin in 2011 (currently live in joplin). It was so sad and devastating, but im proud of the community and the people who came to help.
Growing up in the Midwest I don’t really fear tornados anymore, but the sirens and atmosphere before one still fill me with dread. I still cry when watching footage of Joplin
I'm part of a disaster relief team here in Oklahoma City and was just in Sulphur for clean up. It's a wild place to live but we're used to it. Come out for spring sometime, it's truly something to feel the day it's supposed to get bad.
I used to live a block away from a tornado siren. They used test it out on a nice sunny day to make sure it was working right during tornado season. Now I have a hearing problems.
I was in high school when the 1999 Moore tornado struck and leveled my aunt & uncle’s house. My cousin was an infant at the time and was nearly ripped out of my aunt’s arms. My mom frantically drove there that night where 108 tornadoes were touching down. Moore would be hit again in 2009 and 2013 by EF-4 and 5 tornadoes. I’ve rode out an EF-2 hitting my neighborhood when I was in college and just last night, an EF-3 passed within 10 miles of where I currently live. At some point, you get pretty good about gauging the weather and you pay attention to radar images of all storms passing around you. You also start getting weird when a storm is too dark or has an odd color to it. Like greenish tints, which usually accompanies hail.
I am a storm chaser in Kansas, I've been chasing for 11 years, and I chased some of the tornadoes in this video. The first time I remember hearing the sirens was during the Wichita/Andover EF5 tornado. I've also had houses damaged by tornadoes that have come through my town. My Dad survived the 1966 Topeka, Kansas tornado, but his house was torn off of its foundation and they never saw that house again. (My Dad got sent to Vietnam like 2 years later,poor guy. Also random fact, Dad was originally from Connemara, Co Galway!)
I live less than a mile from where that EF5 tornado ripped through Alabama in Harvest. It took Years for the lots to regrow. My sister was down in Tuscaloosa, where one of the tornadoes ripped through and killed a bunch of people. She was less than half a mile away from it, hiding in a store. We didn't have power for weeks, so my friends parents who had a condo down in south Alabama invited me down, and we spent time on the beach, and slept in a Yacht. Good times
@@Drago_San yeah, this was over a decade ago. All the gas, and essentials at the stores were sold out, and people were scrambling to buy up anything they could. The power out meant a lot of stores including gas stations couldn't run so it drove a mini panic (kind of like when covid first hit). Thanks for the kind words
@@Joshua_Bearden I was in a condo in Mobile right after, so I didn't have to deal with all the issues. I know how much no cell service/internet/power sucks
Having been in a few tornadoes, feeling a deep dread of them, and living around people who are all kind of numb to the terror - it's cathartic to see your reaction
I grew up in Tornado Alley in Northwest Texas. We had a tornado one day during school. It took the roof off our gym and auditorium as well as destroyed the band hall. All of these were in the only building that made up our high school. All the students and staff were in the main hall in the floor with our heads down against the rows of lockers. No one was hurt but it was scary AF!!!
I lived 18 miles north of Jarrell in 1997. I'll never forget standing outside watching the clouds heading south over us and thinking how strange they looked and how strange the air felt. The tornado hit Jarrell not long after that. Hearing about it in the news later was chilling.
As a young boy in 1974, my dad drove us about 100 miles to Zenia Ohio about a week after the F5 hit that town, buildings swept clean like they were sucked up by a giant vacuum and dumped back in pieces. A gas station had nothing left but the pumps and a hole in the ground where a building had stood.
My paternal grandfather and his parents (my great-grandparents) survived the F5 Tri-State tornado in 1925. They lived in Murphysboro, Illinois. My grandfather was 5 years old at the time.
So happy they survived! I learned a fun fact that after the tornado in Princeton, they had lots of cars with their roofs ripped off that were still driveable, so they were known around town as tornado convertibles
watching European dudes react to weather in the States really brings the danger and seriousness of it all back, due to growing up around hurricanes and tornados, while i’m still cautious, i tend to forget just how devastating they are because they happen all the time, it’s really helpful seeing it though a fresh pair of eyes
Yeah I feel the same way. I lived in Alabama for over 20 years (and was there in 2011 during the outbreak) before moving to Germany just last year. It's a strange feeling to hear a thunderstorm coming in and my brain just automatically flipping into tornado preparedness mode.....and then realizing I don't need to, it'll be fine. Tornados DO occur here in Germany it's just much more rare.
I was on the outskirts of both of the F5 tornadoes that hit Moore Oklahoma, on this list. While I and my home suffered no damage, houses just 300 feet away were totally destroyed. In total I have been in or very near to five tornadoes since I moved to the Oklahoma City area. In fact this afternoon we are in a "High probability" warning. It's just a fact of life here and after one hits, the outpouring of support and assistance from the people in this area is amazing. Despite the dangers of tornadoes, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, because of the people here.
I can't imagine the strong bond in your community after all you've been through throughout the years. No wonder people choose to stay. There's a lot more love and support there than other places in these modern times where we're so isolated even though we live so close to each other
This year in march ohio had a mini outbreak, these were all nighttime tornadoes, typically when the sirens go off my dad looks outside, keeps track of the weather instead of scaring everybody and just making us go to the basement and play the waiting game since the tornado sirens are for the ENTIRE county you are in. I just had an eerie feeling about it, my dad could see power flashes in the distance it was the first time he felt the need to get his family downstairs. The hail was so loud, the rain was so hard it was coming into the basement. The power flickered about 4 times before it went out completely, turns out the tornado directly hit about a 2 minute drive from us, so we were only experiencing the outer winds of the tornado but it was still terrifying. I remember holding my cat and being afraid for my home. A barn was completely destroyed, schools were damaged, and at least 4 transmissions towers were bent over or just completely toppled over. My dad said he remembered it being eerily calm, there was no wind before either the rain was just pouring straight down Tornadoes are definitely more common in the US but its also highly unlikely you will be hit by one, even more unlikely an EF4-EF5 will hit you. I'm 18 years old and that night in march a couple of months ago was my first time one came close.
march 3rd, 2023 i was on a road trip and i was driving through farmland in Indiana, an EF1 (not strong enough to do too much damage) tornado allegedly touched down right on my car, as i couldn't see it due to the rain. definitely one of the most scary experiences in my life.
I'll never forget the meteorologist that recognized his subdivision and ran off camera, still mic'ed, and his phone call was live. He called his wife and told her to get herself and their kids into the basement immediately, don't grab anything just go now. I don't remember exactly where/ when it happened but I know his family was safe afterwards
I am from Alabama and currently live in Tennessee. When I was a kid and lived in Arkansas, right in the middle of "tornado alley," we had a tornado go between our house and our neighbor's house. It removed our shed, but didn't do any significant damage to our house. I remember my dad running out right after it went by to get the horse saddles from the yard since they were leather and would ruin. I'm still pretty scared of tornadoes, but I've never seen one so I have a very morbid curiosity now I'm older.
I was outside with friends playing baseball when the supercells pasted through SW Ohio in April 1974. I'll never forget as they approached, how the sky changed to an eerily green/black, the rain, and the gratefulness that my neighborhood was spared.
The sound of an approaching tornado is one of the most heart stopping sounds you can hear. Akin to just standing on rail while a freight train is coming full speed.
I live on the East Coast in the U.S., and we don’t get tornados anything as large as the tornados in this video, but to me they are still terrifying. The first tornado I ever went through was 2 weeks after having my first child. I was young and living in a mobile home. Thankfully it did actually have a basement but the only way to access the basement was through an outside entrance. So I found myself running outside into an oncoming tornado in order to get myself and my brand new baby into the basement to hide under a desk that happened to be down there. That tornado came through my yard and ripped up trees but spared my home. The second tornado I had an up close experience with was when I was home alone with my 3 kids I had at that time, ages 10,6, and 10 months old. Again a tornado came through the field next to the farmhouse we lived in. I found myself hiding on the basement stairs due to the water rushing in through my stone basement and rapidly flooding while a tornado came within a few 100 feet of my home, doing only minimal damage. I was absolutely terrified both those times so I cannot fathom living in the Midwest where these monster storms are.
I was born in connected and when I was 2 there was a tornado outbreak in several northeast states including Connecticut and that was in 1989. I don't remember it obviously but the strongest tornado was an F4!
@@HeritageHighlandAcres a lot of houses were from what I know but only one person died while they were camping or something. But that explains why we had a whole course on tornado safety in second grade lol by second grade it had only been 5 years since it happened.
I live in oklahoma, i was visiting moore back in 2013, my family made it to an underground shelter, as the main portion of the E-F5 tornado approached our shelter, our ears started popping from the atmospheric pressure changes, and you could feel the entire ground rumble, could feel it in my bones, the aftermath was the worse part, the entire neighborhood was wiped from the face of the earth, trees uprooted and automobiles were crumpled up like crushed soda cans. I still have nightmares.
-My Dad was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, OK (close to Oklahoma City) in the 50's and then again in the 60's. The radar man called the base commander's attention to the strange "look" (pattern) of the radar images of the clouds and he suggested that the line of bombers and other planes outside on the flight line might be in danger but the commander (who had never seen images like this before) declined to fly the planes out to another base. Sure enough a tornado touched down on the flight line and destroyed several planes and generally did a lot of damage to the base and its facilities. A month or two later the same radar man saw the same pattern of clouds setting up in the same pattern as before. Again, he informed the base commander who this time flew everything that had wings off the base and battened down every thing else. Low and behold another tornado cruised down the flight line again but this time there was little damage because the planes were gone and everything else was secured. Thus radar became the standard procedure to watch the weather, send out warnings and keep track of the weather systems that can produce twisters.
Bonus videos on patreon❤ www.patreon.com/moreadamcouser
We only use the EF scale. Also really dude.
They start in the clouds and form a wall cloud as in the name is a wall of cloud dropped down from the storm cell/front and a funnel will either snake out or will form a big cone before sucking up dirt and debree along with the storm form a hook on radar that is easily spotable
To answer your question at 13:52 theyvstart at both the air and ground when one forms the clounds begin to visibly spin and the same time dust and dirt on the ground form a dust cloud then the two funnels meet eachother near the middle
ayy I'm from Northern Ireland too!
As of June 5th 2024 Ohio, my home state, has had 62 tornadoes this year.
I grew up in the US Midwest and tornados are no joke. As a kid we weren't scared of monsters in the dark, we were terrified of being awoken by that errie tornado siren.
YOU KNOW IT!!!! They were my nightmares.
AMEN on that. Can't remember who many times I fell out at night because of those sirens.
I legit still have nightmares of them and im 36 lol
Midwest got hit hard not too long ago
@@ryenbowyer7352 I almost got caught outside because I was in the backyard storage shed listening to my music and only saw it when I got up to close the building door after it slammed open
I saw a picture of someone's home that was destroyed by weather like this. He still had a sense of humor. He wrote on the sign, "Home For Sale. Some Assembly Required." LOL!
The fucking madlad 😂
🤣🤣
Lol dark humor indeed :P
it really sucks, but to be fare most of the homes arent even made to withstand f4 or f5 tornadoes, which imo should be a priority if you live in an area where it could happen
If you can make someone laugh you are making them forget their pain for a few seconds.
For the Joplin tornado: There was a reporter who was on site immediately after the tornado hit. She said she got PTSD from being there and for weeks after she would try to sleep but could still hear the search dogs barking in her head every time they found a body.
We have a family member who was in a stairwell and the 2 people behind him were sucked out and were killed
I spent my birthday helping with the search and rescue for Joplin. I definitely understand what that reporter is talking about. It is something you can never forget. You could never imagine the destruction and sadness until you see it with your own eyes. I have the utmost respect for everyone out there who helps in trying to predict and warn everyone of these storms to save lives.
I helped clean up the greenbrier nursing home after the Joplin tornado, (still live between Joplin and Carthage Missouri) there’s still nights though rare that I hear the beeping of the bed alarms that let you know someone isn’t in their bed
I live south of Joplin and went up as a volunteer to help. The damage was devastating, seeing it on TV is nothing compared to seeing it up close.
I grew up in Virginia and a tornado traveled up a creek bed a little ways behind our house. A car from a few streets over ended up in a tree between our house and our neighbor's. Bit of a shock to walk out the front door and see it hanging out like a tree house from hell
The sheriff deputy finding that little baby in the mud makes me cry every time. Baby lived
I remember when I was young hearing on the news about a, I can't remember if it was a baby or a toddler that was found in a tree about 3 miles from it's home. Had some cuts, bruises but was fine otherwise. I've forgotten a lot of the details but that part always stayed with me.
She was known as the mud baby. She’s now a teenager and wants to be a meteorologist.
@@celticwolfsong1373 yep, and more recently there was a four month old in a car seat found in the fork of a tree (in Tennessee I think) also unharmed.
“It’s not THAT the wind is blowing, it’s WHAT the wind is blowing” - Ron White
The wind is blowing me
I swear to God 😭@@FERARRI.THE.PROTOGEN2.0
Ahh do you remember the special this is from?! That unlocked a core memory for me lol.
I LOVE RON WHITE! TATER SALAD!!
@@FERARRI.THE.PROTOGEN2.0🤨📸
The worst part about a Tornado is the absolute quiet right before it hits. I'll never forget my first Tornado. The sky completely black and not a sound to be heard, no dogs, no birds, no bugs, nothing.
Yep, it’s very ominous
The one memory i think I'll never forget is when the wind switched directions as an F1 dropped literally right on top of my car. It was blowing west then it stopped. And then the wall of eastbound wind and the sound of a train. Ive never cowered in my car that hard. Thankfully i live in the mountains so any tornadoes are pretty rare by me. The only one worse wasthe F3 that hit my neighborhood when i was a baby but i have no memory of it being so young
Wow that sounds horrible I’ve never been in one but they scare me and I hope I will never be in one 😅❤️
I've been in 6 the sky turn a strange green color. I think the green. Is more scary than the black.
@@LJBSullivanI remember leaving the mall one day as a kid and the sun seemed more orange. It was so still.
My wife and I got to the basement about 25 seconds before the Joplin tornado hit our house dead-center. To this day, we get emotional if we speak about it and weather events cause us a great deal of stress and anxiety. We climbed out and started helping look for others. It was like being in a war zone.
So happy you survived. Bless you both, always.
People without basements are even worse off. But mobile homes rank highest on the terror scale.
@@billolsen4360 I just moved into a mobile home in a state that gets real tornadoes. Luckily I’m married to a concrete man who will make us a shelter. The way the weather is intensifying, you can’t be too careful.
Glad to see you still alive
😢
Tx resident of 26 years now been a witness and uncomfortably close a few times … it’s an experience that you’ll never forget, the air around you gets dense like there’s this pressure pushing against your lungs and things get absurdly dark, the sirens will go off as the most insane black clouds block any form of light getting through, the ground will begin to rumble while the siren put the fear of god in you, I’ve watched trees and street signs get bent sideways and torn out of the ground as I’m stuck on the highway watching it form, cars and trucks where losing their grip sliding off the road, some where pulling over while others where just desperately trying to drive past it before it came whirling through which is a decision your forced to make while in a panic, you’re truly at the mercy of Mother Nature and you can only go as fast as she’ll allow so it’s either find shelter or step in the gas … I had to pull off into a target to seek shelter as I was in traffic and I remember telling myself that day that ain’t no fucking way I’m dying in a target 😂 …
One thing that people don't usually mention is all the animals/birds, etc. killed in these tornadoes; pets, wildlife, and farm animals are so vulnerable. They often have nowhere to hide, and I find that heartbreaking.
It's funny you mention that. My uncle owns a farm and he built a shelter for his livestock and horses. He's the only one I've ever known that had one. It's actually amazing. It's basically an underground stable.
@@lightsalt8530 That's amazing--I love your uncle!
@@meghanmacqueen5157 me too. I was definitely impressed
@@lightsalt8530that is amazing. Bless your uncle. I wish more would follow his lead.
The Jarrell Texas tornado sandblasted cattle to death. Tore their entire hide off. Some places to the bone.
I've lived in Tornado Alley most of my life. We just had a "tornado emergency" here in Nebraska a couple weeks ago. Tornadoes that occur at night are by far the scariest.
I live in iowa, now, but I spent most of my life in omaha nebraska. The tornado the wiped minden iowa off the map, I saw out my back door. It was HUGE. We headed for the shelter once we saw it. It was terrifying.
I live in Arkansas, so I don't get the tornados themselves, but I do occasionally get the periphery storm cell, and few things are worse than being woken up by ear-splitting thunder and the tornado siren shortly afterward. The disorientation after getting woken up is the worst.
Fellow Nebraskan here. We had a tornado a few weeks ago that made top 20 deadliest tornados due to it's wind velocity and it was a mile long. EF4 and destroyed a ton of homes 20 minutes away from me. Horrifying
Real Estate value must be really low in tornado alley. @@itsybitsypixzie
Is it like a really regular thing?
Scariest live footage I've ever seen of a tornado was Joplin. In the news footage, you can see the tornado in a wide shot over the town, and it literally looks like the sky has bent to touch the Earth. The anchors literally fell silent from shock. Absolutley horrifying.
I will never forget the look of the sky that day 😢
I live in Iowa, and when Joplin got destroyed my friends & I all crammed ourselves in my car and went there for a week to help with the cleanup.
Yes, we found bodies... or at least, we found what had once been bodies. Looked like someone had shoved some poor fucker in a sandblaster, and stripped all their skin off.
I still do not regret going down to help, though. Best part was reuniting a super-sweet elderly couple with their wedding photo book. I still remember the hug I got from the wife ❤️
My husband was in St . John's Hospital. Our children and grandchildren were visiting him. I said "Rain is on the way. I think I will head home". The family left when I did. A little over 30 minutes later, the tornado hit. It took 2 days to find my husband. He survived, but never fully recovered.
@@tr4nsg0th1cai hate that I've seen pictures of that. very luckily not of humans but of livestock that were skinned from the sheer force of wind 😷 i cant imagine how traumatizing it was to see it irl
I live in the KC metro area. I remember the devastation of Joplin. Many of us sent supplies and help to the people of Joplin. Imo worst tornado ever bar none
So both of my parents lived through the Xenia F5 when they were teens, and my mother described the experience as follows:
- the weather had been beautiful earlier that day.
- dark fingers reaching down from the sky (multivortex tornado - meaning it had more than one funnel inside the larger funnel)
- roaring sound like a freight train, eventually so loud you couldn't hear yourself screaming
- wind that takes your breath away
- doors slamming
- ears popping from pressure change
- roof peeling off like a tin can lid
- after, she said it smelled like a lumber yard from all the wood (trees and houses.)
Took the house from over their heads but left a dollar bill sitting on her brother's dresser. (My uncle used to joke that it told them to keep the change. 💀) Only parts left of the house were the hallway and closet. Their neighbors only had the toilet on the second floor - pipes and all. Whole process only took a minute or so. The shock after can do some weird stuff too; apparently my mom was more concerned about how upset her mom was going to be about the mess than about the fact that she and her brothers didn't have shoes lol. The Red Cross at the time was instrumental in getting them back on their feet, though.
My dad was downtown taking shelter in one of the elementary schools and got whacked in the hand with a flying brick that almost took his finger. He was always less descriptive with his story but that's probably for the best.
The 1999 Moore tornado almost killed me when I was 7 years old. My mother, my 2 younger siblings, and I were all at home while my dad was deployed overseas for military work. It was a small 3 bedroom home with no basement or shelter. We huddled in a broom closet for hours listening to the tornado sirens and the local weather radio. As a kid I had no concept of the danger we were actually in. The tornado ripped through town just half a mile away from us, but we were ok where we were. I remember the next day when we saw the damaged houses I asked my mom why none of the flattened houses had closets where people could hide, and she explained that the tornado was just too strong for the closets and destroyed them too. That's when it sunk in for me how close we came to dying that night, and it was the first time I ever felt that recognition of my mortality as a kid. Things were probably even worse for my dad. The only information he had overseas was the news reports because the phone lines in my town were all damaged and not working. He spent multiple days thinking his entire family was killed. I don't remember exactly how we got the news to him that we were ok, but as a father and husband myself now I can't even imagine how stressful that would have been.
Incredible story, I'm glad you all came out of it ok. Moore hit me like a ton of bricks when I was a kid in Nebraska. I had never understood why my dad wouldn't let me watch the weather outside with him when it was bad until I saw the devastation in Moore on TV. I had a lot more respect for tornadoes after that.
For hours??? That tornado was in Moore for maybe 5 minutes. It was bad, yes but hours is a stretch. I’ve lived in del city most all my life and we got part of it, tornadoes don’t last hours in the same area. It hits and continues, it didn’t circle Moore for an hour 😒
Moore has the WORST luck when it comes to tornadoes!! 😮😮
"we almost died ... actually we weren't even close to being hurt"
@lovemygolden8935 right lol to be fair as a child they prolly thought it was longer and are counting the warnings and time.
We had a night one last night and it lasted about a hour but it was multiple nados and time outside the shelter but ready to get in and such
I was in the Tuscaloosa EF4 in 2011. I was a week from graduating college. It came about 500 yards from my apartment. The ceiling and the walls were shaking, my ears were popping from the pressure. While it only blew some windows out in my complex, all of the homes and trees around it were gone. The most eerie part of it - the silence, both before and after. Still have a little bit of PTSD even now when a tornado watch is announced.
I was in the Blountsville 2011 tornado. my family and I hid in the bathroom it went right over us. All that was left standing was the bathroom we were in. I was 10 at the time, and I'll never forget the sound and my ears popping.
I was a bit further away from it, but I remember being in our shelter just waiting to see if it hit us or not. And after the fact, my family and community went and volunteered with relief efforts, and I’ll never forget the destruction I saw as a kid. Stays with me to this day
Thank God you guys made it.
The best scene in Twister, (Hands down for me.) is near the end of the movie, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt's characters try to find any shelter from the F5 chasing them. They open the door of a tool shack, only to find out it contains a crapload of sharp, rusted blades, which causes Paxton's character to say "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?"
I only saw that movie once as a kid, but I distinctly remember that scene.
Another good quote from that movie though would be when they’re all at Aunt Megs house and Preacher says that an F5 is “the finger of god.”
@@celestia486 I Won't lie, towards the end when the F5 to me seemed to be targeting Helen Hunt's character especially, kind of similar to the shark from Jaws: The Revenge.
What WERE they doing with all that whole arsenal?!?!
My favorite scene was that one cow floating right beside them lol.
2:07 If you were wondering, this is what the "Dead Man Walking" phenomenon looks like. It's when a tornadoes winds are so fast and powerful it begins to rope apart while still maintaining integrity and speed. It is only seen in the most powerful tornadoes and is very rare.
I think the phenomenon is called "Twin Twisters" phenomenon but the most rare Tornado phenomenon is the "Anti Cyclone Twin Twister"
@@alonsobeltran3844 I swear it was called "the dead man walking" but idk
@@alonsobeltran3844 ruclips.net/video/JK7XOMTs6j8/видео.htmlsi=1tOaaq9QL4e5y6qR
It's bith iirc, just more commonly called dead man walking
@@alonsobeltran3844 Twin tornados would be two separate super cells producing two different tornados next to each other.
Dead Man Walking is technically a multiple vortex tornado.
So, one tornado that is so strong it has multiple vortexes coming out that is then reabsorbed by the main vortex.
I'm a trained storm spotter in Alabama. So yeah, a bit of a tornado geek. Tornadoes start as a direct result of various, specific conditions coming together. There are a lot of things going on there; it's a very dynamic process. You have hot moist air butting heads with cold dry air, wind shear and several other factors. The reason we get so many tornadoes here in the deep south and in the plains is because of the warm, moist air (that rises) coming up from the Gulf of Mexico colliding with cold, dry air (that falls) coming down from Canada. This causes instability. Throw in some wind shear and rotation develops.
That's a very basic description of the process, but you get the idea.
Here's some fun trivia for ya! Here in Alabama (and probably much of the deep south, in general), it's very humid and green and lush with much vegetation. But that's only because of the Gulf of Mexico. If it weren't for the Gulf, we would be desert.
I hope bro reads this and stops thinking these things are sentient lol
This is why the argument “build your homes with stronger materials.” Or “build your homes better” literally doesn’t matter. When that’s coming at you, your home is gone, no matter what it’s made out of.
Bricks are just heavier bits of shrapnel
yeah, the only thing that "survives" those is usually the concrete bases of the house, and last I checked making entire houses out of concrete isn't exactly ideal for several reasons
There are tornado PROOF homes. The only problem is that they are MILLIONS of dollars.
There was a tornado in Jarrell Texas, it was the same storm of that famous “the dead man walking tornado” picture. It was so powerful it was pulling asphalt off of the roads. I think that puts in perspective how powerful tornados are. The town that got it, house foundations didn’t even exist after the storm. Sad stuff
@@AliceBunny05 in florida if you build a house too heavy it sinks in the ground because of how much moisture is in the soil
When I was 5, my family got stopped in the middle of a highway because of a tornado. My mom was an EMT at the time and told us to get to the ditch and hold on. She had my little sister with her and told my oldest brother to help get me and my other brother. On my way to the ditch the storm actually lifted me 3-4 feet off the ground and my brother grabbed my arm and pulled me to the ditch. We then watched the car rise and fall on the road. I was young enough to barely remember/believe it, but my mom and brothers always bring it up during bad storms.
cap
@@normiepuppetyou fool I literally lived through the most severe firestorm in history of Australia and possibly even the world
Mount Gospers Fire
That first tornado you noped on looked like it was maybe a mile wide. The biggest recorded was 2.6 miles wide (4200 meters). As for the damage . . . The worst tornadoes don't leave heaps of debris behind. The wipe the earth clean. They even rip the asphalt off roads. They shred everything. Fastest winds 300 mph (500 kph). All houses today are vulnerable to tornadoes. Brick and stone don't stand up either. My grandparents survived the Waco Tornado. It lifted a few blocks before their house. They thought it was a normal storm. Then grandpa went downtown to buy a cigar . . . and became a rescuer. I've seen two in person. One day I was on watch on board ship, the only person in that small town waterfront at the time. The funnel formed, but didn't touch down. It dissipated. Nonetheless, while it was developing, I was deciding my escape route should it sink the ship. I also saw one up close, a classic white stovepipe. My car was broken down. I came out from under the hood and looked up, and there it was. That was an 'Oh shit' moment. Fortunately, it was running parallel to the highway, about 50 yards away, and was very small, only about 10 m in diameter. It dissipated as I watched. Tornadoes start in the clouds, with a rotating wall cloud. It sends down a condensation funnel until it reaches the ground. As it picks up debris, it changes from white to black. When you said, "Why isn't it number one?" all I could do was shake my head, knowing that we hadn't reached the Tri-State Tornado yet. I predict we're going to have worse though. If an EF-5 hits a major city, it's going to be much worse.
As a American who lives in tornado and alley and who slightly obsessed with them it so funny seeing how someone from a foreign country react to something that is just a fact of life here makes me realize how easy it is to view something has normal your just used it.
I’m an American who has never lived in a place where we get them. They also scare me just as much. 🤣 It’s all a matter of perspective.
Where im from in the Midwest we had tornado warnings every day in the first town I lived in we had tornado warnings almost every day, so when I moved a town over (with way less warnings for some reason) anytime we had one I was like yeah whatever who cares as everyone else was freaking out, but after a recent tornado that basically wiped out a town kinda near us there’s been tornadoes left and right here, it’s kinda weird and concerning honestly, there’s just so many lately and even if they don’t form fully they’ll be above our homes and stuff, this is the first time I’ve ever been scared of the tornadoes
tornado ally here as well! Had a tornado warning going just the other day. Touched down 15 miles outside of my part of town, thankfully it lifted before it got into town
Oklahoman here. Same. That's why I clicked on his video lol. Sitting in a storm shelter is just an average Tuesday during storm season.
I live in a part of Ohio that always has tornado warnings every season. We don't necessarily have a touchdown every year, but we do get them. Yay Clear Fork Valley 😂.
"If you see the dead man walking, you will soon be dead"
A native American myth referring to the look of the formation of multi vortex tornadoes, that tend to form EF 4's and EF 5's, as such, seeing it in person likely means you don't have long to live.
You can see one in the greenfield tornado footage from the other day 😞
@@thajoker9813that one was sick. Even on radar you knew it was going to be bad.
That just gave me chills
Damn imagine seeing a tornado back in the 1500s as natives. Before we were conquered
Reed timmer just captured one
I am born and raised from Kansas, lived here for my whole life. Everyone here in Kansas knows once the sky turn bright green, you get your ass inside, that’s when it’s about to get real and devastating.
When the sky is green, you can feel the air change and everything goes quiet. It’s like one of the most scariest moments you’ll experience.
Yeah, Oklahoma here, and it’s a weird green/yellow and a smell that’s kinda like rain but not quite the same.. and everytime I’m like dammit not again. Lol
I’m from Tuscaloosa Alabama. I will never forget the eerie green color of the sky April 27th, 2011. You’re right,that’s when you know it’s bad…
When everything goes silent...pause in the rain, birds, crickets, locusts, ish is about to go down.
My neighbor, who is from Kansas, taught me this. We're in Pennsylvania and get maybe one or two baby tornados ever few years.
Jarrell resident here. While we had the F5, in total there were over 20 in the area along the 35 corridor. The F5 scoured the earth about 18 inches. It also hit a scrap metal yard essentially creating a blender for everything it ate. Body parts of humans and cattle were everywhere. You don't forget that smell.
Sad fact... we STILL don't have a tornado siren...
We've had a few in the last couple of years too.
There's no warning system, which is wild.
BODY PARTS? I am new Jerseyan so I don’t really know
@Royalfoxes Correct. It hit a scrap metal yard before it hit the homes, essentially making it a blender for everything in its path. It was awful.
I was in the Joplin Missouri tornado in this video. I lost everything it took hours to get me out from under my house. The scariest thing I've ever been through. But the thing I remember the most about that day was the way the people came together to help each other. I'm a 58 year old woman from Chattanooga Tennessee and I'm one of your new subscribers. I hope you know how great you are. Your so funny. Please keep doing what your doing. Prayers and love from Tennessee
I have a dear friend who lives in Webb City. It was heartbreaking to see all the damage.
@@NotKateHepburn Yes it was insane.
I’m in Dallas. We had a Drum Corps contest like they do every night, in a different cities. They were selling t-shirts to help Joplin’s High School Band buy new instruments because the band hall got hit and destroyed all of them. I still have my shirt and I made it a shirt I sleep in!
I’m glad we could help them rebuild.
@@eddietucker7005Yes it was amazing the way people came together to help.
I'm from Knoxville TN. I can't imagine leaving our weather here, similar to your in Chattanooga... Only to live thru Joplin.
There's a reason the EF5 is called the Finger of God.
My grandma and grandpa were in the Tri-State Tornado. My grandpa said he remembered standing on his front porch watching it move over the farmland. The tornado hit my grandma's childhood farm...she said she remembered she was in the kitchen with her mom, when her dad ran in from the field yelling that they had to take cover and as he picked her up it hit. She said she remembered them finding her under the front porch, the feathers had been sucked off of their chickens and her dad's wedding ring was sucked off of his finger. Somehow they lived through it.
and also why one person who described the nuke as looking into the eye of God or something similar, when something that powerful is basically staring you down its not to far off to say its something of the BIG G himself
@@theenderdestruction2362 us humans make nukes, WE MAKE GOD'S EYE!
@@Floofie_boi -monke
From around May-June (right now) in the states you can search for live storm chasers around 10pm you're time, almost any day and ride along with your choice of tornado chases. Today, May 6 is going to be huge around 5-9pm CST. If you're interested. Be careful doing any reactions though. I hear they are pretty strict with their copyrights.
I’ll have a look!
@@MoreAdamCouser yeah, I've seen a few myself, had my barn blown away. The worst was witnessing the devastation in Jarrell, TX in 1997. I grew up in the town just north, and was headed to work that day when everything went crazy. You just become used to being weather alert living in tornado alley. Not to jinx myself, but my house has made it 115 years!
RyanHallYa’ll is pretty good. Helped me prove my previous jobs bosses wrong fron last year’s Hurricane. Alot went home against orders on the east coast here and the ones who stayed had damaged vehicles from the winds
anymore which is stupid because storms are getting more violent and there are more of them.
They gather at gas stations
I was a Paramedic for St. Johns hospital back then. I remember driving into Joplin that evening and my heart sinking when I could see the hospital from the complete other side of town. What was once the homes and businesses of my home town were reduced to splinters. And seeing that St. Johns regional medical center had taken a direct hit chilled me to my soul. It took years for the nightmares of that night to stop haunting me.
I have a friend whose 8 year old son's life was taken in the 2013 Moore, Oklahoma, tornado. He's still obviously very devastated. Victim's name is Christopher Legg
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Soo sooo sad! Bless him 🙏🏻
Incredibly sad! I hope your friend finds his way to a good therapist ❤️🩹 much love sent to all victims, alive and angels.
That's terribly sad. R.I.P. Christopher Legg.
I’m so sorry. If anything good came from that, it was the determination of people in the state to build storm shelters for local schools. There is now one on my town’s school.
Canadian here, did trucking across the US last year in the mid west. One night round 11pm i was driving down some back road in my Rig and unbeknownst to me cause the darkness, i was driving a few miles ahead of one. I only learned of it the next morning driving back the other way and seeing the destruction. Locals were talking about what time it went through and it was only minutes after i drove past.
Wow. God bless you made it
Many years ago I'm driving through Kentucky on a stormy night. Suddenly an announcement came on with a tornado warning for the area I was driving through.
I just picked up speed and kept driving. What was I supposed to do? I was in the country I didn't know the area.
It was really quite frightening.
I live on the border of North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. We are currently watching tornadoes on TV in Oklahoma RIGHT NOW!! You learn to be very weather aware living in "Tornado Alley", but we don't fear tornadoes in general. A lot of people have tornado shelters now, and if you don't, most people have a plan to stay safe in such instances. But since tornadoes hit very targeted, relatively small areas, most people have never even seen one in person. We prepare, shelter and pray when necessary, and help our neighbors when tragedy strikes. It's just part of life, here.
I also live on the Ok/Tx border and have lived between OKC and here my whole life. Most of us don’t fear but greatly respect tornadoes. You’re correct, they’re very targeted and most never see one. There was a small one 1/2 mile from my house a few years ago and we had no idea till a friend called to check on us. They do some really strange and odd stuff to the things they suck up and sling out!!
I would say those "a lot" people who are fortunate enough to have shelters are primarily in the cities.. Outside of the cities, not so much.
They're too expensive.
@@Gutslinger there is or were programs through Texas and Oklahoma, funded by FEMA that would rebate up to 1/2 of the cost for cellars & was easy to apply for. That did allow “a lot” of people to have them put in. I’m not positive it’s still available but might be worth checking into if that might help.
I live in bartlesville and the same tornado that hit barndall hit me
I was very lucky during the Sulphur tornado.
Storm Chaser and Oklahoma resident here! I loved this video! It is truly scary to see the power that makes you feel helpless but also feel curious about a storm at the same time. It’s also refreshing to see someone from a different region branch out to explore and learn about weather from different parts of the world. Some residents here in the states barely scratch the surface on tornado knowledge so, good on you! Also, don’t worry about the cursing. It’s our native tongue as well. 😊👍
from oklahoma as well, letting you know i’m keeping you in my prayers for safe storm chasing!
You should check out the real time Joplin Missouri tornado. It’s shows the tornado from a variety of videos in real time as it happened.
I lived in kcmo during that and it was no joke! After the chiefs game we heard about it.
Yeah, that and the Real Time Tornado Tuscaloosa are both really interesting and heartbreaking at the same time.
The way the Joplin tornado goes from a whispy, barely visible tornado to a monsterous wedge in the span of 5 seconds is the most insane tornado footage I've ever seen. I highly recommend trying to find the footage.
I was born in Joplin... we moved to KCMO when I was an infant and still live here. Now I live about a mile from where the Ruskin F-5 Tornado flattened the Ruskin Heights area here in KC on May 20th, 1957. 44 dead, as high as 531 injured. I don't tend to sleep much on nights when there are tornado watches in effect.
I agree !!! My niece worked at the hospital in Joplin, but Thank God was not at work. My family and I drove to Joplin and went to see the empty hospital. I will never for that sight. I just have no words to describe it.
American in the Midwest here. A tornado never really sneaks up on you these days. You typically know there's a storm coming and they ring to tornado siren when they want you to start paying attention. If you're in the path of a likely tornado, you get alerts on your phone, and at that point you're probably watching storm coverage. You hunker down in your basement and hope you're not hit.
Not fun, but there's no surprise about it.
That isn't 100% true. Just last year a short lived EF2 dropped in central Knoxville, TN, and only a watch was issued. There was no warning, at all. Weather stations had to confirm after the storm ended that a tornado occured, both with historical radar data, and damage analysis. Tornado Alley may have the benefit of having all eyes on it during storm season, which helps with warning times, but Dixie Alley isn't so lucky. Thankfully, no one was killed, but the apartment complex that was hit, had large sections of the roof torn off. Bottom line, these storms still do have the potential to catch you by surprise, even if you're paying attention, I would know, I was in Knoxville that day, and was paying attention, and didn't learn of the tornado until a day later.
Not for us
I'm in Michigan near Ohio and i.was out in my yard with my toddlers feeding my goats 2 summers ago and it got dark and one went through my yard between the house and where we were. We were hiding under the barn in mud. Everyone told me it sounds like a train and I legit was waiting for a train whistle sound that is not what it sounds like it sounds like a roar. We had no alerts and no warning
here in texas the soil is hard so its very rare to see a basement so there is no getting in your basement in texas
They can still sneak up on folk, especially if they hit at night. But I'm Very, very thankful for modern radar and reverse 911. We can *barely* hear the tornado sirens in our rural area, so if we didn't watch the news that's the main way we catch the Warnings.
I went through one here lately that the siren blew right as it rolled by
Really surprised that he didn’t mention the El Reno Oklahoma Tornado in May 31st of 2013, even though the damage scale from that EF5 was basically what you saw out of an EF3. But that one was significant since it was one of the deadliest/costliest storm chasing wise. The erratic movements caught even professional storm chasers from Discovery and The Weather Channel off, and they either died or got severely injured, plus it was rain wrapped meaning usually storm chasers had a corridor between the rain wall and the vortex to escape, but the rain wall was actually the edge of the tornado. It was the widest tornado ever recorded too.
Yea they talk about this one all the time on the weather channel…
Yeah, I'm really surprised they didnt talk about that one. It was one of the largest torndoes ever recorded. 2.65 miles (4.26km) wide at one point.
i think if anyone tells this guy about el reno, his brain might explode lol
especially since she was as wide as or wider than the length of manhattan
considering the size of the ones he’s reacted to so far and how mind blown he was by those sizes, i hope he reacts to el reno eventually
I just left a comment wondering the same thing, then seen this comment.
There were 3 storm chasers together (2 were father and son).
The tornado unexpectedly shifted in their direction. The Chevy colbolt they were in was absolutely mangled into a small ball of metal. It’s devastating.
I believe there were 5 others who would die in their vehicles as well, including a mother and her baby.
I’ve experienced many tornadoes living in Oklahoma, but this one in particularly stands out to me because it was so close to me and my babies. We lived in a shelter at the time and I remember holding them tightly under a table begging the universe, god, or anybody who could hear me to protect us.
It gives me chills to even think of it. to this day I’m absolutely terrified of tornadoes. My anxiety is always so high this time of year.
@@OofAvocado Thanks for telling me this story. It's really interesting hearing other people's perspective living in Tornado Alley, since I live in the Pacific Northwest area. With the 3 storm chasers, 2 of them got blown out and the other one (I think the son) was left inside the metal ball of the Chevy. I know all of them died. Stay safe out there.
Back in the early 2000s a tornado curved around our city. It was far enough away that my parents decided we'd just go to bed. The wind knocked a large oak over in the yard in the middle of the night, and it nearly landed on my bedroom. The branches left scratches down the wall and cracked my window.
Few years after that a tornado hit my hometown. It was a really bizarre and surreal experience, going up for the holidays and seeing an empty block of concrete where the gas station used to be. Buildings that had been there for my entire life were just gone.
Tornadoes are just something else, even from a distance.
The eerie calm before they hit gets me everytime. The rain just stops... lighting starts strobing like a wack rave... wind picks up, then the sound of a train barreling across the land can be heard even over the rain, if it starts back.
I remember when i was at school during a tornado, it never hit us, but it almost did.
It was raining hard and you could hear the wind slamming against the roof. But then it all just stopped, and everything was just eerily quiet, too quiet.
The air started to smell of wet flowers and a loud roar was heard as it passed over our school.
I like to think God blew it over our school, because if it hit, at least a couple thousand of us wouldnt be having a good day
Sky usually goes green or an intense yellow.
@@rdmfeyna-sleep yep, for some reason in my part of MS it seems like we get them at night more frequently. I forgot about that, pretty and eerie.
Last one I got woke up in the middle of the night to the house shaking/vibrating from thunder and then strobing lightning before my alarms started going off. Really crappy wake up call 😂 especially when you are home alone with the dogs (husband working in another state).
@@RAZORBACK_BELIEVER God I hated when they hit when I was in school! You were very lucky/blessed. The way tornados "jump" over buildings definitely seems like a divine intervention, especially when it misses buildings full of children. So glad ya'll made it. Not sure I've paid attention to the scent in the air, interesting observation. The stillness just makes my skin crawl with anticipation...
@@mouse9884 saturday night, in Arkansas, we had a tornado hit one of out fellow cities school that I have friends and family go to. Luckily, since it was the weekend, no one was there.
Im glad you are safe when your tornado hit your school.
As for the smell, coming from experience since ive been in at least 20 tornados, they usually smell like wet flowers because of the plants and stuff that may be in the tornado (if you live in a rural area like I do). But it always depends on what the tornado hit, if you have a good enough sense of smell, you can tell what the tornado hit.
You can smell dead things in a tornado if it hit animals, or people. Tornados are pretty much nightmare fuel if you even look just below the surface.
I'm a trained spotter here in the Kansas City area. We moved out East to Syracuse, NY for a bit. They hadn't experienced them before, so there were no alerts, just the TV. Hubby & I jumped in our old truck and started chasing. I finally got thru to the local TV stations (thank goodness for conference calls!), explained who I was, where I came from, etc. and was immediately patched to the weather depts. It's a very hilly area, but we knew what to look for. We successfully (? is there success ?) "caught" 3 heading towards the area. We got lucky that they just passed thru farmland! The news channels mentioned us, and gave us so much praise, but hey... at least we knew enough to chase those things and report everything to them!
Syracuse definitely has experienced tornadoes over the years,nowhere near the severity experienced in the Midwest, but there were plenty of tornado watches and warnings from my childhood there.
I lived in Moore, Oklahoma and have first had experience of tornados. The EF4-EF5 in 2013 destroyed my childhood home while I was visiting with my husband and son. We were lucky to have had a neighbor with a storm shelter. Hearing it go overhead while holding my son then seeing my (former) bedroom completely gone afterward is something I still have nightmares about.
I can confirm these storms are as terrifying as they look here.
Me too ✋🏼 as a okie I can confirm, 2013 was one of the worst years for me I was only like 9 or 8 years old I'm 20 now and still have ptsd I feel like I can hear sirens all the time even though I know I don't, my farm was swept way and I haven't have farm life since.
As someone who has lived and still lives in tornado alley (like the early 2000’s Moore tornado and being near the Joplin tornado), please never live here unless you are ready to face the consequences of the storms that come with living here lol.
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Also, fun DISTURBING fact:
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there have been stories of tornadoes of having such high vacuum levels that not only do they suck you and air out of spaces, but people seeing the the literal lungs of people sucked and expelled out of bodies from them. If the twister is bad enough, not matter WHERE you hide (crawl space, basement, tornado shelter), nature will not hesitate to kill you in the most gruesome of ways possible. If a single straw of hay can puncture through a tree/glass from a tornado, that same blade can kill any being in its path.
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Alternatively, it’s not uncommon to see the bare remnants of a car or large animal in a tree twisted like a meat pretzel after severe twisters.
Hey, we can help with "how tornadoes form!" Meteorology is one of our favorite special interests! 😊
So, tornadoes are not like "dust devils," where warm air from the ground being warmed by sunlight creates a spin.
Tornadoes (as well as derechos, which are the extreme thunderstorms that the phrase "raining so hard it's falling sideways" originates from, since their windspeed on a straight front is comparable to hurricanes and tornadoes, which wings the rain so hard it seems to be falling horizontally instead of down) come from what is called a Supercell.
Now, what is a supercell? Well, hurricanes form over water, right? So they get warm and gain enough energy to spin. Well, supercells are similar, but instead of forming over water with pure warmth, they form over land, and wind shear is the key ingredient.
Wind shear keeps the two extremes of the storm separated (the cooler air with rain, and the warmer air above it.) So if the wind shear lands at around 20,000ft, or roughly 6 km since you're not American, and it's sufficiently strong, that's when you're cooking a supercell and not your average thunderstorm.
Now, supercells have something called a "mesocyclone." Think of this like an intake valve: if the shear is good, then this cyclone draws warm air from the ground and up towards the updraft instead of it getting countered by the cooler downdraft. So this is where the heat that Hurricanes gain over the Gulf of Mexico is substituted from, it takes the warm air from the ground and adds it to it's own stock.
So, we've got a rapidly-spinning thunderstorm now. Now we just need it to touch down.
This is where the surface comes in clutch again. In this specific step, you can look at lighting as an example: in order for lightning to touch the ground, you need a charge in the sky, but you also need the opposite charge from the ground. This is why most "downward" lightning is actually shooting UPWARD, not downward, because basically what the ground starts doing once it's charged is "reach" for the charge in the clouds, not the other way around. This is why if you're in a thunderstorm and your hair starts to stick up for no reason, you need to get indoors immediately: because while dirt or other ground can sometimes shoot blue "streamers" in preparation for a strike, if lightning is contemplating using YOU as a rod, your hair will start to stand up from the static charge trying to go upwards.
So, Tornadoes form from not just the spin in the storm, but also gusts from it beginning to spin on the surface.
If the wind spins in the right direction, this allows the wind at the top to spin all the way down into a continuous funnel. Now you got your tornado.
Pretty crazy planet we live on. 😅
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That's crazy... Thanks for the lesson though. lol
Dude, pictures of lightning step leaders are so cool. The 'zzzt-crackle!' sound it makes when the charge from the clouds meets the step leader it's picked followed by the explosion of plasma is Insane!
The old saying, "When thunder roars, go indoors," holds truth, because if you can hear a storm, you're already within striking distance. For those wondering why, lightning can strike up to 10 miles away from the parent storm.
Canadian here, my house got hit by a tornado in barrie 2021 . It was terrifing as we had no warning one minute calm eating lunch , next minute chairs flying and windows breaking . We were blessed no one died especially because three kids got sucked out of their house and flung across to a feild
I remember that my buddy who’s married to a Canadian was there.
Oklahomans watch weather channel in the spring like our favorite sports team is playing, and we have multiple trackers for each news station throughout the state. Our weathermen and storm trackers have probably saved 100s if not thousands of lives.
That's what makes tornadoes terrifying.
It can go from calm skies to a few minutes later. It's rain and then a couple minutes, after that. It's a tornado throwing your car, if not your house.
My mom told me a story about when she was visiting family in Iowa when I was an infant. They were all out enjoying the day, completely clear blue skies, not a cloud in sight. Suddenly the sky turned completely black and my great aunt who was living there for a long time was just completely calm and said that it was time to leave, like it was nothing. She could have been telling people to come to the table for dinner, it was basically just any Tuesday to her
I remember this, I’m an hour south and we were very unnerved by the damage
People don’t realize the weather America be goin through 💀 shit sucks at times. Earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes. We got it all! Even volcanos!! And it’s not like tornados are infrequent. It’s an entire season of like April to June Julyish
And then hurricanes last June to November. Anytime in summer or fall is such an interesting tine
We'll see some tornadoes in November/December as well. It's rare, though. Just had some this past December in the DFW area.
Grew up in Indiana and in April 3-4, 1974, the most F5 tornadoes ever recorded in a single outbreak. Now live on the East Coast. The difference between a hurricane and a tornado is that you have longer warning for hurricane and time yo prepare your house, pack and leave. With tornadoes, it can be only minutes.
They’ve been appearing more and more up to December because it’s still warm instead of being cold and snowy. 2-3 years ago I was driving home when the wind picked up all of a sudden (it was dark so I couldn’t see anything in front of me). After I passed that area my phone started going off telling me there was an active tornado in my area and I realize I just passed it. Luckily it wasn’t a big one but it still did cause some damage to some buildings.
west coast wild fire season too.
the wreckage and aftermath always shatters my heart, homes, businesses, lives all destroyed in a matter of minutes those who survive have to live with that trauma and try to rebuild from everything they lost it is so devastating.
I remember watching storm chasers as a kid & as scary as the tornado itself is, it’s the destruction it leaves behind that’s really impactful to me personally.
Fascinating but horrific weather phenomenon truly, I’m so glad I don’t live in flat land areas but I still have seen my fair share of tornadoes where I live throughout my life.
the sound too if you have ever heard one in person it’s the most insane thing my ears have ever listened too.
I recall a tornado hitting my hometown when I was only 10 & it took so many of my classmates homes as well as took a whole mother and her newborn baby that lived only two streets from me and carried them threw them into a field, completely different directions several miles from where it lifted them. They both passed & the sadness that filled my hometown after that tornado was so intense.
:( a memorial was there for years and they never rebuilt the house that once stood there.
Just drove by not but a few weeks ago and there is a new house there now, I’m almost 30 it’s insane how time passes and things change but moments or horrors like that live with you forever.
Being from Oklahoma Twister is half comedy, half public service announcement, half "yeah, I know them".
Facts
Missouri here and we hear the sirens and crack a beer and go outside to watch 😂
Don't forget the bag of chips
@@RayFranklin1975 honey bbq Fritos on deck 🫡
Yumm
Tornado sirens are tested every week in the summer. I always jump, then go, "oh, its ten o'clock on a Tuesday."
Massillon Ohio test theirs every first Monday of the month, you learn to ignore it unless a storm hits
In Minnesota they’re only tested once a month. First Wednesday of every month.
The one in my town goes off 3 times a day to tell the farmers start time, lunch and stop time. Freaks me out everytime lol.
Now I worry I won't take it seriously if a tornado comes during the times they regularly set it off
Ashtabula County in Ohio test their Sirens the first or second Wednesday of every month no matter what time of year.
@@jennahall4045 are you sure the tornado sirens are going off to alert the workers that it is lunchtime and or the end of the day? Because that's not what tornado sirens are used for in any way shape or form and they can't just be accessed by a random person.
The Weather Channel did a series, Tornado Alley Real Time, featuring four tornados. The Joplin, Moore, Tuscaloosa, and Hattiesburg. They contain amatuer, storm chaser and news coverage in real time as it occurred during the tornados. While they can be hard to watch, the heroism and community you learn about during the interviews is truly inspiring.
I'm one of your recent subscribers and just wanted to say hi. Your reactions are hysterical, great job.
This is a very good series.
I'm reading this while my television has the local meteorologist showing the storm approaching us here in Oklahoma City this channel has about a dozen storm chasers out giving live updates
There's also one for the Washington, Illinois tornado!
@@ClefairyRoxAnd one for the EF-4 tornado that struck Henryville, Indiana on March 2nd, 2012. People who have a sense of Gallows Humor say that the reason why Henryville was hit by a tornado is because a crew from The Weather Channel was in the area that was lead by Jim Cantore. Legend says that if you see Jim Cantore in your town; bad weather is bound to happen, so either take shelter or get out of town.
I grew up in Arkansas. Far from all tornadoes are like this. In my hometown the siren translates to "hey, come outside and look at this!"
Adam, my mother was born and raised in Moore. When the sky turned green, the family hit the rootceller. The only safe place is underground. It took strong men to hold the door closed. I wouldn't live in Tornado Alley for anything. The Midwest is getting smashed right now. There's so much rain, because of the tornados, that parts of Texas are underwater. If you feel like praying, do it....they need it badly. Google.
Glad you're back. I've missed you.
I live "up" in New England, and while tornadoes are rare where I live, we still have the saying in our family "when the sky turns green, it's about to get mean!" Two of the three scariest things I've ever seen in my life were the times I've seen the sky turn green before a funnel forms. No photo or video can really convey what it's like, it's so otherworldly it hits you on a primal level, where your whole body tells you "something's not right." My heart goes out to anyone and everyone who lives through this regularly.
I've lived in the midwest for 39 years and have never seen a tornado. Usually when they say seek shelter, it means your trash cans might blow over.
My mom lived in Enid as a child, she told us(kids) she had seen three tornadoes on the ground at the same time…I think that’s the only thing she was ever scared of.
@@deckzone3000that's crazy. I live in the Midwest and have been in 4 of them.
Native Oklahoman here, and I gotta say the Oklahoma footage I all watched in person on TV, some of it close to me, but I did not receive any damage thankfully. The second tornado shown, the Moore tornado, the 20+ lives that were taken. were actually children that were trapped in a school. That is why that is one of the most well-known tornadoes of Oklahoma because it took such precious lives from us. I don’t know when this video was made that you were watching, but we recently had two EF five tornadoes. 11 years after that one even though it said there hasn’t been one since, there has now been two this year.
Yeah, this year has been WILD in Oklahoma! Just saw the count and they’re saying 103 tornadoes counted here so far this storm season!
@@Gennamel2 It's been wild for sure! Such an active storm season. Glad we're mid-way through June now. Whew.
I live in Moore, thankful we’ve made it this far!
@@LeAnnM24Me too.
So, as an "Army brat" growing up on military base in the Marshall Islands, Typhoon Zelda hit Thanksgiving of 9th grade. It spawned tornados that destroyed several buildings. We watched as people's patios were just blowing through the streets. Thankfully, no homes were destroyed. Army base housing was made of giant bricks and were very strong. A few residents lost their roofing, but that's it, no fatalities. Only cheap business buildings were destroyed and being Thanksgiving, they were all closed. Name of the place was Kwajalein and it was Thanksgiving of 1991 I think.
I live in north Louisiana and recently, throughout the spring and early summer months, we get lots of tornados! The only one that I’ve ever been unlucky enough to be in was in the spring of 2019. Two people tragically lost their lives when a tree was thrown onto their house. Also, our local college’s baseball and softball fields were destroyed, as was one of our local high school football fields. My boyfriend at the time was sleeping in his house when the roof was ripped off and he was nearly sucked out of bed. Another friend of mine was living in a trailer (the worst place to be when tornado hits for anyone who didn’t know) and she could literally see the walls BREATHING!
Texan here. We don’t have basements usually as our water table is too high. Some older homes may have outside storm shelters, although they tend to harbor flooding or snakes. We usually hide in the bathroom closest to the center of the house. No sirens near us because we live in the country. We’ve had tornadoes hit as close as mile from our home. This weekend we literally out ran a tornado. A friend of ours wasn’t so lucky but he survived and has video of his truck being spun around and an RV being flung into him. So glad he had a newer truck with side airbags.
In America every state has a form of severe weather. West coast has earthquakes. The north (from east to west) get severe snowstorms and cold. Midwest is known as tornado alley for a reason. We’ve had three tornadoes this week in north Texas! East coast and south also get hurricanes. The best you can get is picking the desert of New Mexico or Arizona, although when I lived in those states as a kid my mom would hide our shoes to keep us in our own yard because temps would get over 110 F in the summer and the sidewalks were too hot for bare feet. So we all pick the weather we are most comfortable to handle and shake our heads at everyone else saying, “I could never live there!”
Tornadoes are terrifying but fascinating at the same time. I lived in Oklahoma for four years on an air base in my early 20's and saw a fair share of storms. One of the locals told me that "if it looks like it ain't movin', then it's coming straight towards you. Get out of it's way." I truly miss living in that state.
Come back anytime!
I lost two friends to the Joplin tornado. Last we heard, they were taking their dogs to a back hallway (there was no basement, if I remember correctly) and were going to try to ride out the storm there, the way they always did when there were tornado warnings, but no one had any idea how big this storm was. We thought they’d just lost power as the storm passed through. It took several days to get confirmation that they were gone and not just stranded in a neighborhood without power. Even the hospital was torn just about in half in Joplin. I think, afterward, it was the only building still recognizable in the whole neighborhood because it was big enough that it didn’t get leveled. Where do you go for help when your local hospital’s been hollowed out by the same storm, you know? To this day, I can’t think about Joplin without getting really angry. It just wasn’t survivable once you were in its path. In the video footage of Joplin, you can see the path it tore through town as it picked up strength and debris and speed, and grew wider as it moved. I’ll never look at tornadoes the same way again since Joplin.
We were there just a week after and were stunned. I lost my cousin in the May 3 tornado, and it is so tough.
I am so sorry! My husband lived just down the road in Neosho.
Watching and hearing about tornados from people who experienced them and their consequences, I can't help but be reminded of a video Kurzgesagt did, the "What happens if you nuke a city?" video. The events aren't quite the same, but the devastation is eerily similar. The police are scrambled, local hospitals and fire rescue could also be as helpless as anyone else that got hit. Infrastructure is down.. The help that comes comes from other cities and it may not be able to take a direct route if roads are blocked by debris... it's all quite chilling.
@@dragon_nammi we have drills and plans. In the May 3 tornado we learned how valuable tires are. Some emergency vehicles couldn’t get places because of all the nails in the streets. Now, they are prepared. Since Oklahoma is an oil and gas state, it isn’t hard to get dozers in asap. Everyone has a pickup truck and neighbors will haul people to hospitals. Farmers bring their tractors to help. Neighbors help neighbors. Typically, neighboring emergency personnel do not wait to be called. They just go. Yes, hospitals do take direct hits, but there are plans set in place in that scenario.
The 1991 Wichita/Andover F5 destroyed the block behind us and everything south of that.
I was 12 years old and it was insane. After the tornado passed through we went outside and you could hear hundreds of gas lines hissing from the houses being torn away from them.
We found shoes, clothes and a toothbrush on our roof. The roof of a trailer house was in our backyard.
Our entire neighborhood was blocked off for months. Red Cross was there and served us sandwiches and gave us flashlights, since the power was going to be out for a while.
I remember taking baths at night with flashlights :)
Nobody died in my area... but there were deaths in Andover.
Midwest lady here, and Tornadoes are the worst. I will never forget where a school in Iowa was wiped out, during a school day. It still makes me cry, and breaks my heart over and over for those babies. RIP angels.
I have never personally seen a tornado though, I always stay in my safe spot, wherever that is at the time.
Oh please tell me the school was Roland-Story High? Please?
@@Hiraghm I was at my friend’s grad party when the greenfield tornado was going to hit. I also remember waking up in the middle of the night to sirens, looking out my window and my heart just stopping when I saw the night tornado, I swore everything was going to be destroyed but luckily enough it didn’t hit my town but it did hit the next town over. Pretty sure that same night and earlier that day, I watched the thunderstorm rage from inside of a car, it was horrifying and no matter how much tornado training I had, having one right there made me forget everything.
I think they’re still trying to rebuild Greenfield today and parts of other cities it hit, but my family and I were all in different areas when it occurred and was supposed to hit our town. My little brother gathered the dogs and took them to his friends house and my mom and her employees hunkered down at work. It was one of the most terrifying moments in my life knowing everything was possibly going to be ripped away from me in that instant.
Tornadoes are often formed from the cold air coming off the Rocky Mountains that hits the moist warm air from the Gulf Ocean that comes up through the south and hits in Tornado Alley in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and the south. Lots of storms with hail hit that area every spring/summer. I’ve been through bad winds and large hail but never a tornado, thank goodness. I had a friend who saw damage from a smaller tornado that went from Ohio through northern Pennsylvania and saw houses gone but the wood pile stacked next to the house untouched. So weird. The debris flying around kills. That’s why a lot of US homes have basements.
My family was in the May 3, 1999 tornado and I still remember this day as if it was yesterday. My family was at home watching it live the day it hit, we lost everything. All we had after it was over was the clothes on our back. Luckily Oklahomans look out for their own and we had many friends and family (that were unaffected) help us that day. Luckily my family sustained no physical injuries, however me and my sister suffer PTSD from the emotional/mental impact this had on us. I was 13 and my sister was 11 at that time. To this day, I thank all the storm chasers and news stations as well as emergency personnel etc that did their best and more to try to warn/help as many people as they possibly could. This sounded like you were standing on tracks with a freight train barreling straight towards you at high speed. The tornado itself was so wide and it was so dark and since it occurred during the evening it made it worse. My family did not have a shelter at home, so we had to hide in a closet and hope that we made it out alive. Afterwards, with word coming in from neighbors etc, the portion of our neighborhood began the roughly 2 mile trek to a church that had opened it's doors to survivors but it was still rough due to the amount of debris etc thrown about. So starting @ 21:41-21:45 you can actually see my family's rebuilt property towards the bottom left corner of the video.
Thank god there were people and systems set up warning people about it. Tornado warnings/broadcasts used to be illegal since it was thought that it would cause too many people to panic.
I lived in bridge creek
And the fact you can still see scars to this day
And my graduation almost never happened, in bridge creek, bc the night before we had 4 different tornadoes forming over the town, and if all 4 merged, it was said it had potential to be worse than may 3rd, and you could hear the concern in David payne voice. This happened may 11, 2023
I grew up in the Midwest. Many of the homes built back there have basements you can go to. We are also drilled and warned about tornados from an early age at school with tornado drills. Tornado prone areas have tall loud horns that alert people when there is a tornado spotted. Things will get really quiet, the the sound of the winds, the twirling of the wind sounds like a train approaching. Scary stuff because they can just come on, and then disappeared, just like that. had a friend that lived in Joplin in 2011. She lost her house, luckily her family was ok. Just lost everything they owned. :(
I grew up in the Midwest. I used to sleep straight through any storm until I was 6-7. That one night I woke up to hearing the tornado sirens going off. I opened my door and my dad was immediately waking everyone else up, as I never woke up to it before and he was unsure if it was real until he saw my bedroom door open,we went downstairs to the basement and we were put in the shower just in case. Thankfully it didn't hit our house, but it was 10ft from our house. We went outside in the morning and saw trees down in the woods behind us. Haven't slept through a storm since. Still absolutely love thunderstorms and tornadoes, but definitely effects my sleep
Washington, Illinois November 17, 2013... Tornado reached its apex over my house, felt the suction as it went over, almost burst my eardrums from the pressure, and live with PTSD from it... Still here, and it has gotten easier over time, but something I will NEVER forget...
Oklahomans call them Mother Nature's vacuum cleaners.
I think I’d literally have a heart attack if there was even a close call with a major tornado. I have been terrified of them since I can remember, and I grew up in a state that rarely had an F1.
Bless you and yours, so glad you survived.
@@rooh1981 Doom vacuums!
My Lil bro was born during the 2011 outbreak. The hospital he was born at was in the tornados path, but the storm turned last second. I can recognize one of the buildings in the moore footage
I was born in Joplin's, now non-existent St. John's. Minor inconvenience though.
@@thenedanocap7673 damn, that's awesome
3:40 For our friends watching from across the pond… 210 miles per hour is equivalent to 338 kilometers per hour.
The EF5 Bridgecreek/Moore tornado had the highest recorded wind speed at 321 miles per hour (517 kilometers per hour).
3:40 The 212 kilometers that was shown on the screen at that time was the conversion for the 132 miles to tornado traveled across the ground.
One last interesting facts for friends… the widest tornado was recorded the 2013 El Reno tornado which was recorded at 2.6 Miles (4.2 kilometers) wide! It’s honestly hard to even conceive of. It’s so wide it’s probably also easy to misinterpret until it’s too close to escape.
1:00 that is what is known as a “wedge” tornado. Those are when the tornado is wider than it is tall, and they can get pretty big. The largest tornado ever documented hit just to the south of El Reno, Oklahoma in 2013. It was 2.6 miles (about 4.2 km) wide. Also 14:00 typically a tornado starts with rotation in the supercell that reaches down to the ground, however, water/groundspouts exist, as well as gustnadoes. Swegle Studios has a good video going over tornado terminology where he explains what different types of whirlwinds and how they form.
My childhood home was destroyed in the Joplin Missouri 2011 tornado. My family had moved away just months earlier.
I’ve lived in Kansas USA my whole life and been through a couple bad tornadoes in my area. Although they’re super terrifying and can cause awful damage, tornadoes are one of the natural disasters that can be really well predicted. Obviously it’s not easy to predict exactly where they will form, but the weather conditions have to be very particular in order to birth a tornado. Us locals can typically tell day to day if it feels like “tornado weather,” and radar/ weather warnings tend to be very reliable for big storms like these. The time of year is also a good predictor for tornadoes, as most fall within the April-June tornado season. I couldn’t imagine living in an area where earthquakes are common because there’s not really a way to know when one will happen or how strong it will be.
There's a guy here on RUclips who predicts earthquakes, (globally).
I live in an Earthquake area and I totally agree with you, I wish we could predict them the same way we can with other natural disasters. Obviously I wish more people were able to find shelter and know about tor warnings, but at least most of the time there is some heads up if you're paying attention. Here you're just shit outta luck if an earthquake hits, you just have to hope you're in a good spot and react quickly enough once it starts.
When I hear about hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, etc. I think about the natural disaster risk I have living in Oklahoma and choose it over the others. Tornadoes are quite surgical so even if one comes directly at you, there's a decent chance it will shift slightly and you'll get only minor damage or even none at all (maybe a fence blows over). We had a small tornado hit my workplace several years ago after business hours. The storage facility behind us had several buildings destroyed, then the air conditioners were pulled off the top of our building as it hopped over, then destroyed a church across the street. Hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires are so all-encompassing that you are affected at least in some way if you are in the area it occurs. You either face hours of battering winds and torrential rain, building damaging shaking for miles and miles, or risk miles of fire burning everything as it expands. Being in this part of the country means we have to deal with tornados, but not any of the rest of those. I'll stay here, thanks.
Been from Kansas as well and having grew up the till I joined the military you are right we just know when the weather is going to produce a tornado.
I've lived in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area for 70+ years. In that time there has only been one earthquake that affected my life - 1989 Loma Prieta. Most quakes are so small we never feel them. We just hear that the sensors picked up something. Deadly destructive tornadoes on the other hand, happen EVERY year. Granted, not in every city every year, but the visuals are terrifying.
While not on this list, I lived through the Parkersburg, Iowa tornado in May 2008. My first thought upon seeing the damage was "this looks like a warzone". Every time a tornado siren sounds it brings back memories. One thing nobody ever mentions is the air pressure change is enough to cause your ears to pop like in a jet.
I live in Moore, OK and have been through both the May 3rd 1999 F5 (320 mph winds) and the 2013 F5. Still alive and kicking. As I'm typing this, we are under a grave tornado threat once again today, and I'm watching the weather.
Native Oklahoman here - The same day as the Wichita F5 (April 26,1991), an F5 outbreak hit the Tulsa area. I lived a mile south of where one of the F5 tornadoes hit. Fortunately, we only lost a couple of dead trees, and our home and barns were not damaged. Then during the May 3,1999 F5 tornado that hit Moore, I was finishing my sophomore year at the University of Oklahoma. I stood with several of my friends on the balcony of our house and watched as the storm passed through Moore. We couldn't see the tornado, but we could see the storm clouds. That was a very sobering moment for us. I lived my entire life in tornado alley, and have had several close calls with smaller storms. Springtime is interesting in these parts.
I live in TN, and back in 2018 one of my good friends' mom passed away in a tornado. It wasn't a particularly strong or long drawn out storm, but it was just strong enough to come down on their home and sweep it off its foundation. She was going down the stairs to get into the basement as the tornado ripped apart the house. Everyone else in the house was downstair's already and survived with minimal injuries. Almost the entire high school went to her funeral. It was an extremely sad day and I still keep in contact with him.
I'm so sorry! Wishing well for you all ❤
When I grew up in Kentucky I fell in love with tornadoes. Every tornado season we would have maybe two or three times when we had to run across the property to the storm cellar with the most exciting time being when a tornado went practically right over the cellar (didn't touch the house at the other end of the property, thankfully.) Now I'm in school for meteorology! The movie Twister was a huge inspiration for me, too. It made me want to chase tornadoes and really get to know and experience them.
I grew up about an hour and a half from joplin in 2011 (currently live in joplin). It was so sad and devastating, but im proud of the community and the people who came to help.
Growing up in the Midwest I don’t really fear tornados anymore, but the sirens and atmosphere before one still fill me with dread. I still cry when watching footage of Joplin
The weirdness of the air pressure is unnerving
I'm part of a disaster relief team here in Oklahoma City and was just in Sulphur for clean up. It's a wild place to live but we're used to it. Come out for spring sometime, it's truly something to feel the day it's supposed to get bad.
Thank you for your hard work. My son helped clean up Greensburg. It’s very emotional.
I used to live a block away from a tornado siren. They used test it out on a nice sunny day to make sure it was working right during tornado season. Now I have a hearing problems.
I was in high school when the 1999 Moore tornado struck and leveled my aunt & uncle’s house. My cousin was an infant at the time and was nearly ripped out of my aunt’s arms. My mom frantically drove there that night where 108 tornadoes were touching down. Moore would be hit again in 2009 and 2013 by EF-4 and 5 tornadoes.
I’ve rode out an EF-2 hitting my neighborhood when I was in college and just last night, an EF-3 passed within 10 miles of where I currently live.
At some point, you get pretty good about gauging the weather and you pay attention to radar images of all storms passing around you.
You also start getting weird when a storm is too dark or has an odd color to it. Like greenish tints, which usually accompanies hail.
I am a storm chaser in Kansas, I've been chasing for 11 years, and I chased some of the tornadoes in this video. The first time I remember hearing the sirens was during the Wichita/Andover EF5 tornado. I've also had houses damaged by tornadoes that have come through my town. My Dad survived the 1966 Topeka, Kansas tornado, but his house was torn off of its foundation and they never saw that house again. (My Dad got sent to Vietnam like 2 years later,poor guy. Also random fact, Dad was originally from Connemara, Co Galway!)
I live less than a mile from where that EF5 tornado ripped through Alabama in Harvest. It took Years for the lots to regrow. My sister was down in Tuscaloosa, where one of the tornadoes ripped through and killed a bunch of people. She was less than half a mile away from it, hiding in a store. We didn't have power for weeks, so my friends parents who had a condo down in south Alabama invited me down, and we spent time on the beach, and slept in a Yacht. Good times
Damn man, that’s crazy!
Hope all is well for your community
@@Drago_San yeah, this was over a decade ago. All the gas, and essentials at the stores were sold out, and people were scrambling to buy up anything they could. The power out meant a lot of stores including gas stations couldn't run so it drove a mini panic (kind of like when covid first hit). Thanks for the kind words
Cell towers were down, we all lost power, things were not good when that happened
@@Joshua_Bearden I was in a condo in Mobile right after, so I didn't have to deal with all the issues. I know how much no cell service/internet/power sucks
I was running from the 2013 Moore, OK tornado. You'll never forget the sound.
“Is that a focking tornado 😭” I can’t but I love your videos and the reactions to these tornadoes
American here I lived through one and two hurricanes. We're all trained at a young age how to hide from them
Having been in a few tornadoes, feeling a deep dread of them, and living around people who are all kind of numb to the terror - it's cathartic to see your reaction
I grew up in Tornado Alley in Northwest Texas. We had a tornado one day during school. It took the roof off our gym and auditorium as well as destroyed the band hall. All of these were in the only building that made up our high school. All the students and staff were in the main hall in the floor with our heads down against the rows of lockers. No one was hurt but it was scary AF!!!
I live in an area without a lot of tornadoes for the US but we still get like 5-6 tornado warnings a year but we've never been hit
I lived 18 miles north of Jarrell in 1997. I'll never forget standing outside watching the clouds heading south over us and thinking how strange they looked and how strange the air felt. The tornado hit Jarrell not long after that. Hearing about it in the news later was chilling.
As a young boy in 1974, my dad drove us about 100 miles to Zenia Ohio about a week after the F5 hit that town, buildings swept clean like they were sucked up by a giant vacuum and dumped back in pieces. A gas station had nothing left but the pumps and a hole in the ground where a building had stood.
It was the first tornado to have the experts, including Dr Fujita, to consider rating it F6.
I lived eight miles from Xenia in 1974. April 3rd was a very bad day.
My paternal grandfather and his parents (my great-grandparents) survived the F5 Tri-State tornado in 1925. They lived in Murphysboro, Illinois. My grandfather was 5 years old at the time.
So happy they survived! I learned a fun fact that after the tornado in Princeton, they had lots of cars with their roofs ripped off that were still driveable, so they were known around town as tornado convertibles
watching European dudes react to weather in the States really brings the danger and seriousness of it all back, due to growing up around hurricanes and tornados, while i’m still cautious, i tend to forget just how devastating they are because they happen all the time, it’s really helpful seeing it though a fresh pair of eyes
Yeah I feel the same way. I lived in Alabama for over 20 years (and was there in 2011 during the outbreak) before moving to Germany just last year. It's a strange feeling to hear a thunderstorm coming in and my brain just automatically flipping into tornado preparedness mode.....and then realizing I don't need to, it'll be fine. Tornados DO occur here in Germany it's just much more rare.
Getting underground is by far your best bet for a tornado
I was on the outskirts of both of the F5 tornadoes that hit Moore Oklahoma, on this list. While I and my home suffered no damage, houses just 300 feet away were totally destroyed. In total I have been in or very near to five tornadoes since I moved to the Oklahoma City area. In fact this afternoon we are in a "High probability" warning. It's just a fact of life here and after one hits, the outpouring of support and assistance from the people in this area is amazing. Despite the dangers of tornadoes, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, because of the people here.
I can't imagine the strong bond in your community after all you've been through throughout the years. No wonder people choose to stay. There's a lot more love and support there than other places in these modern times where we're so isolated even though we live so close to each other
This year in march ohio had a mini outbreak, these were all nighttime tornadoes, typically when the sirens go off my dad looks outside, keeps track of the weather instead of scaring everybody and just making us go to the basement and play the waiting game since the tornado sirens are for the ENTIRE county you are in.
I just had an eerie feeling about it, my dad could see power flashes in the distance it was the first time he felt the need to get his family downstairs. The hail was so loud, the rain was so hard it was coming into the basement. The power flickered about 4 times before it went out completely, turns out the tornado directly hit about a 2 minute drive from us, so we were only experiencing the outer winds of the tornado but it was still terrifying. I remember holding my cat and being afraid for my home. A barn was completely destroyed, schools were damaged, and at least 4 transmissions towers were bent over or just completely toppled over. My dad said he remembered it being eerily calm, there was no wind before either the rain was just pouring straight down
Tornadoes are definitely more common in the US but its also highly unlikely you will be hit by one, even more unlikely an EF4-EF5 will hit you. I'm 18 years old and that night in march a couple of months ago was my first time one came close.
march 3rd, 2023 i was on a road trip and i was driving through farmland in Indiana, an EF1 (not strong enough to do too much damage) tornado allegedly touched down right on my car, as i couldn't see it due to the rain. definitely one of the most scary experiences in my life.
I'll never forget the meteorologist that recognized his subdivision and ran off camera, still mic'ed, and his phone call was live. He called his wife and told her to get herself and their kids into the basement immediately, don't grab anything just go now. I don't remember exactly where/ when it happened but I know his family was safe afterwards
I am from Alabama and currently live in Tennessee. When I was a kid and lived in Arkansas, right in the middle of "tornado alley," we had a tornado go between our house and our neighbor's house. It removed our shed, but didn't do any significant damage to our house. I remember my dad running out right after it went by to get the horse saddles from the yard since they were leather and would ruin.
I'm still pretty scared of tornadoes, but I've never seen one so I have a very morbid curiosity now I'm older.
I was outside with friends playing baseball when the supercells pasted through SW Ohio in April 1974. I'll never forget as they approached, how the sky changed to an eerily green/black, the rain, and the gratefulness that my neighborhood was spared.
The sound of an approaching tornado is one of the most heart stopping sounds you can hear. Akin to just standing on rail while a freight train is coming full speed.
I live on the East Coast in the U.S., and we don’t get tornados anything as large as the tornados in this video, but to me they are still terrifying. The first tornado I ever went through was 2 weeks after having my first child. I was young and living in a mobile home. Thankfully it did actually have a basement but the only way to access the basement was through an outside entrance. So I found myself running outside into an oncoming tornado in order to get myself and my brand new baby into the basement to hide under a desk that happened to be down there. That tornado came through my yard and ripped up trees but spared my home. The second tornado I had an up close experience with was when I was home alone with my 3 kids I had at that time, ages 10,6, and 10 months old. Again a tornado came through the field next to the farmhouse we lived in. I found myself hiding on the basement stairs due to the water rushing in through my stone basement and rapidly flooding while a tornado came within a few 100 feet of my home, doing only minimal damage. I was absolutely terrified both those times so I cannot fathom living in the Midwest where these monster storms are.
I'm so sorry you've had those experiences. I really hope you never have to worry about that ever again! Please stay safe ❤
I was born in connected and when I was 2 there was a tornado outbreak in several northeast states including Connecticut and that was in 1989. I don't remember it obviously but the strongest tornado was an F4!
@@artemis8396 thank you very much. I also hope to never go through another one. Two is enough for a whole lifetime for me.
@@PaulHosey an F4 in Connecticut? I can’t even imagine. The population is so dense here on the East coast I can’t fathom the amount of damage it did.
@@HeritageHighlandAcres a lot of houses were from what I know but only one person died while they were camping or something. But that explains why we had a whole course on tornado safety in second grade lol by second grade it had only been 5 years since it happened.
I live in oklahoma, i was visiting moore back in 2013, my family made it to an underground shelter, as the main portion of the E-F5 tornado approached our shelter, our ears started popping from the atmospheric pressure changes, and you could feel the entire ground rumble, could feel it in my bones, the aftermath was the worse part, the entire neighborhood was wiped from the face of the earth, trees uprooted and automobiles were crumpled up like crushed soda cans. I still have nightmares.
-My Dad was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, OK (close to Oklahoma City) in the 50's and then again in the 60's. The radar man called the base commander's attention to the strange "look" (pattern) of the radar images of the clouds and he suggested that the line of bombers and other planes outside on the flight line might be in danger but the commander (who had never seen images like this before) declined to fly the planes out to another base. Sure enough a tornado touched down on the flight line and destroyed several planes and generally did a lot of damage to the base and its facilities. A month or two later the same radar man saw the same pattern of clouds setting up in the same pattern as before. Again, he informed the base commander who this time flew everything that had wings off the base and battened down every thing else. Low and behold another tornado cruised down the flight line again but this time there was little damage because the planes were gone and everything else was secured. Thus radar became the standard procedure to watch the weather, send out warnings and keep track of the weather systems that can produce twisters.
As former USAF myself this makes me proud…of your dad, not the base CO.😂