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Have you ever seen or been in the path of a tornado?

FelixDeCat

FelixDeCat

Lifer
I moved to a new apartment back in 2000. I lived on the 3rd floor. I was about a quarter mile from downtown Fort Worth. Then one day came the "Tornado of 2000" that hit downtown dead center. One building that took the brunt of the damage, the Bank One Building was totally destroyed. It took 4-5 years to completely gut it out, settle the legal claims, clear the asbestos and convert it to $250,000-$1,000,000 condos. Its a beauty now that I would love to live in. They sold out quickly.

It hit Friday afternoon and I stood on my balcony watching the whole thing as it caused severe damage to other buildings, leveled homes and killed a man two blocks away. I watched the power wires explode and snap up into the vortex....the trash, debris, dust, etc fly round and round in the wind. Cell phones service was too clogged to use. So I stayed on my land line. About half way through I thought it might be a good idea to go inside instead of getting a 2x4 to head at 150+ MPH. It sounded like someone put a bunch of rocks in a washine machine and it just rolled and rolled for about 45 minuets.

It was already dark when the rain stopped and I started walking towards downtown. Police, fire and news crews were everywhere. I managed to get on camera in one instance. It also took out the Cash America building which had our local FBI field office. Secret documents were found up to 1/2 mile away!

I was on vacation that week so my cousin and I had a chance to wonder around all over the downtown area taking pictures and talking to people over the next few days sharing experiences.

What about you?


edit: Very good pictures of tornado damage. The BankOne Building was the one with almost no windows left!

Video of tornado.

 
A few months after I started my new job and moved into our house we had a tornado pass through town. We stood outside at the plant and watched the funnel form. It touched down about 3/4 mile from my plant and headed north of us. Blew out several windows at the hospital, clinic, and about 100 cars in the parking lots had all of their window's blown out.

To make it worse after the tornado passed we had a huge brush fire that destroyed something like 5000 acres.

Found the CNN article.
 
Originally posted by: minendo
A few months after I started my new job and moved into our house we had a tornado pass through town. We stood outside at the plant and watched the funnel form. It touched down about 3/4 mile from my plant and headed north of us. Blew out several windows at the hospital, clinic, and about 100 cars in the parking lots had all of their window's blown out.

To make it worse after the tornado passed we had a huge brush fire that destroyed something like 5000 acres.

Found the CNN article.
Click to expand...


I dont know why, but even though it was right in front of me, I wasnt scared it all. I was more fascinated than anything. It was only after my brain kicked in that I decided to take shelter.
 
I've actually been present for a volcano (Mount Spurr in Alaska), a hurricane (Bob, on Long Island NY), many minor earthquakes in the Bay Area and Alaska, and the largest tornado ever recorded (in Oklahoma City).
 
My current natural disaster list includes volcanos, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, floods, landslides, and blizzards.
 
Originally posted by: DonVito
I've actually been present for a volcano (Mount Spurr in Alaska), a hurricane (Bob, on Long Island NY), many minor earthquakes in the Bay Area and Alaska, and the largest tornado ever recorded (in Oklahoma City).
Click to expand...

What impacted you the most? Care to share some details?
 
I'm from Maine. No tornados up there. Just snow and lots of it.

And of course, Ice Storm '97. Worst... thing... ever. Coldest... week, EVAR!
 
Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
Originally posted by: DonVito
I've actually been present for a volcano (Mount Spurr in Alaska), a hurricane (Bob, on Long Island NY), many minor earthquakes in the Bay Area and Alaska, and the largest tornado ever recorded (in Oklahoma City).
Click to expand...

What impacted you the most? Care to share some details?
Click to expand...

The volcano was the strangest in many respects - I was about 50 miles from Mount Spurr, and all of a sudden it was completely dark at 3 in the afternoon. The hurricane was really dramatic as well - it was only a minor hurricane but I've never, ever seen rain that dense, nor winds that strong. The tornado was by far the highest-impact storm - it actually contained the highest windspeeds ever recorded on earth (319 MPH!), was a mile wide and 60,000 feet high. I wasn't nearly close enough to actually see it (everyone with a brain and the opportunity was in a shelter, including me), but the devastation it wrought was just remarkable. It absolutely devastated the suburbs south of OKC, and more or less completely destroyed a small town, Bridge Creek.
 
yeah, saw a tornado out of my bedroom window, i think back in 90? west side of houston. picked up a construction trailer and tossed it into a nearby house, caved in a bunch of garage doors / broke windows, and knocked down the frames to a bunch of houses under construction
 
Wow man, crazy photos.

Living in Oklahoma all of my life (except for recently), tornadoes were obviously common. Some of the most notable times:

1) A tiny F1 passed over our cabin in southern Kansas. Tore off the roof of some cabins near ours, uprooted trees, etc.
2) Three little tornadoes were seen right outside of Manchester, OK. We were probably half a mile from all of them on our way to our cabin. Seeing three tornadoes dance around in a single storm was one of the more interesting meteorological moments of my life.
3) I was about 10 minutes ahead of that F5 that hit OKC. I was visiting a client and just happened to leave a few minutes before the storm really hit. Went I went back there was a path of destruction right where I was 10 minutes prior to the storm. Freaky.

I think that's about it.
 
Still haven't seen a tornado, although I've been trying to see one for years. Closest I got was after a tornado warning went out, I drove as fast as I could to where I figured I'd be able to intercept it and see it... While driving down a road, completely wooded on both sides, it was incredibly windy - the water spraying up from the tires in front of me was heading completely sideways, not backwards at all. All of a sudden, the wind direction shifted 180 degrees. It was the weirdest thing I had ever experienced. As far as I can tell, the tornado was no longer on the ground and I was *reallllly* close. I didn't see it though 🙁
 
I've seen a few small ones (an F0 and an F2), but luckily they didn't get near me. They were about 2 miles away.
 
Our city missed the ice storm of '97, thank goodness. We were too far south.

My neighbourhood was hit with a mini-twister back in the summer of 1989. I watched from the garage. There was a warning on the radio about an extremely intense line of thunderstorms heading our way. Next thing I know is that the sky went dark, like night, in 10 mins flat. This very loud roaring sound starts up and I couldn't see a foot outside the window. It was all a washed out grey. I saw what I thought was my neighbour's huge tree floating in the air. This lasted about 5 mins. It ended as quickly as it started. What I saw afterward was scary. The whole street was flooded under 2 feet of water. My neighbour had his huge tree ripped out of the ground and moved 10 feet. No electricity. My whole neighbourhood looked like a hurricane came through. Trees were down everywhere. Powerlines all down. I decided to check out the area and saw many damaged houses. Power lines on the road and only a handfull of people outside. Police and fire vehicles started showing up and blocking roads where wires were down. Our local hydro company worked for hours trying to restore power. We didn't get power back till the next morning. That was a very scary storm.

 
Ive seen a few F1's up in Northern Ontario, been in the path of 1 once. And a F2 around the Detroit area around 1995...
 
I was about a mile from one in 1989. But it was dark and I didn't see it....I heard it, though. Didn't know it was a tornado until someone called me.

I have been through several Hurricanes, though. Fran was the worst, in 1996.

And on the hurricane note, I'm tired of hearing about Katrina and the people who are still having problems. We are only still hearing this because it was that shlthole New Orleans that got hit. Anywhere else and they only get coverage for a week or two nationally.
Floyd hit Eastern North Carolina and absolutely devastated it. A year and more later, people were still living in the govt-provided campers and many never were able to rebuild.
But you only heard about that nationally for a short time.
 
Twice, but I didn't even know it was a tornado until after it had passed.

1st time, stuck at an airport for ~4h wondering WTF was going on.
2nd time, thought it was just really high winds shaking the apartment

/shrug

- M4H
 
I've seen funnel clouds but no tornadoes. I've been within 10 miles of a tornado probably a dozen times. The other day there was a tornado in my area (Southern MN) that messed some stuff up (1 person killed, a few dozens homes flattened, and softball-sized hail).

One time the sirens went off and we went in the basement. Then it sounded like a freight train passed over us. Our house was shaking violently and at that very moment I thought I would die. It turned out there wasn't a tornado but 100+ mph winds. Luckily our 100 year old house didn't get any damage.

30 years ago there was a tornado that ripped through our town. On our road, our house and every house west of ours is about 100 years old. Every house east of ours was totalled by the tornado.

Now I live in Seattle with the most tame, mild, boring, and predictable weather in the world.

That Forth Worth tornado is crazy though - it's pretty rare to see tornado damage in big cities like that.
 
Originally posted by: Pacfanweb

And on the hurricane note, I'm tired of hearing about Katrina and the people who are still having problems. We are only still hearing this because it was that shlthole New Orleans that got hit. Anywhere else and they only get coverage for a week or two nationally.
Floyd hit Eastern North Carolina and absolutely devastated it. A year and more later, people were still living in the govt-provided campers and many never were able to rebuild.
But you only heard about that nationally for a short time.
Click to expand...

It's hard to believe that anyone with a human level of intelligence could fail to appreciate the difference between the two, but then again perhaps I shouldn't be giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you possess a human level of intelligence. Maybe your post is the result of putting 1,000 monkeys in a room with 1,000 computers or something.
 
i've seen a small tornado and that's the only tornado i saw.

i live right on the hills.

edit: oh yeah, memory served me well. back in '96 while living in bayonne, one day in summer the clouds were becoming black quickly. i've never seen like that before. it began to rain rapidly and maybe 20 or 30 minutes, it stopped and everything went back to normal. it sounded so weird to me.
 
I was in an 18 wheeler in 1997 near the town of Arkadelphia when it was wipe out by a tornado. I saw branches the size of small trees blowing vertically . . .
 
Originally posted by: jagec
My current natural disaster list includes volcanos, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, floods, landslides, and blizzards.
Click to expand...

The west coast sounds like fun!


Closest I've been to a tornado was about 30 miles. That's a bit closer than I prefer.
 
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