# Have you ever seen, or been hit by, a tornado?



## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

I grew up in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, which lies in the north end of Tornado Alley. One time when I was about ten years old I was riding my bicycle home ahead of a thunderstorm and was overtaken by a tornado. The wind was unbelievable; I had to lie down flat in the ditch until it passed over.

It wasn't a very powerful twister--probably an F1--but it did a fair bit of damage to trees and the roofs of houses. It also drove grit into the skin of my face, which itched like crazy for a couple of days.

I've also had three near misses, including an ill-fated shopping trip when one of my brothers and I had to drive like mad northwards out of Minot, North Dakota. We joked that if we could just make it to the Canadian border we would be safe.

Does anybody else have some tornado experiences to relate? Ever since my ordeal I've always been interested in the subject.


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## haydnfan (Apr 13, 2011)

I've seen one in the distance before. I live in Oklahoma and this time of year they pop up alot. There was one that passed within a mile of my apartment, missed me but touched down in a nearby small town and made so much damage that it made the national news. Just a few days ago the tornado siren went off and it wasn't a drill.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I've lived in Ohio... in Tornado Alley... for most of my life, and I have been closer than I like to these monsters on more than one occasion. The power of these things is not to be believed, but it is their unpredictability that makes them truly frightening. Shortly after graduating high-school we had one tear through my town. It ripped up huge swaths of forest to the South of where I lived then sucked back up into the clouds and passed overhead before dropping down again. One clock away it destroyed every tree on the street... some rather huge oak trees were exploded into nothing but pulp... and yet it didn't touch a single house. It then took off through another area of forest, again ripping a path that looked as if huge plows had been through clearing the land. Its final act was to rip the roof completely off the middle-school in town (luckily it was summer and no school in session).

My most recent experience with a tornado was some 7 or 8 years ago. The wife and I were sitting in our car at her parent's house waiting for her mother to get home. A wicked lightning storm was venting its fury and the wind began to pick up. Suddenly the small trees began to bend to the point of touching the ground and the car began to rock. I yelled, "This ain't no storm; it's a f**ing tornado!!" I threw the car in gear and took off. The road was littered with branches... some quite sizable. As we were tearing down the road an old man in front of us was petering about. My wife... not known for public outburst or profanity... yelled "Get the **** out of the way, old man!!! It's a f**king tornado." WE tore to the next town which was in a low valley and then put on the radio. The announcers verified that there were indeed several tornadoes moving through the area and gave the direction the were headed. We naturally headed the opposite way. Arriving safely outside of the storm zone in a favorite Mexican restaurant we proceeded to down a pitcher of Margaritas and who knows how many shots of tequila.:lol: 

It is amazing that something like a tornado becomes just part of life when you live in Tornado Alley... to such a point that you become complacent about them. I remember one night during my first year in college we were sitting around the dorms when suddenly there was the usual beep and the tornado warning came across the TV screen. One class-mate... I forget where he was from exactly, but obviously not someplace where tornadoes are a reality... yelled at us, "What are you all just sitting there for? Didn't you hear the warning? Shouldn't we be going to the basement or something. Its a tornado for God's sake!" :lol: Of course we had all glanced at the screen and ascertained that the storm was a county away... nowhere near us. He, on the other hand, was wound up for the rest of the evening.


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

I live in Fort Worth, TX, which isn't exactly in the heart of tornado alley, but we are just south of it and we get tornadoes around us every spring.
The closest experience I ever had was when I was in college. I lived with 2 roommates in a duplex just off campus. There was a really nasty storm one night, bad enough that the storm sirens were going off around us. One of the local television channels had broken from regular programming and was reporting on the storm. They were reporting potentially tornadic activity, but where they were reporting it was like 4 or 5 miles north of where we lived so we thought we were safe. At some point we heard this really loud whistling sound outside, and then this absoltuely crazy sounding wind that just came out of no where and lasted for a few seconds and then just as quickly went away. None of us knew what had happened but we got up and looked out and there was all kinds of debris in our front yard. I suspected we had been in the tornado, but my roommates were not from the area and I didn't want to freak them out so I didn't say anything at the time. A few minutes later we started hearing emergency vehicles with their sirens on moving through the neighborhood. By this time the storm had calmed down so we went outside and walked aroun. Just 2 blocks over from us a few houses had been hit by a tornado and their roofs were ripped off, and there were seveal trees that had been ripped out of the ground. We walked over to the college campus to to see if there had been any damage there. There wasn't much damage to the school, but the tornado apparently touched down in a parking lot full of parked cars. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen. One car had been picked up, flipped over, and violently put down on top of another one. Another car had gotten tangled up in a light pole that was twisted all around it. We later found out that the tornado hit an apartment complex about a half mile on the other side of where we lived. If you draw a straight line from the cars that were damaged at the school through the houses that were damaged near where we lived, and to the damaged apartment complex, the tornado must have gone right over the duplex we were living in. I was talking to someone who actually witnessed the tornado the next day, and he said that it kept touching down and lifting back up. So it must have jumped right over us, sparing us any damaged. Which was somewhat of a miracle for us because we were completely unprepared. We were just sitting in our living room with many windows on the upper floor of our duplex. If we had taken a direct hit, I shudder to think what would have happened.

The good news is that no one was killed or seriously hurt. Just a bunch of property damage.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Here is a terrifying video of the F5 tornado that hit Elie, Manitoba in 2007. Toward the end, you can see the tornado split into three separate vortices:


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I had a very close encounter with a tornado. I may have been _inside_ one in fact.

In April of 1998 a huge storm system came through Nashville. I was at a friend's house and as we watched the weather get more threatening I decided to head for home, thinking there would be time. That was a mistake. I had the radio on listening to the weather reports. To my horror I heard them report a possible tornado heading down Ellington Parkway. That was the road I was on! I saw no sign of it, but in the rear view mirror was what looked like a wall of white cloud. Expecting to see a funnel cloud I thought it was still several miles away, so I hustled to try to find an exit and get out of its way. Soon I realized, whatever the cloud was, it was gaining on me though I still saw no funnel. Ellington is a limited access road, so I remembered from science shows what I was supposed to do. Seek shelter in an underpass. I was approaching one ahead, but it was already full of cars doing the same thing -- no room for me!

I don't remember having time to be scared, only angry. An underpass means an exit too. I found it and got on the exit ramp, but had no idea what road I was headed for. I think I still had the idea that the thing was headed down Ellington Parkway and that I would be safer if I got off. The wind was picking up and the car was shaking. I know I was supposed to get out and get in a ditch, but something told me not to. Where was a ditch anyway? About that time my ears plugged and I could barely hear. I realized the radio had become silent too. Tree limbs (which were probably smaller than they looked at the time) were hitting my car. I was sure it was going to be totaled. It was like being in a car wash with tree limbs at midnight while an earthquake was going on. I couldn't see out, could barely hear, and for all I knew the car had flipped.

Eventually the chaos died down and I could see a little, though the rain was torrential. Little by little it dawned on me that the car was upright, still running and none of the glass had broken at least. Puzzled by not ever seeing a funnel cloud, I shuddered to think what it would have been like if I had been closer to it.

I drove the rest of the way home, after first passing the obliterated radio studio I had been listening to. That frightened me a bit. My home was fine, but I stopped by my mother's house to see if she was okay. Almost every tree was felled. Power lines were down everywhere. Most roads were inaccessible. I could see small columns of smoke rising from various places around her neighborhood and hear sobbing in the distance. It was hellish. I turns out it had only knocked off the electrical conduit pole thingy of her house and there was no other damage, but she was a bit disoriented. I inspected my car it was miraculously undamaged, maybe a very small dent in the hood.

When the electricity came back on (a couple of weeks later for some folks) we watched the news footage. Only then did I realize this tornado did not present what you would call a funnel cloud. It was a monstrous thing, maybe half a mile or a mile across. That's why I saw the wall of cloud. Was I right in the middle of it and lived to tell the tale? Who can say? There's no accounting for what these things do or don't do I guess. There were few casualties, but lots of damage citywide. People in these parts still talk about the Tornado of '98.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

"In April of 1998 a huge storm system came through Nashville"

There's actually a Wikipedia article about that:

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Nashville_tornado_outbreak*


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Well, I lived in Oklahoma when I was real young, and a tornado lifted up right above our car when we were driving to a gymnasium in order to get safe. The tip of it literally started retracting a few feet behind the car.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Lukecash12 said:


> Well, I lived in Oklahoma when I was real young, and a tornado lifted up right above our car when we were driving to a gymnasium in order to get safe. The tip of it literally started retracting a few feet behind the car.


I'm sure there is lots to see and do in Oklahoma, but from April to September I am going to give it a miss. Take a look at this:


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