Holy CRAP!.....a Tornado!

You know what's worse. We don't even try to build houses that are safe from these storms.

I was watching a program once a few years ago that showed some tests and what happens when a 2x4 hits a house at 100 miles an hour.

It's like bullets and missiles hitting houses.

I have been in one tornado, one hurricane ane one earthquake. Nothing make you realize how helpless you are when confronted with nature's fury.

I was in Germany one winter when they had 100 days of severly high winds. Flipped a helicopter on the runway and blew down over a million trees. I had to climb to the top of a steel control tower clad in tin each of those days. We worked 12 hours shifts during that time. The tower would sway several feet and it was hard to keep my balance on the slippery catwalk when I had to go out and take weather readings every 15 minutes.

Nature is very strange indeed. I am very glad to hear that everyone made it out ok in all of the previous stories.
 
jimmy-leggs said:
July 31 1987 I lived in edmonton,alberta,canada.Not a place known for tornados.A F5 tornado touched down a block from my house,then hit evergreen trailer park,and industrial areas killing 27 injuring hundreds.It was the most bizzare day I have ever experienced.Considering a tornado of that caliber is VERY scarce in those parts.
I will never forget it because for about 3 weeks it was blistering hot,not a cloud in the sky then BOOM it turned ugly,hail stones as big as softballs(infact my brother kept one in his freezer for years to show people).
Infact if anyone is interested google Edmonton tornado and you will see what I saw.
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Ever notice that trailer parks are tornado magnets?
 
CamposCues said:
They aren't cool. I use to think I wanted to see one. I don't anymore.
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You got that right. I dont want to see anymore. I lost my Grandmother and Aunt/Uncle to a F4 tornado. They never stood a chance.
 
Sweet Marissa said:
My home survived a tornado last year. My car was a bit damaged by a flying tree, but I'm thankful that I wasn't injured. This is the same one that hit Enterprise High School (killing eight students) and Albany, destroying a hospital with fatalities as well. Thank God you and your wife were left uninjured!
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The one that hit Enterprise was unreal. I was tracking it on radar live and you could tell it was bad. There was alot of people that lost their lives in Alabama that day. It got bad all over the state. We got hit hard too. Here in the past month or two, we've had straight line winds or tornadoes atleast once a week. We've had well over 42 so far this year with more to come.

I'd much rather ride out a hurricane that see these damn tornadoes (I've rode out both).
 
No joke

Campos is right on. Here in the central plains, tornadoes can be very strong, large and stay on the ground for miles. A few years back, a little town south of Lincoln, called Hallam,NE was completely leveled by a tornado that was over 2 miles WIDE. The widest recorded in the U.S. Myself and our install crew went there to help out the next day:

Hallam6.jpg
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We had one roll on through our tiny town a few years ago. I was working, I worked at a Target store, and shit hit the fan. So we herded all the customers together and to the back of the store, where there were no windows and such. Someone had to watch the front doors though, make sure no-one would make a run for it. Just happened to be the front end manager on duty that day. I got to watch one of those big red carts go right through a brand new 2006 7 series BMW. What a day that was!

The tornado also picked up one of the temporary construction trailers and flung it into the middle of the busiest street in town.

You'd think that at like 3:30 when all this happened, people would have gotten injured, but even the lone guy in the construction trailer made it out nearly unharmed. He had a bruised rib, thats it.

Was cool to see in person, but through the weather channel is close enough for me now.
 
In the early 80s my little brother and I took after one. We were about 2 miles behind it, driving down a dirt road, when all of a sudden the air was full of dirt, about 150 to 200 yards to the southeast of us a 2nd one had touched down.
It was open country, no damage done. But it scared the living hell out of us.

An awsome sight.


Justin Nuder
 
Tornado thats just nasty... for those who care I don't actually live in Mankato I live about 10 minutes away in Saint Peter. google saint peter tornado 1998. I've seen what they can do.

you are lucky to be alive.

a family member had pictures mailed back to them from the middle of Wisconsin.

a Saint Peter Herald our local newspaper was found on the banks of lake Michigan the following day..

I have seen cars in trees...I have seen 200 year old solid brick buildings disappear.

if you see a tornado HIDE IN THE BASEMENT Immediately

we luckily only had one death.. but was a small child.
 
powerlineman80 said:
The one that hit Enterprise was unreal. I was tracking it on radar live and you could tell it was bad. There was alot of people that lost their lives in Alabama that day. It got bad all over the state. We got hit hard too. Here in the past month or two, we've had straight line winds or tornadoes atleast once a week. We've had well over 42 so far this year with more to come.

I'd much rather ride out a hurricane that see these damn tornadoes (I've rode out both).
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yup! We have a house in Florida, and a few years ago we had 3 hurricanes roll through in about 2 months! We were lucky that none of them were giants, but sustained 70mph winds for 12 hours was hell. I have been through bad storms, but when they last that long its nerve wracking. Walking out the next morning was like seeing a bomb go off. Luckily our house was fine, just minor damage, but they hadn't had a hurricane in that area for almost 20 years and many homes lacked proper maintenance and they paid!
 
Been chasing and photographing them for over twenty years. I've always been fascinated by them. Last year I watched the Greensburg tornado form and helped in the search that night. I've always had a healthy respect for them but that monster completely changed the way I feel about them. It went from a hundred-yard stovepipe into a mile-wide beast in seconds. I'm fortunate not to have been closer. Sadly some of my friends weren't so fortunate. Larry Hoskins, former owner of the Greensburg bar, lost his life in it. Had many fun 9-ball ring games in his place. Super guy. He's missed.
 
Chasing storms is one of my other hobbies. I got to see a couple nice funnel clouds last year but no tornadoes on the ground. My family thinks I'm nuts but I have loved storms since I was a kid. I'm fascinated by them.

When we have bad storms within 30-40 miles of me I'll hop in the car or truck with the camera and get on the backside of the storm and sometimes chase the storm for up to 50 or 60 miles or more if it looks like it has the possibilities of dropping any funnel clouds out of it. It is really tough to keep up with some of the fast moving storms at times.

I plan on going on one of those week long storm chasing vacations in the plains/tornadoe alley sometime in the near future. Spend all week chasing storms from the Dakotas to Texas for a week just sounds like a lot of fun to me. I hope to get some awesome footage when I do it.

I'm not trivializing the damage the storms can do by any means either. I've seen up close what they can do. We have had 2 F3 strength tornadoes that have done major damage within the past several years either in my county or the county just North of me. It aint pretty what they can do.
 
Tornado

I was in my car when I was 18 and a tornado on the ground was even with me in a wheat field about 100 yards away. I floored it.
 
I got stuck in a small tornado a few years ago. I was driving home in my truck and I could see a storm was about to hit, wind blowing hard and sky getting dark. I figured I would get home before it hit. I got to my driveway and hit the garage door opener but I couldn't get the garage door to go up. Turned out the storm had knocked out power. It hit so fast that it was over before I could have done anything, I just sat in my driveway in my truck like an idiot while this tornado went by. My neighbor's tree was uprooted and fell not far from my truck but I didn't realize it until the storm had passed because I couldn't see anything. I have a picture of an oak tree that was cracked in a spiral in the trunk in the same way that you would twist a rag to squeeze water out of it.

I guess God looked out for my dumb ass that day.
 
Gerry said:
yup! We have a house in Florida, and a few years ago we had 3 hurricanes roll through in about 2 months! We were lucky that none of them were giants, but sustained 70mph winds for 12 hours was hell. I have been through bad storms, but when they last that long its nerve wracking. Walking out the next morning was like seeing a bomb go off. Luckily our house was fine, just minor damage, but they hadn't had a hurricane in that area for almost 20 years and many homes lacked proper maintenance and they paid!
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I spend my vacation in Pensacola Beach and I couldnt believe the damage from the storm surge down there after Ivan, Dennis (I think), and one other storm I think. The road from Pensacola Beach to Navarre Beach might be done by May I'm told (take in mind Ivan hit around 04 maybe?).

I rode out Ivan, I think Opal in 95, and Hurricane Floyd in 99 then had to work it. We got there alittle too early and caught the storm then as soon as it quit raining we went to work. Its a weird feeling being the ONLY people allowed on the Interstate at 2AM. I15 in Georgia was shut down all the way to Savannah.

We were even at work one day and not a cloud in the sky and before you knew it our General Foreman was on the radio screaming at us to take cover and then we hear sirens. We were in the middle of the country with nowhere to go. We jumped in the bucket truck, buckled up, and started praying. It touched down less than a 1/4 mile from us and luckily went over the woods and didnt hurt anyone. But scared the crap out of us.

But after working all kinds of unreal storms, I'd much rather risk a hurricane. We've had a few F4's hit and one or two F5's in my day and it looked like an atomic bomb hit.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/bmx/significant_events/1998/04_08/index.php

I still remember reading about the F5 that hit Oklahoma City in 99 I think it was. That storm was UNREAL. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbqGsS5iB4

318mph winds:eek:
 
I'm with you powerlineman!...over all the hurricanes I've been in were less scary after the fact :D


Email we got today from the weather channel....

Montgomery County Emergency Management personnel contacted us this
morning regarding wind damage that occurred in
Douglass Township in the 700 AM to 800 AM time frame. Several
meteorologists here at the Weather Forecast Office
reviewed the Doppler radar imagery from that time frame and saw no
evidence of rotation in the atmosphere over northern
Montgomery County. This lack of detected rotation suggests two
possibilities: the wind damage you experienced was caused by
a gustnado, or it was caused by strong, straight-line winds. A gustnado
is a very small scale circulation that spins up from the ground,
usually just ahead of an advancing cold front. A cold front moved
through the region in the 7 to 8 AM time frame. We can't see
gustnadoes with our radar because they're too close to the ground and
their size is too small. While gustnadoes look like tornadoes
in some cases, they're really not tornadoes in the classical sense, and
we usually just classify them as straight-line winds when they
produce damage. Straight-line winds, on the other hand, are strong
winds (wind speeds 58 mph or greater) that blow in a straight line
at the ground surface. Straight-line winds were very possible this
morning given the strong speed shear (change of wind speed with
height) ahead of the cold front this morning.

Based on the damage you describe, either phenomena could have been
the cause. Either one would be called straight-line wind
damage. Straight-line winds often knock down trees and buildings, and
can even cause bark to "twist" off trees.
Classical tornadoes around here often produce a path of damage which can
be several miles in length.



Hope this helps. We appreciate your report.

Joe Miketta
NWS Mount Holly, NJ

It was cool of them to get back to us so quickly. So, I guess it wasn't a "real" twister, but I was freaked out none the less. After seeing the pics you all have posted I consider myself VERY lucky!
 
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