Tornadoes

[Mysterian]

If your house gets swept up by a tornado, you're liable to land where everything is in Technicolor.

 

[kdonnel]

In college there was a tornado that skirted by campus. Being young and dumb we went out on the roof of the dorm to watch it go by.

Another time, my mother in law looked out the window during a storm and said look, the birds are flying in a circle, to her husband. It wasn't birds, it was debris, and was a tornado. It ended up ripping some siding off their house and most of the furniture around the pool ended up in the pool.

 

[AuntieMe3]

No never and I hope I never do... they terrify me. BiL and SiL live in Kansas, she says it's not a tornado area but then points out all the previous tornado damage when we're driving around.

 

[fla4fun]

I grew up in Ohio and saw several tornadoes. Then moved to Florida and saw a few more. Once in Ohio, a tornado was on the ground headed for our neighborhood, lifted up and cleared our neighborhood before coming back down. That was the closest we came to being hit. It went right over us.

 

[Her Dotness]

Once in Ohio, a tornado was on the ground headed for our neighborhood, lifted up and cleared our neighborhood before coming back down. That was the closest we came to being hit. It went right over us.

That's what's weird about tornadoes--a little difference in the terrain can cause them to lift.

They also can hit and lift back up in one place, a spot funnel.

One took out a neighbor's garden shed next door to where I lived in Kansas once. The neighbor said they figured a small one touched down, sucked up the shed and lifted up again.

The weird thing was that it left a lawnmower, snowblower and everything else that was in the shed, only took the metal shed off the concrete slab it was on.

 

[luv2cheer92]

Tornadoes are the number 2 reason I moved out of Texas. They happen occasionally where I live now, but nowhere near as frequently as they did there. There was one night where there were over a dozen all within 15ish miles from my house. Thankfully never saw one or had any damage from one.

 

[JLTraveling]

We had two follow the same track about a year apart. Passed less than a mile from our house, up through the Lower 9th ward (a depressed area of the city where people really couldn't afford to rebuild from one, never mind two) and into Arabi (small town just over the parish line). The local weather people showed them on camera in real time, and they looked terrifying.

When I was a kid, I was at summer day camp in small town Florida. My mom worked at the hospital a few blocks away. A big tornado destroyed the mall, which was exactly in between the two--and both the rec center and the hospital were spared!

When my family drove down the Everglades years ago, there were waterspouts (basically tornadoes, just over water) on both sides of the bridge for several miles. Could see them quite clearly, and it was super scary!

 

[LuvN~Travel]

I haven't seen a tornado, but had to clean up after one. My sister's house got hit by the one back in March of '96, on the edge of Montgomery. Talk about a mess in the neighborhood. It also hit the front of the neighborhood, so I know it must have been a pain for those living further back to get around all of the different conveyances we were using to move families out.
As to the other day, my husband has a cousin who lost everything in the Autauga tornado. I don't know if she lived west or east of the interstate, but you could not even tell if theirs was a wood frame house or a trailer! All you can see from her photos are downed trees, pieces of wood and clothing.
We have been blessed so far. We had the Flatwood community tornado before Christmas that missed us by a few miles, and then week before last the one that hit over by the Eastchase shopping area, that missed us by a few miles. Though I did have to travel through that area later that morning to get to the dentist. Another big mess, though wonderfully nobody was killed and maybe nobody injured.
It has definitely been quite the tornado season so far here.....
Lets just say my local weather app has gotten a lot of use lately!

edited to add: Just looked up where my husband's cousin lived, right in the hardest hit are in Autauga County where the five or six ppl died. Gee! So glad they were not home that day. wow!

 

[Lehuaann]

Middle TN here. Born in SoCal. Been jolted out of bed by a few earthquakes. Lost a few things off my walls. But I will
never get used to tornadoes.

1998, in the hospital recovering from the birth of our son. High floor. Watched the sky turn black outside my window. Everyone taken to the hallway at the last minute. My hospital window, the thick double paned one with the blinds between the glass, broken.

2006, husband and I were out shopping during an active warning and watched huge American flags at a car dealership change direction before our eyes. Straight as a board. Then saw the cloud pass…flags followed it.

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

I have always lived in the midwest and tornados are not uncommon. Thank goodness I have never personally seen one. The closest I have been to one is a few miles, and that is too close for comfort.

 

[notatallmagic]

Our house was hit a few years ago in the late afternoon. It got incredibly dark, incredibly fast. We saw the funnel about half a mile away and it didn’t look like it was moving at all (because it was coming right towards us).

We got into the basement closet under the stairs and all our ears popped hard- mine popped twice right in a row like a very sudden change in a plane’s altitude. It did sound like a train and then the house sort of “exhaled” and all the walls popped a little. Then we heard the breaking glass. It probably lasted 45 seconds. We had damage to our roof (but it was still there) and several windows broke. We also had cracks that came down the wall of a few rooms. Houses on the next block were gone.

The weirdest part is you could very clearly see where the tornado had gone. It had gone diagonally through the neighborhood which looked so odd when you stood in the yard and saw places blocks away that were normally blocked by other houses.

Shout out to the American Red Cross who seemed to magically apparated into the area right behind emergency personnel (and honestly were way more together, emphatic and interested in getting people off the streets- rescue personnel seemed excited and almost giddy about it talking about how awesome the storm was and comparing notes with one another about did they see x and y like young kids but whatever).

So glad you weren't hurt! And your comment about the path of a tornado being SO clearly visible...the EF 4/5 that hit our area was so crazy. You could see exactly the path through the neighborhoods and the nearby woods. One house would be fine; the two neighbor's houses would be leveled to the ground - and you could see the path into the wooded area like a huge bulldozer had driven it. I had to go through the area for work the next day, and it was simply unbelievable.

 

[MGMmjl]

And it happened again! A tornado developed just south and east of our location early this morning, and did some pretty significant damage a county over from us.

Also, thoughts and prayers with the people of Mississippi and the tragic tornadoes that hit there on Friday. The last count I saw had 26 people that lost their lives (25 in Mississippi and 1 in Alabama).

 

[nw6675]

The only damage we ever had was in Middle TN. Had to replace the roof and get the hail damage on a car fixed.

As a young girl, one passed my grandparents farm in Central IL while we were visiting

 

[kerry1379]

Lived in Texas for 20 years. Had many warnings but thankfully never saw one.

Another safety tip for those that live in high risk areas and have a designated place to go-keep a pair of shoes there. A wise friend once told me that if your house sustains damage, there is likely to be lots of debris-broken glass, pieces of metal and such. Things you definately don't want to walk through. Many of our warnings were at night with us scrambling to get kids out of bed and downstairs to the closet. I would not have thought about shoes at those moments.

 

[disneyseniors]

The last few months have been really busy for tornadoes in my area. I live in central Alabama, and there have been 3 tornadoes since late November that have passed within 20 miles or so of our house. One in late November only missed our house by 2 miles. We're ready for a break in the severe weather here! Last Thursday, there was a deadly EF-3 tornado that passed northwest of us. My wife knows a family that had 4 family members killed (a former school friend lost her dad, stepmom, and 2 other family members). There is another risk of severe weather this Thursday, but thankfully the risk looks a lot less than some of the recent events.

It got me to thinking: Has anyone here ever seen a tornado? There have been a couple of instances (like back in November) where a tornado passed within 2-3 miles of my location, but I've never actually seen a tornado.

Hi MGMmjl: There does seem to be a lot of tornadoes this year in Miss and Ala. My brother lives in Tennessee and he has seen a lot of that activity. I have never seen one, but last year, my brother had one hit within 30 feet of his house. It tore down houses across the street and did damage all around him. It was spooky to see it for myself. It was so close.
I used to live in Tennessee, and I think that being local, we got kind of blase about severe weather and tornado forecasts. It seems they were pretty constant, and when it never happened, we kind of got used to hearing it and some times ignoring it. We weren't in danger doing that because we stayed in the basement just in case. I think that a lot of people who live in the South are so used to hearing these severe weather warnings that they might mean less to them at times. I know we did.
I feel so bad for all those people who have gone through that horrible severe weather down there, and wish you the best in the future.

 

[jaybirdsmommy]

I've never seen one, but my mother is what we affectionately call a "tornado magnet." She's had several close calls. During the super tornado outbreak of 1974 one crossed the road right in front of her car. Then when I was a teenager she and my Dad were at a local store when one destroyed a few buildings across the street.

The most recent was this one:

. If you watch the video, at 2:15 the driver is passing in front of her house, filming the house directly across the road from her. Hers was the only house on that stretch of road that didn't receive major damage, it zig zagged at just the right time. She was extremely lucky that time, she'd been asleep and had woken up to the train sound. She'd tried to make it to the garage to get to the basement stairs and her dog refused to let her out of the door. The only part of the house damaged was the garage.

My DH had one pass over the restaurant he was managing at the time, right off an interstate exit. He was in the walk-in cooler so had no idea. Stepped out to a building full of panicked motorists and the phone ringing off the hook with the district manager wanting to know if everyone was ok.

 

[RangerPooh]

I caught a new segment a few days ago that shared that Tornado Alley is shifting further east. Which is why us in TN/Miss/Al are experiencing more tornadoes. Unfortunately ours tends to be at night rather than during the day.

While this article is a few months old, it highlights the shift. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/28/weather/southeast-tornado-xpn/index.html

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I caught a new segment a few days ago that shared that Tornado Alley is shifting further east. Which is why us in TN/Miss/Al are experiencing more tornadoes. Unfortunately ours tends to be at night rather than during the day.

While this article is a few months old, it highlights the shift. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/28/weather/southeast-tornado-xpn/index.html

The south has been referred to as Dixie Alley for a long time.

Tornado Alley is still considered the Great Plains/Midwest.

In terms of weather, patterns, types, etc they differ because of the locations. Where I live in the Midwest we get a lot of meeting of the weather from jet streams to warm/cold air, etc. The south is a bit different in that especially as things for the most part are coming straight from the Gulf area. In the Midwest we get stuff from Canada/TX/Gulf but also from west to east (ETA: although AR/TN also gets weather a lot from OK). Tornado seasons also differ between the two regions. Tornado Alley has more during the spring April and May but also into June. Dixie Alley earlier being October-May-ish.

ETA: Roughly these are the different regions:

 

[Mokat76]

I’ve been fortunate to sit through several warnings without experiencing a tornado. That said, when I moved back to MO, one of my nonnegotiables in my house search was a basement. There’s no way I’d live in the Midwest without one.

 

[FQLover]

Growing up in IL, I experienced a few of them. On time when I was in high school, I was rehearsing a play in our big auditorium, after school, where we were sort of oblivious to the weather. When my dad picked me up at 5 pm, he told me that a tornado had come through. The sky was blue at that point, and the talk of our neighborhood was about the roof that had been lifted from our neighbor's house (two doors down from ours) and then set right back down on their house but off kilter. The blue sky was streaming through a two foot open corner of their living room where the roof had not been set down properly after it was lifted. That was weird. Luckily, our town only suffered property damage that day, but no one was killed or even injured that I recall.