What are you into?

[Man in Black]

Have you ever seen one yourself?

I've seen several funnel clouds, but I've only seen one tornado and it was a huge F5 that I only got to see from many miles away. (It wiped out a neighborhood in SC).

I'm still trying to get a picture of one someday or even some video. They don't form right here where I live though because there are so many hills and mountains.

[Jason]

Unfortunately, I've never seen one. I've lived in California my whole life and there has only been one tornado in California that I've known of. But I never got to see it. We get tons of dust devils, though.

Wow. You actually got to see an F-5? Those are pretty rare! They updated the Fujita Scale in 2007, and there have only been 2 F-5's (EF-5's) since then. They've got a few videos online of the two tornadoes. I'll post the videos.

This is the first EF-5 since the Fujita Scale was modified.
Greenburg, Kansas. 95% of the town was demolished
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBSps3VviB8

The Second EF-5 tornado was in Parkersburg, Iowa. A surveillance video captured the tornado as it demolished a bank.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=akUX58MFAQM

I believe this was the same bank, but I'm not positive. The surveillance camera off of the bank captured a house being ripped apart.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAPnbzHvIKs


And just for kicks, the strongest tornado on record. This tornado is the reason why the Fujita Scale was enhanced. The original Fujita Scale had the estimated wind speeds of an F-5 between 261-318 mph. This tornado's wind speed was recorded at 318.mph

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbqGsS5iB4

Inside the tornado cloud.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mdf9R4nFMc

[DeserTPunK]

Holy! Those are awesome! I never thought to look on youtube for twisters.

[Man in Black]

Punk have you ever seen one?


Here is the link to the info on the F5 I was talking about. This says it was an F4. I really don't know now, all I remember was they said it was an F5 on the local news. The storm we saw was the 4th one down.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1989_tornado_outbreak

This is a really poor scale wise sketch I did quickly to give you an idea of what we saw. The tornado didn't look that big to us where we were at because it was far away from us.

I live right at the NC - SC state line and that tornado followed along that boundary just east of the mountains. My cousin and I had been riding around near his house in Landrum, SC and we were about to get on I-26 to head to my house in NC.

As we were crossing the bridge to get on the exit the sky was all yellow looking so we slowed down long enough to notice a gigantic wall cloud to the southeast. It was the strangest one I've ever seen as the sky was horizontally divided by black and white.

We could see the twister coming down from the wall at a distance of (I'm guessing) about 15 miles away. It just looked like a triangle wedge connecting the cloud and the ground. We got the heck out of there and didn't know how bad it was until we turned on the TV and saw the reports.

It was part of this ridiculous outbreak all on the same day. I didn't recall that there were 3 other F4's in the area until I looked up that Wiki link. We are lucky right where we live because even though we have some wicked storms, all the hills and mountains stop most circulation. Just outside the hills though, they do get some bad ones.

The only one that ever hit right here where I live was an F1 that happened during hurricane Ivan. I didn't get to see that one though because it was at 2 am. I was scared shitless, to be honest. Marii was 10 months pregnant and we had just moved into this house. I thought the freakin roof was coming off. I took the mattress off the bed and we leaned it up against a counter in the middle of the house and slept under it.

Our house got through without a scratch but there were 2 cars and a boat lost to trees in our neighborhood. (plus a dam broke, but that was the rain not the twister). We were without power for a while and I cleaned up tree limbs for a month but we were lucky.