Tornado footage

deaddirty

Forum Elite
Joined
Oct 7, 2008
Messages
12,384
Location
UK
Not sure if it wil embed, but I'll try. I like the comment:
"Tornados and Hurricanes are god’s way of punishing Bible thumpers who get the message wrong. Notice these things only happen at or below the Bible Belt."

https://revoltroom.com/media/videos/10000/d/9558-5b1aa89994e63_10726.mp4

[video]https://revoltroom.com/media/videos/10000/d/9558-5b1aa89994e63_10726.mp4[/video]
 
Seeing something like that from my window would be enough to give me a coronary. It's SO scary! I wonder if I would try hopping in my car to escape it. That would probably be a bad idea, but would hunkering down in place be any better? The funnel means my life will soon be over.
 
Well you will never make a Canadian, Alex. There the motto is clearly 'Keep Calm and Carry on Mowing' - after all if you don't get that lawn looking smart quick, the mower may be blown into the next county and then where would you be? (Answer - probably in the next county too, or even scattered across several counties. But your lawn will be immaculate for the funeral do.


(There's a much bigger version of the pic in the Guardian article, but it's in a format called .jxr which won't opload to pixhost and I can't convert it into anything else)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2017/jun/05/how-close-can-you-get-to-a-tornado

How close should you get to a tornado?

Lawnmower man Theunis Wessels was photographed in Alberta nonchalantly gardening as a tornado looms in the background. A stormchaser explains what makes a ‘safe’ distance from a twister

Theunis Wessels mows his lawn at his home in Three Hills, Alberta.

A tornado touches down near Three Hills Alberta, and a flurry of footage appears online. But one photo goes viral: a man nonchalantly mowing his lawn as the twister apparently bears down on him.
“It looks much closer if you look in the photo, but it was really far away,” the lawnmower man in question, Theunis Wessels, told local media. “Well, not really far, far away ... I was keeping an eye on it.”
That somewhat relaxed mindset seems familiar to me from twister-seasoned Oklahomans and Texans I’ve met chasing storms up and down ‘tornado alley’, where – except for a strangely barren 2017 – +
How close can you get to a tornado? Predictably that depends on the size, but also the type of tornado. It’s never a good idea, particularly in urban environments, to be anywhere near as it’s the debris that does the damage – as well as huge hail. It’s hard to judge how far away this one is – at least half a mile, I’d say, having seen one from a similar distance last year. As most (not all) storms in North America move in a south-west to north-east direction, Wessels is probably justified in being somewhat confident that it is “moving away toward the east.”
As twisters go, this one’s a photogenic beauty, sweeping regally and predictably across the Canadian prairies at a safe distance. This one – perhaps an EF1 or 2 on the Enhanced Fujita scale of tornado strength, with winds up to 135mph – reminds me of the Wray, Colorado twister from last year, its funnel caught perfectly by the sunset, the brown dirt swirling outside a graceful elephant trunk masking the mayhem happening at the centre of the vortex. If you want to see how close you can get to a tornado of this type, videos can be found on YouTube (but don’t try it yourself).
Too often the really dangerous tornadoes are a muddy thick wedge veiled in a curtain of rain and hail. As veteran chaser, photographer and entertainer Hank Schyma (who goes by the name Pecos Hank on YouTube) says: “Many people dream of witnessing a tornado from a safe distance. And if that day arrives it’s often not what they imagined it would be. Dramatic images of well-lit cylinders, cones and ropes rise above the white noise of more typical rain-wrapped, weak-contrast, ill-defined tornadoes. In 2015, I witnessed 31 tornadoes. Of those, few, if any, were photogenic.”
It is usually the aftermath of those horrible, EF4 and EF5 monster wedges we see on TV reports. People find themselves driving through a wall of rain and golfball-sized hail, only to emerge into an EF5 with up to 300-mph winds. That’s strong enough to toss trucks hundreds of metres, completely remove stone buildings from their foundations, strip roads of concrete and leave bizarre parting gifts such as pieces of straw embedded in telegraph poles and chairs lodged in concrete. Clearly you have no business being anywhere near a tornado like that.
Not that this would deter extreme chasers such as Dr Reed Timmer or filmmaker Sean Casey, who have built specially adapted armoured vehices to intercept powerful tornadoes and conduct research. Casey’s TIV2 vehicle is armed with 2ft spikes that anchor the TIV into the ground like a limpet, aiming to get right inside the funnel, which he has done – with jawdropping results.
But ultimately, I find, the ideal tornado is Theunis Wessel’s photogenic funnel snaking harmlessly over the prairie. From that distance you can take in all the wondrous structure of the entire mesocyclone.
It’s a cruel twist that while the US stormchasing community endures the worst season in living memory, their northern neighbours witness the tornado of a lifetime and can’t even be bothered to look at it
 
My pleasure. People think we don't get tornados in Britain but we do - not big ones but big enough to do some damage. An F2 ploughed through parts of Birmingham in 2005 causing a lot of damage and some serious injuries - amazing there were no deaths, especially as most of those roofs are of slates which must act like mini-guillotines in a tornado.

https://pixhost.to/gallery/VQ2sp

 
An F2 ploughed through parts of Birmingham in 2005...

Those poor people -- even if insurance reimbursed them for the damages, the gigantic headaches of cleanup remained. I looked, unsuccessfully, in the yards for evidence of lawnmowers hastily abandoned. It would have proven that the Brits are more sensible than the Canadians. However, it would seem that those residents of Birmingham who were engaged in lawn maintenance as the tornado approached stubbornly finished the job and stowed their equipment before heading to the storm cellar.
 
Those poor people -- even if insurance reimbursed them for the damages, the gigantic headaches of cleanup remained. I looked, unsuccessfully, in the yards for evidence of lawnmowers hastily abandoned. It would have proven that the Brits are more sensible than the Canadians. However, it would seem that those residents of Birmingham who were engaged in lawn maintenance as the tornado approached stubbornly finished the job and stowed their equipment before heading to the storm cellar.

Of course - they are Brits after all! We must maintain our stiff upper lip even in the face of an advancing tornado.
 
Of course - they are Brits after all! We must maintain our stiff upper lip even in the face of an advancing tornado.

Otherwise how on earth could we drink our tea?
 
He hasn't arrived yet...so I'll quick bake a cake for him...and mow the lawn. Then I shall be prepared to die a model's death.
 
Not sure if it wil embed, but I'll try. I like the comment:
"Tornados and Hurricanes are god’s way of punishing Bible thumpers who get the message wrong. Notice these things only happen at or below the Bible Belt."

actually tornadoes can happen in any state in the USA. Wisconsin gets hit by them too. we had an F3 tornado that traveled 83 miles back in 2017
 
Back
Top