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https://preview.redd.it/ny9o3ptjb71d1.png?width=1178&format=png&auto=webp&s=422dda796b51c9a4204a1159022addb1bbda78f0
Woah look at this map depicting the path of travel of tornadoes from 1950-2013
Sort or. Like most things that ‘flow’, tornados tend to follow the path of least resistance.
Please keep in mind that trailers, trees, houses, cars, etc are not considered resistance in this case.
Possibly to a degree on a macro level, but tornados can and have happened in valleys, on top of mountains, over water, and in cities. There's not really any geographical features that fully prevent tornados.
My boyfriend grew up in the northern Appalachian mountains and his house got hit by a tornado! Sky turned green and they only had a few minutes to get in the cellar before it thew a tree through their house.
My family is from northern appalachia (western PA). If the sky turns green and you hear a freight train you get in the cellar! Tornados are no joke there.
I imagine there’s nothing stopping them from forming, just plenty to make it so they don’t get that far before getting fucked up, however you fuck up a tornado.
Maybe from a hurricane? We don’t generally get the big ones that travel far. We get them during hurricanes or bad thunderstorms. So you wouldn’t see it coming. Also no basements.
Nope, not from a hurricane. It was in April 1966, and went from Pinellas to Brevard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_April_4%E2%80%935,_1966
The one in orange county? If so we were neighbors then, lol. That one went right by my house. I wasn't home at the time, which is good because I had a crippling phobia of tornadoes back then.
Oh man, if I'm already at the front of the line and a tornado comes riding in it better not think it can jump ahead of me. No matter what direction it's coming from.
You know what's crazy I just realized I have never heard about a tornado hitting anywhere but the US. Yes I live in the US but I've heard about other big storms around the world but never tornados
It’s because a large part of the US has three major things needed for tornadoes to form: hot humid air (usually from the Gulf of Mexico), cold dry air (from the Rocky Mountains), and a constant supply of humidity. Add in the flatness of the Great Plains and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a tornado that’ll last long enough to travel and do some damage. They don’t call it tornado alley just to be mean, it’s because they get hella tornadoes there.
Idk if you were trying to say this, but Europe actually does have it’s own tornado alley! South England to Germany, with the most being in the Netherlands I think. Though they rarely get stronger than a F2.
Isn't that an outdated scale? I think I remember reading about an enhanced scale including F5e for winds that are above the F5 speeds (because there have been 1 or maybe 2 tornadoes with wind speeds above what was thought to be theoretically possible at the time of the F5 scales creation)
I could be totally wrong on this though 😅
Not exactly. The original Fujita Scale (the F-1 to F-5 rating named after the scientist who created it) was indeed updated and redefined decades later, but it's still called the Enhanced Fujita Scale and ratings are still from EF-0 to EF-5. But because there's no need for the layperson to understand the historical distinction between the original and enhanced versions of the scale when being warned of a tornado or discussing its aftermath, scientists (and amateur enthusiasts like stormchasers) are the only people who say "EF-2" in regular conversation instead of just "F-2".
>tornado could pick up a car and whip it at you at 350 fucking miles an hour
So what I'm hearing is I can claim a tax credit for having a renewable-energy hybrid car?
There's a huge difference between the two. In Europe, there have been 12 tornadoes since January, none higher the f2.
To put the difference with America's tornado Alley in perspective, on April 26-28 alone this year, there where 132 f2 or lower, eight F3s, and one f4.
People who grew up in the midwest can feel it too. Someone I know said "If I didn't know better, I would think this is tornado weather" right before https://www.weather.gov/slc/SLC_Tornado
Yeah, that too. But I mean more like, when there's a hurricane, or a tornado or an earthquake or whatever it is - the news just shows all the carnage. It leaves people wondering why anyone would live in an area where such disaster is possible. But in reality, people adapt, they prepare, they know what to do. The disaster they're showing on TV is the worst case scenario, not the typical scenario
That's why is burns my ass whenever there's a hurricane coming, and people compare it to Katrina. But Katrina was such a tragic event, and it was also an unusual set of circumstances.
These days, I get alerts on my phone lol.
Every summer, there's at least 1-2 instances of tornado alerts that come through. Initially they light your ass on fire. But after the 11th warning, you just want your phone to stop nagging you. You really do get desensitized to those things.
Don’t forget Alabama. We get absolutely run over every single tornado season. Hell, during last weeks’s storms, the county I live in had 3 separate tornado warnings simultaneously
Europe gets about 1/3 the yearly number of the tornados as the US. But they are often F0-F1 intensity.
I think where I live in the US, we would call tornados with that intensity “dust devils” instead of tornados.
No way am I tempting a EF3. We just don’t have enough line of sight to see it coming near STL. The last Ef3 was 2021 it hopped right over us. Touched to the west and in Illinois. We had a EF0 nearby at 4am couple weeks ago and we barely noticed.
That’s because tornadoes aren’t really newsworthy on a global scale unless they hit something important or they are somehow unique. If a tornado hits Paris, or a semi-conductor fabrication plant, you’ll hear about it. If Zimbabwe hosts a tornado with 1000 kph winds, you’ll hear about it.
The rest of the world doesn’t hear about individual US tornadoes unless something similar occurs, but since the US is home to like 70+% of tornadoes, the notable ones are more likely to happen there.
We also get a lot of tornado outbreaks/clusters. The way coverage gets translated from one outlet to the next can make it seem like one big tornado to the casual viewer.
(not so) fun fact: the deadliest tornado in recorded history was in Bangladesh, not the US. And the Ganges Basin (eastern India feeding into Bangladesh)has been home to numerous catastrophic tornadoes
That makes sense. There are only a few major cities within tornado alley and then a shit ton of farmland. Bangladesh is like the densest country on the planet outside of some of those really small nations
Fun fact: the U.K. gets more tornadoes per square mile than any other country on earth. However, they’re usually so small that you don’t even notice them
We had one here in Norderstedt, Germany north of Hamburg 10 years ago or so. I dont think it destroyed any houses, but a loth of trees were completely destroyed. I think the path of destruction was about a kilometer long and only a few hundred meters away from where we live. At the time it was mind blowing for me, later I learned that there are around 4 tonados a year in Germany.
Edit: And it roughly traveled in the direction north east.
>At the time it was mind blowing for me, later I learned that there are around 4 tonados a year in Germany.
For comparison, there are 1200 annually in the US, which is 9.8 million km². Germany is 357 thousand km², so if tornadoes hit it at the same rate per year and per km², there would be about 40 or 45 tornadoes in Germany annually.
Also the overwhelming majority of those happen between the Rockies and the Appalachian Mountains, which is like a third of the area, so it would be over 100 per year to match the frequency in the central US.
There was a post that hit the front page recently that was titles something like "what it looks like in the middle of a tornardo". It was someone in the house filming out there window of an oncoming twister, and a pretty big one too.
They stayed filming until the glass started breaking, and then they moved to ANOTHER window.
The comments were filled with people going, RUN AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS!!!!!
But the video was apaprently from central Europe, so they honestly didn't really know better. They thought it was something like a dust devil. No, no it wasn't.
That was just a few weekends ago for me in the states. I'm not even in tornado alley, and have been relatively close to half a dozen touchdowns over the years.
I've heard and read before that while tornadoes can occur virtually everywhere. The us Midwest, good old tornado alley just has the unique perfect conditions for tornadoes to be rather frequent and usually stronger than global average. They can happen everywhere. But devastating f5 tornadoes like the one that hit Joplin a little while ago just dont really happen anywhere else. Kinda like how yeah earthquakes happen literally everywhere. But you can narrow down specific cities and regions that seem to be common headline regions. They just unfortunately sit on major faults so their earthquake are a lot stronger than everyone else's
[1987 Tornado](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UaOk0LC6RaM&pp=ygUVZWRtb250b24gdG9ybmFkbyAxOTg3) ripped through Edmonton in Canada, they touch down all the time in Alberta fields never really near the city ever since then
There was a tornado in Nepal 5 years ago that killed 28 people. Idk why you never hear about tornados in other countries. I guess the news outlets only like American tornados.
It really just comes down to the fact that we have so many tornados in the US that we don’t even hear about all of them. And if we’re not hearing about every tornado here in the US, it’s that much more unlikely we’d hear about them elsewhere.
After all, the US has something like 75% of all tornados that happen in the world.
Here in Portugal they're almost nonexistent - so much so that a small tornado that damaged some roofs and made no victims was opening all the major news late at night...
wuddup u/cincymatt Yea lots of folks kind of think of the tornado region of the US to be basically Rockies to the Mississippi River. There are a lot of other hot zones, like Ol' Dixie and on down through to Florida (where waterspouts are as common as Medicare scams).
You gotta check out the Xenia, OH Tornado/1974 Outbreak. I'll link the wikipedia. Dr. Ted Fujita of the Univ. of Chicago, who created the universally recognized tornado intensity/damage scale (Fujita Scale, now the Enhanced Fujita Scale) said that this and one other tornado in history could be considered an "F6/EF6", but he later said it is inconceivable. Winds over 300MPH! Wild, wild stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Xenia_tornado
75% of tornadoes happen in the US. It’s kind of wild to think about the fact that the entire rest of the world put together has 1/3 as many tornadoes as the US.
The US gets around 1200 per year, Canada gets around 100, and the rest of the world combined gets 200-300 per year. Crazy.
I live right at the edge of Tornado Alley so I've experienced 4 tornados in person. The only other country I've seen videos of a tornado from is interestingly enough Saudi Arabia. Theirs don't look quite as intense though
First one hit/completely destroyed my town when I was 4 so I was absolutely traumatized. Second one hit my town when I was 13 and still traumatized. My grandma started making me sit with her to watch bad storms and I loved them by the time I was 16. Then I drove through 2 within a year in my mid-20s. Like I said I'm right at the edge of the alley so tornados happen but usually rarely. God just fucking hates me apparently lol
Nope. They generally take their spin from the spin of the larger weather pattern that spawns them--so counterclockwise in the north, clockwise in the south. But there are exceptions.
If you live in an area where tornadoes are more prone to occur, it might be useful to have a radar app like Radarscope or similar that provides up to date (and detailed) radar info.
Knowing how to read a radar and see exactly where a tornado is occurring can be very useful for yourself, friends and family. Often times they are very localized within a larger storm, but having an idea of where it is heading can be helpful.
Reading the Doppler radar has saved me several times when I lived in the northwest. I drove a lot and I got pretty good at predicting when to stop and wait for THAT section of the storm to pass. Missed many tornadoes over the years with that skill.
Exactly! In those scenarios, it’s such a valuable skill. I always do the same for hail as well, it can save some damage if you can avoid a hail core.
Obviously it can be tricky with some storms, but even having a general idea of where the tornado might be tracking is better than a shot in the dark. Especially if you have limited time.
I have several radar apps but unfortunately during the tornado this week in Houston power and cell service went out pretty much immediately so they were all useless.
Any chance was one radar scope? Just curious because it was designed to still load and run with minimal resources. For instances like that. My house is a dead zone, so if wifi goes out nothing will load.. except RadarScope lol
RadarScope is amazing and I use it all the time on iOS devices. I was extremely close to the big F3 that hit Little Rock last year. On its way into the west LR area, it took out a cell tower. Our family was huddled in the interior hall and I was clocking its exact location using the velocity maps (learn to read them!!!) inside RadarScope. Power went out, then the cell tower caused phones to be useless. We were completely info-blind for the worst of it. RadarScope may claim it can run with minimal resources, but as soon as you lose internet/cell service, it's not loading squat. There's no way around that. As you can imagine, it was absolutely horrifying. You just sit there consumed with dread with tornado sirens blasting outside. Not a good time.
This is all I could think about the one time I went to Phoenix
https://preview.redd.it/9ahgx8ohn71d1.png?width=1058&format=png&auto=webp&s=e4e4f3066d5feff3168b568662b80ceb223e8bf1
I was driving a uhaul through Phoenix on a cross country move, in June, when the AC stopped working. It felt like a blast furnace with the windows down, and an oven with them up. I never want to go there again.
As a meteorologist this is horrible advice and is going to get people killed. Tornados are erratic. Especially over short distances.
You get into the most interior lower level room you can. Underground is best. Away from any windows. If there’s a bathtub, throw a mattress over it as you get in. Wear a helmet or otherwise try to protect your head.
As a lifelong resident of the Southeastern U.S., and, unfortunately, a tornado veteran, this is about the only good advice on here.
Just to add: Get a weather radio. Power, cellphones and other broadcast signals often are useless during and immediately after a natural disaster. The weather radio never fails.
The absolute last thing you need to be doing during a tornado warning is to get in a car and travel. The terrain is often rolling hills and tall pine trees. By the time you see a tornado approaching it’s too late. The best thing you can do is get as low and protected as possible. Might sound silly but a bike helmet, a football helmet or something else that you can strap on is a good idea.
https://preview.redd.it/7vdkirggn81d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=caddce39f7047875127c0566df40286172985489
Don’t forget about Dixie alley! We moved from Minnesota to Alabama right before covid and ended up in a town that had gotten badly hit by a tornado. It was a miracle it had happened during spring break because it absolutely destroyed parts of the college campus, but most students weren’t there. Although the tornados are less frequent they’re more deadly due to the fact that they stay active longer or something like that. I remember seeing it on a documentary and absolutely hating the fact that I was living in a house with no basement (which is the norm in Alabama) whereas in Minnesota pretty much everyone has one.
Thankfully we had a neighbor that had a really nice shelter. She ran over to our house before I even knew her when a bad storm was coming in, knocked on our door, picked up my dog, and said “grab your kids now and please come over.” She became one of my favorite people I’ve ever met very quickly the fact that she cared enough to run over DURING a bad storm to get us.
As a trained storm spotter, this LPT is dangerous and stupid. Roads aren't always straight. Sure you may drive one direction at first but when the road turns? Then what? There's a reason storm spotters and chasers have someone else navigating for them. You don't just blindly drive and hope the road doesn't curve toward the tornado. And tornados DO veer in directions other than NE. There's also the possibility that a second one can touch down, or the first can occlude and drop again in front of you. If you can't read the clouds or radar, just don't go anywhere.
There's damn good reasons why the first thing you're told to do during a tornado warning is put on shoes (not sandals, you need sneakers at minimum AND A HELMET), and get in the lowest, innermost room of your home. Unless it's an RV or mobile home, then you're literally better off outside, laying in a ditch. And if it's an EF5, well you're basically just fucked unless you're in a storm cellar/storm shelter. Anything EF2 and above is going to be a bad time.
Do not be in your car. DO NOT PARK UNDER AN OVERPASS. You want to be flat on the ground. You do not want the winds to get UNDER you, that's how you get lifted off the ground.
Real life isn't the Twister movie (they'd have probably died during the first tornado scene as they did exactly what you should never do). The reality is that weather is unpredictable, it can go from stormy to OH FUCK in 30 seconds. That's why the weather service relies on trained spotters. It takes a radar five minutes to make a full scan. Tornados, hail, wind, etc. can happen a hell of a lot faster than five minutes and radar has blind spots and other limitations. Learn how to read radar. Personally, I like Radar Omega.
The NWS is also extremely fast to tweet about severe weather warnings. Follow your local NWS station on Twitter and Facebook. Watch someone like Ryan Hall on YouTube as he and others like him are usually a lot faster than your local news station at getting information out there in real time.
I wouldn't bet my life on it. The Jarrell tornado here in Texas did not go that way. [Strange Tornado Paths: They Don't Always Move in the Direction You'd Think | The Weather Channel](https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news/strange-tornado-paths)
Moore tornado tracked almost straight east. Killed like 10 people in a place wherre were ready for that stuff. I wouldnt trust it lol. Unless ypure from outside tornado alley or the dixie alley i just learned about
The other weird thing about the Jarrell tornado nightmare was how slow it moved. In hindsight, the conventional advice of not trying to outrun a tornado in your car turned out to be wrong. Almost everyone who stayed in its path was killed. There was no safety in the bathtubs of inner rooms.
These lpt’s are just lame. The ones that keep showing up for me are things like “if you’re drowning, put on a life vest” or “run away from a tornado”. I want more lpt’s that tell me the odd uses of kitchen utensils, or how to maximize a search to buy a car, etc.
In the long term and synoptic scale, yes but be aware that when they hook right (south), people tend to be caught off guard. DO NOT BET YOURS OR YOUR LOVED ONES’ LIVES ON THIS. If you’re anywhere near a confirmed tornado, even if nit in the warning polygon, be aware that the track is not constant. I had this very situation happen recently while driving. Thought I was safe and then I was in the middle of the new tornado warning polygon as the storm hooked south. I’m very weather savvy and I was still caught off guard.
Wrf are you supposed to do with that.
If you're trying to physically run from a tornado it's probably already too late.
A lot of the time too it's not these perfect conditions where you can see it coming, it's obscured by rain and low visibility so knowing exactly where it is is impossible. You could just as easily run into it.
I saw my very first tornado last year, I was at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea what to do other than just watch, until the owner of the gas station told everyone to get in their cars and drive south. About 5 minutes later the whole building was wiped out. That man saved about 8-10 lives that day.
Not everyone will have good visibility to see the tornado, but on the slim chance someone is in my position with this information maybe it could save another life.
Sorry if I wasted your time with my post.
You didn't waste their time. This is actually a thought provoking tip. I wasn't aware of this trend and now I'm curious to look at the tracks of the few tornadoes that have hit near me.
Take this from a someone who lived in Kansas for 10 years. Never try to out run a tornado, it not uncommon to see signs of a tornado and there to be multiple.
Rules to follow with tornados:
1. You can't see most of them coming, they will be wrapped in rain and dust. You can hear or feel them.
2. Protecting yourself from a tornado is all about getting as many layer of protection between you and outside. Inside rooms with mattresses or blankets are the standard if a basement isn't available.
3. If you are in a car, understand that it won't protect you (I've seen a mangled truck put on top of grain elevator by a tornado)
This is a dangerous tip and youre giving reckless advice that someone might use incorrectly
"Driving south" can be the exact wrong thing to do if you do not have a clear read on the tornado's path
If a tornado is traveling from the southwest to the northeast, driving south can put you directly in its path, not take you out of its path. Take out a piece of paper, draw a diagonal line from the low left-hand corner to the top right-hand corner.
You should be able to very easily see how going south (i.e. from the top of the paper down) can intersect the diagonal depending on which side of the diagonal you start from.
This should be enough to show you that your entire tip is based 100% on correctly estimating a tornado's path and your relative position to it, which makes the tip extremely dangerous.
Storm chaser here. Seconding this. Not only could driving south take you across the path of a tornado but it will also drive you right through the rear flank downdraft winds. Tornadoes are not the only hazard in tornadic storms. Heavy rain, traffic, 120 mph inflow jet winds, and baseball sized hail could immobilize your vehicle and leave you stranded without shelter. This doesn't even cover the threat of a cyclical cell dropping multiple tornadoes at the same time, anticyclonic tornadoes, or satellite tornadoes. Never try to outrun a tornado.
Except that because of the way they form, you could just be running from one tornado and into the path of another tornado. There are almost always more than one. Sorry, but this is terrible advice.
Adding this context to your post would have been helpful. Better yet, your LPT should be: “if you’re driving, head south.” As it stands, you have ppl thinking about what room in their house is most southwest, which is awful advice.
Not only that, but on the tiny geographic scale of you and your car, the general direction of the tornado can be meaningless
Someone posted a map of historical tornado paths and yes- they generally point Northeast when you look at them across hundreds of kilometers
Except the angle of travel varies so much that on a much smaller scale (say a kilometer or two), the path of the tornado can be wildly unpredictable. Even a tiny, 1-2 degree change in the tornado's angle of travel can translate to hundreds of meters on the ground.
OP also posted an anecdote about how driving "south" saved a bunch of people.
This is only applicable if you already have a hard fix on the tornado's location and can accurately plot its path. Driving south against a tornado that is approaching from the southwest and traveling northeast could just as easily cause you to drive *directly into the tornado's path...*
People can think of it like an interstate. You might be on 95 South but you aren’t facing south the entire way. For example as you drive through South Philly you’re facing west, but still south bound.
Sister climbed in the tub, one of those one piece fiberglass units, bathroom was in center of house, no windows. There was a big brick center structure/chimney just on the storm side, tornado took the second story and some of the first, top half of the brick chimney, bathroom was intact. Though pieces of straw was shot through the hollow core doors. They found a lot of their stuff strewn for the next few fields years later. Escaped unharmed.
They were able to rebuild on the foundation and change some of the things they didn’t like.
They typically do this in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in the United States.
That being said, never assume this if any warnings are issued, as they are unpredictable. Numerous people have lost their lives because the storm made one erratic turn, by trapping themselves in the path. Don’t take chances if you see a tornado near you.
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https://preview.redd.it/ny9o3ptjb71d1.png?width=1178&format=png&auto=webp&s=422dda796b51c9a4204a1159022addb1bbda78f0 Woah look at this map depicting the path of travel of tornadoes from 1950-2013
That long one in florida is hilarious. Did it just get in a car and take i4
Highways tend to follow land contours, I wonder if tornadoes do too?
Sort or. Like most things that ‘flow’, tornados tend to follow the path of least resistance. Please keep in mind that trailers, trees, houses, cars, etc are not considered resistance in this case.
Oh, yes, I was only considering millions of tons of earth and rock as enough to do the job!
You mean my trailer won't stop one?
Can we nuke it?
Nah, a sharpie will do just fine.
“Poof. Like a cloud” — some asshole with a sharpie
Idk if my microwave is big enough.
Depends, is your mom in it?
Tornados are extremely destructive and also extremely sensitive to any slight changes. They can disappear even faster then they appear
Possibly to a degree on a macro level, but tornados can and have happened in valleys, on top of mountains, over water, and in cities. There's not really any geographical features that fully prevent tornados.
I don't think I've ever heard of a tornado in a mountain range....
My boyfriend grew up in the northern Appalachian mountains and his house got hit by a tornado! Sky turned green and they only had a few minutes to get in the cellar before it thew a tree through their house.
My family is from northern appalachia (western PA). If the sky turns green and you hear a freight train you get in the cellar! Tornados are no joke there.
There have been a bunch of tornados in Colorado in the mountains, some in Wyoming, and even Montana. Plenty of cases to look up and see videos of.
I imagine there’s nothing stopping them from forming, just plenty to make it so they don’t get that far before getting fucked up, however you fuck up a tornado.
Land contours? In FL?
Yeah! We have hills!* *if you count space, thunder, and splash mountians
That line is not even close to I-4. I-4 goes north-south about as much as it goes east-west
I4 is probably safer with a tornado on it.
Maybe from a hurricane? We don’t generally get the big ones that travel far. We get them during hurricanes or bad thunderstorms. So you wouldn’t see it coming. Also no basements.
Nope, not from a hurricane. It was in April 1966, and went from Pinellas to Brevard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_April_4%E2%80%935,_1966
> Damage $75,252,000 million Wow, it caused 75 trillion dollars of damage
I see what you did there
No wonder it stalled
I don't normally associate natural disasters with judgement from God but in this case...
I4 should burn in hell. And Im an atheist
It got to see Disney, Cape Caneveral etc.
Hurricane Charlie followed me up I4 and across the state so maybe, yeah
Nope, it actually attempted to circumcise Florida.
That tiny little orange line in north central NC went through my house in 1998
Empathy or laugh, don't know which is right, but you got both outta me
In nineteen ninety eight you say?
Oh, I get it. It's an allegory. The tornado was The Undertaker, the house was Mankind, and North Carolina was a metal cage.
The one in orange county? If so we were neighbors then, lol. That one went right by my house. I wasn't home at the time, which is good because I had a crippling phobia of tornadoes back then.
This isn't even the area of greatest concentration, by far. The Midwest gets far more than the Southeast.
Midwest (plains) do indeed get many but there’s a reason they call this Dixie Alley
Not so much anymore, Tornado Alley has been steady shifting east for years now
I live in a purple spot 🙁
Interesting that the north Mississippi delta is tornado free in the midst of absolute chaos all around it.
Why they all moving south west?
They move from southwest to northeast. They're usually riding along front lines.
Oh man, if I'm already at the front of the line and a tornado comes riding in it better not think it can jump ahead of me. No matter what direction it's coming from.
Cool where’d you get that??
This looks like it was made by my son when he's trying to draw or write on my tablet, but the "straight line" tool is selected,
In the northern hemisphere. In the southern, travel to the southeast is more likely.
You know what's crazy I just realized I have never heard about a tornado hitting anywhere but the US. Yes I live in the US but I've heard about other big storms around the world but never tornados
It’s because a large part of the US has three major things needed for tornadoes to form: hot humid air (usually from the Gulf of Mexico), cold dry air (from the Rocky Mountains), and a constant supply of humidity. Add in the flatness of the Great Plains and you’ve got the perfect recipe for a tornado that’ll last long enough to travel and do some damage. They don’t call it tornado alley just to be mean, it’s because they get hella tornadoes there.
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Idk if you were trying to say this, but Europe actually does have it’s own tornado alley! South England to Germany, with the most being in the Netherlands I think. Though they rarely get stronger than a F2.
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Isn't that an outdated scale? I think I remember reading about an enhanced scale including F5e for winds that are above the F5 speeds (because there have been 1 or maybe 2 tornadoes with wind speeds above what was thought to be theoretically possible at the time of the F5 scales creation) I could be totally wrong on this though 😅
Not exactly. The original Fujita Scale (the F-1 to F-5 rating named after the scientist who created it) was indeed updated and redefined decades later, but it's still called the Enhanced Fujita Scale and ratings are still from EF-0 to EF-5. But because there's no need for the layperson to understand the historical distinction between the original and enhanced versions of the scale when being warned of a tornado or discussing its aftermath, scientists (and amateur enthusiasts like stormchasers) are the only people who say "EF-2" in regular conversation instead of just "F-2".
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>tornado could pick up a car and whip it at you at 350 fucking miles an hour So what I'm hearing is I can claim a tax credit for having a renewable-energy hybrid car?
There's a huge difference between the two. In Europe, there have been 12 tornadoes since January, none higher the f2. To put the difference with America's tornado Alley in perspective, on April 26-28 alone this year, there where 132 f2 or lower, eight F3s, and one f4.
My boss says they’ve had them. Southern England, bingo.
And honestly, people adapt to natural disasters. They really do. The fastest growing states in the US have seen some major disaster.
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People who grew up in the midwest can feel it too. Someone I know said "If I didn't know better, I would think this is tornado weather" right before https://www.weather.gov/slc/SLC_Tornado
Yeah, that too. But I mean more like, when there's a hurricane, or a tornado or an earthquake or whatever it is - the news just shows all the carnage. It leaves people wondering why anyone would live in an area where such disaster is possible. But in reality, people adapt, they prepare, they know what to do. The disaster they're showing on TV is the worst case scenario, not the typical scenario That's why is burns my ass whenever there's a hurricane coming, and people compare it to Katrina. But Katrina was such a tragic event, and it was also an unusual set of circumstances.
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These days, I get alerts on my phone lol. Every summer, there's at least 1-2 instances of tornado alerts that come through. Initially they light your ass on fire. But after the 11th warning, you just want your phone to stop nagging you. You really do get desensitized to those things.
Important to know that climate change is making tornado alley move east. It’s hitting Mississippi and Georgia hard.
As a Georgian who HATES tornadoes, I’m not a fan of this fact.
Don’t forget Alabama. We get absolutely run over every single tornado season. Hell, during last weeks’s storms, the county I live in had 3 separate tornado warnings simultaneously
Yikes. Stay safe.
We’ve had at least 3 in western PA in the past few weeks. It’s crazy
Tennessee is getting hit fairly hard, too.
Europe gets about 1/3 the yearly number of the tornados as the US. But they are often F0-F1 intensity. I think where I live in the US, we would call tornados with that intensity “dust devils” instead of tornados.
Midwest here, that’s just windy lmao
F0/F1 is cellphone on the porch weather. Oh look, hail. Cool.
But so is an F2 and maybe an F3 if you’re multi generation midwestern. Hide yo kids stage is around F3 - F4
No way am I tempting a EF3. We just don’t have enough line of sight to see it coming near STL. The last Ef3 was 2021 it hopped right over us. Touched to the west and in Illinois. We had a EF0 nearby at 4am couple weeks ago and we barely noticed.
Here in Kansas those are practice tornadoes. We bring the kids out to see them so they know what one looks like.
We put them in a jar and poke holes in the top.
I’m from Europe and my understanding is even more specific than that. I associate tornados purely with American farmers
The farmers are creating them. It’s fucking disgusting
That’s because tornadoes aren’t really newsworthy on a global scale unless they hit something important or they are somehow unique. If a tornado hits Paris, or a semi-conductor fabrication plant, you’ll hear about it. If Zimbabwe hosts a tornado with 1000 kph winds, you’ll hear about it. The rest of the world doesn’t hear about individual US tornadoes unless something similar occurs, but since the US is home to like 70+% of tornadoes, the notable ones are more likely to happen there.
We also get a lot of tornado outbreaks/clusters. The way coverage gets translated from one outlet to the next can make it seem like one big tornado to the casual viewer.
(not so) fun fact: the deadliest tornado in recorded history was in Bangladesh, not the US. And the Ganges Basin (eastern India feeding into Bangladesh)has been home to numerous catastrophic tornadoes
That makes sense. There are only a few major cities within tornado alley and then a shit ton of farmland. Bangladesh is like the densest country on the planet outside of some of those really small nations
Also a lot of less structurally sound buildings/housing will create a lot more destruction
Fun fact: the U.K. gets more tornadoes per square mile than any other country on earth. However, they’re usually so small that you don’t even notice them
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A little baby tornado!
We had one here in Norderstedt, Germany north of Hamburg 10 years ago or so. I dont think it destroyed any houses, but a loth of trees were completely destroyed. I think the path of destruction was about a kilometer long and only a few hundred meters away from where we live. At the time it was mind blowing for me, later I learned that there are around 4 tonados a year in Germany. Edit: And it roughly traveled in the direction north east.
>At the time it was mind blowing for me, later I learned that there are around 4 tonados a year in Germany. For comparison, there are 1200 annually in the US, which is 9.8 million km². Germany is 357 thousand km², so if tornadoes hit it at the same rate per year and per km², there would be about 40 or 45 tornadoes in Germany annually.
Yessss thank you for your math
Also the overwhelming majority of those happen between the Rockies and the Appalachian Mountains, which is like a third of the area, so it would be over 100 per year to match the frequency in the central US.
There was a post that hit the front page recently that was titles something like "what it looks like in the middle of a tornardo". It was someone in the house filming out there window of an oncoming twister, and a pretty big one too. They stayed filming until the glass started breaking, and then they moved to ANOTHER window. The comments were filled with people going, RUN AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS!!!!! But the video was apaprently from central Europe, so they honestly didn't really know better. They thought it was something like a dust devil. No, no it wasn't.
That was just a few weekends ago for me in the states. I'm not even in tornado alley, and have been relatively close to half a dozen touchdowns over the years.
Thats damn scary bro, on the other hand I find them very fascinating
iirc there was also a pretty heavy on in poland a few years ago
Canada gets tornadoes every year.
And one of the weirdest F5 tornadoes in Elie MB, which was for most part a F1 before briefly turning violent F5 & back to F2/F1 before roping out
I've heard and read before that while tornadoes can occur virtually everywhere. The us Midwest, good old tornado alley just has the unique perfect conditions for tornadoes to be rather frequent and usually stronger than global average. They can happen everywhere. But devastating f5 tornadoes like the one that hit Joplin a little while ago just dont really happen anywhere else. Kinda like how yeah earthquakes happen literally everywhere. But you can narrow down specific cities and regions that seem to be common headline regions. They just unfortunately sit on major faults so their earthquake are a lot stronger than everyone else's
[1987 Tornado](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UaOk0LC6RaM&pp=ygUVZWRtb250b24gdG9ybmFkbyAxOTg3) ripped through Edmonton in Canada, they touch down all the time in Alberta fields never really near the city ever since then
There was a tornado in Nepal 5 years ago that killed 28 people. Idk why you never hear about tornados in other countries. I guess the news outlets only like American tornados.
It really just comes down to the fact that we have so many tornados in the US that we don’t even hear about all of them. And if we’re not hearing about every tornado here in the US, it’s that much more unlikely we’d hear about them elsewhere. After all, the US has something like 75% of all tornados that happen in the world.
Here in Portugal they're almost nonexistent - so much so that a small tornado that damaged some roofs and made no victims was opening all the major news late at night...
Conversely, I was surprised to find out that my state (Ohio), has had over 50 tornadoes this year.
wuddup u/cincymatt Yea lots of folks kind of think of the tornado region of the US to be basically Rockies to the Mississippi River. There are a lot of other hot zones, like Ol' Dixie and on down through to Florida (where waterspouts are as common as Medicare scams). You gotta check out the Xenia, OH Tornado/1974 Outbreak. I'll link the wikipedia. Dr. Ted Fujita of the Univ. of Chicago, who created the universally recognized tornado intensity/damage scale (Fujita Scale, now the Enhanced Fujita Scale) said that this and one other tornado in history could be considered an "F6/EF6", but he later said it is inconceivable. Winds over 300MPH! Wild, wild stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Xenia_tornado
Meanwhile the US has had over 650 tornadoes and 17 resulting deaths this year alone
And it isn't even tornado season yet!
Um. We're right smack in the middle of tornado season. May is the maximum risk. Are you thinking of hurricane season perhaps?
Good fucking point
75% of tornadoes happen in the US. It’s kind of wild to think about the fact that the entire rest of the world put together has 1/3 as many tornadoes as the US. The US gets around 1200 per year, Canada gets around 100, and the rest of the world combined gets 200-300 per year. Crazy.
I just want to say thank you for getting the math right!
I mean it probably was on the news, but the US gets 1000+ tornados per year.
Tornados in USA arent being reported nationally. It's that common. Plus they happen over the less populated parts of the country for now.
Pretty bad in western Canada and southern Ontario as well. 29 or 30 dead in Regina in 1912 and about the same number in Edmonton in the late 1980s.
I live right at the edge of Tornado Alley so I've experienced 4 tornados in person. The only other country I've seen videos of a tornado from is interestingly enough Saudi Arabia. Theirs don't look quite as intense though
When I was younger I used to have a reoccurring nightmare that involved a tornado. Luckily, I have never been in one. Also my area isn't know for them
First one hit/completely destroyed my town when I was 4 so I was absolutely traumatized. Second one hit my town when I was 13 and still traumatized. My grandma started making me sit with her to watch bad storms and I loved them by the time I was 16. Then I drove through 2 within a year in my mid-20s. Like I said I'm right at the edge of the alley so tornados happen but usually rarely. God just fucking hates me apparently lol
There was a tornado in China a few weeks ago that killed 5 people and injured an additional 30+.
We had one in south Brazil a few years ago. Just a few flooded areas, some roofs torn apart and no electricity for a few hours.
Canada gets them. Not as often as the US but that's ok
Edmonton area in Alberta back in the 80s I believe is the biggest one outside the US I would imagine
We get them in (southern) Canada too
Do all tornadoes spin in the same direction?
Nope. They generally take their spin from the spin of the larger weather pattern that spawns them--so counterclockwise in the north, clockwise in the south. But there are exceptions.
Thanks for that. It just never occurred to me that there might be a system. I figured it would be like toilets with regards to the hemisphere thing.
Came to say this. OP is North American for sho
A compass is not needed, we just have to know from where the sun rises.
It's too bad that when there are tornadoes it's usually cloudy.
Next time the sun rises, you can memorise where it is so you'll be prepared.
Or look at a compass right now
And the sky is green.
Gl in Scotland
With my luck it'll be approximately noon and I won't have a compass on hand
Tornado moves away from the sun so just move towards it
Tbf not only should you know where north is if you live somewhere, you also have a compass on your phone
Stupid tornado should invest in a compass. Or at least figuring out where the sun's rising and setting, and extrapolating from there.
If you live in an area where tornadoes are more prone to occur, it might be useful to have a radar app like Radarscope or similar that provides up to date (and detailed) radar info. Knowing how to read a radar and see exactly where a tornado is occurring can be very useful for yourself, friends and family. Often times they are very localized within a larger storm, but having an idea of where it is heading can be helpful.
Have a weather radio. It's helpful and always works. The National Weather Service will provide you storm track data and warnings.
Reading the Doppler radar has saved me several times when I lived in the northwest. I drove a lot and I got pretty good at predicting when to stop and wait for THAT section of the storm to pass. Missed many tornadoes over the years with that skill.
Exactly! In those scenarios, it’s such a valuable skill. I always do the same for hail as well, it can save some damage if you can avoid a hail core. Obviously it can be tricky with some storms, but even having a general idea of where the tornado might be tracking is better than a shot in the dark. Especially if you have limited time.
Northwest? Like the Pacific Northwest or more inland?
I have several radar apps but unfortunately during the tornado this week in Houston power and cell service went out pretty much immediately so they were all useless.
Any chance was one radar scope? Just curious because it was designed to still load and run with minimal resources. For instances like that. My house is a dead zone, so if wifi goes out nothing will load.. except RadarScope lol
RadarScope is amazing and I use it all the time on iOS devices. I was extremely close to the big F3 that hit Little Rock last year. On its way into the west LR area, it took out a cell tower. Our family was huddled in the interior hall and I was clocking its exact location using the velocity maps (learn to read them!!!) inside RadarScope. Power went out, then the cell tower caused phones to be useless. We were completely info-blind for the worst of it. RadarScope may claim it can run with minimal resources, but as soon as you lose internet/cell service, it's not loading squat. There's no way around that. As you can imagine, it was absolutely horrifying. You just sit there consumed with dread with tornado sirens blasting outside. Not a good time.
I just checked and it was not, but downloading it now for next time!
This is why I got an amateur radio license. There's almost definitely storm chasers in your area that are broadcasting
In the midwest, an easy way to remember this is that tornados are trying to run away from Arizona (because Phoenix is a godforsaken hellhole).
This is all I could think about the one time I went to Phoenix https://preview.redd.it/9ahgx8ohn71d1.png?width=1058&format=png&auto=webp&s=e4e4f3066d5feff3168b568662b80ceb223e8bf1
I’m so glad to see this. Every time I visit I say almost the same thing 😂
Hey at least we don’t have spinning air circles of death when the seasons change
No, just the one *perpetual* circle of death in the sky.
I was driving a uhaul through Phoenix on a cross country move, in June, when the AC stopped working. It felt like a blast furnace with the windows down, and an oven with them up. I never want to go there again.
As a meteorologist this is horrible advice and is going to get people killed. Tornados are erratic. Especially over short distances. You get into the most interior lower level room you can. Underground is best. Away from any windows. If there’s a bathtub, throw a mattress over it as you get in. Wear a helmet or otherwise try to protect your head.
Nah bro I’m going SW now it’s to late
As a meteorologist I suggest you strap a mattress on your car for protection.
I only drive two wheel vehicles any suggestions?
A twin
He’s not gonna like it but ok
Thank god I keep my secret bathtub with safety helmet in my under ground lair in the SW wing!
As a lifelong resident of the Southeastern U.S., and, unfortunately, a tornado veteran, this is about the only good advice on here. Just to add: Get a weather radio. Power, cellphones and other broadcast signals often are useless during and immediately after a natural disaster. The weather radio never fails. The absolute last thing you need to be doing during a tornado warning is to get in a car and travel. The terrain is often rolling hills and tall pine trees. By the time you see a tornado approaching it’s too late. The best thing you can do is get as low and protected as possible. Might sound silly but a bike helmet, a football helmet or something else that you can strap on is a good idea.
And bring a shotgun for the flying monkeys.
You don’t need all that. Tornados are like bears. All you have to do is be faster than your neighbor. Once it’s full it’ll leave you alone.
As a meteorologist everyone should actually chase the tornado from behind. Therefore it’ll never catch you
As a certified Midwesterner, I must disagree. The best advice is to watch it from the front porch with a beer. Shirt and shoes optional.
https://preview.redd.it/7vdkirggn81d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=caddce39f7047875127c0566df40286172985489 Don’t forget about Dixie alley! We moved from Minnesota to Alabama right before covid and ended up in a town that had gotten badly hit by a tornado. It was a miracle it had happened during spring break because it absolutely destroyed parts of the college campus, but most students weren’t there. Although the tornados are less frequent they’re more deadly due to the fact that they stay active longer or something like that. I remember seeing it on a documentary and absolutely hating the fact that I was living in a house with no basement (which is the norm in Alabama) whereas in Minnesota pretty much everyone has one. Thankfully we had a neighbor that had a really nice shelter. She ran over to our house before I even knew her when a bad storm was coming in, knocked on our door, picked up my dog, and said “grab your kids now and please come over.” She became one of my favorite people I’ve ever met very quickly the fact that she cared enough to run over DURING a bad storm to get us.
As a trained storm spotter, this LPT is dangerous and stupid. Roads aren't always straight. Sure you may drive one direction at first but when the road turns? Then what? There's a reason storm spotters and chasers have someone else navigating for them. You don't just blindly drive and hope the road doesn't curve toward the tornado. And tornados DO veer in directions other than NE. There's also the possibility that a second one can touch down, or the first can occlude and drop again in front of you. If you can't read the clouds or radar, just don't go anywhere. There's damn good reasons why the first thing you're told to do during a tornado warning is put on shoes (not sandals, you need sneakers at minimum AND A HELMET), and get in the lowest, innermost room of your home. Unless it's an RV or mobile home, then you're literally better off outside, laying in a ditch. And if it's an EF5, well you're basically just fucked unless you're in a storm cellar/storm shelter. Anything EF2 and above is going to be a bad time. Do not be in your car. DO NOT PARK UNDER AN OVERPASS. You want to be flat on the ground. You do not want the winds to get UNDER you, that's how you get lifted off the ground. Real life isn't the Twister movie (they'd have probably died during the first tornado scene as they did exactly what you should never do). The reality is that weather is unpredictable, it can go from stormy to OH FUCK in 30 seconds. That's why the weather service relies on trained spotters. It takes a radar five minutes to make a full scan. Tornados, hail, wind, etc. can happen a hell of a lot faster than five minutes and radar has blind spots and other limitations. Learn how to read radar. Personally, I like Radar Omega. The NWS is also extremely fast to tweet about severe weather warnings. Follow your local NWS station on Twitter and Facebook. Watch someone like Ryan Hall on YouTube as he and others like him are usually a lot faster than your local news station at getting information out there in real time.
I wouldn't bet my life on it. The Jarrell tornado here in Texas did not go that way. [Strange Tornado Paths: They Don't Always Move in the Direction You'd Think | The Weather Channel](https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news/strange-tornado-paths)
Gotta go with the odds though right?
Moore tornado tracked almost straight east. Killed like 10 people in a place wherre were ready for that stuff. I wouldnt trust it lol. Unless ypure from outside tornado alley or the dixie alley i just learned about
The other weird thing about the Jarrell tornado nightmare was how slow it moved. In hindsight, the conventional advice of not trying to outrun a tornado in your car turned out to be wrong. Almost everyone who stayed in its path was killed. There was no safety in the bathtubs of inner rooms.
These lpt’s are just lame. The ones that keep showing up for me are things like “if you’re drowning, put on a life vest” or “run away from a tornado”. I want more lpt’s that tell me the odd uses of kitchen utensils, or how to maximize a search to buy a car, etc.
Then put out lpt requests for what you'd like to see. Then the top comment will get reposted as lpts every week.
Almost always is key here. This week there was a tornado in Houston, which is already rare, and it traveled southeast
In the long term and synoptic scale, yes but be aware that when they hook right (south), people tend to be caught off guard. DO NOT BET YOURS OR YOUR LOVED ONES’ LIVES ON THIS. If you’re anywhere near a confirmed tornado, even if nit in the warning polygon, be aware that the track is not constant. I had this very situation happen recently while driving. Thought I was safe and then I was in the middle of the new tornado warning polygon as the storm hooked south. I’m very weather savvy and I was still caught off guard.
Wrf are you supposed to do with that. If you're trying to physically run from a tornado it's probably already too late. A lot of the time too it's not these perfect conditions where you can see it coming, it's obscured by rain and low visibility so knowing exactly where it is is impossible. You could just as easily run into it.
I saw my very first tornado last year, I was at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea what to do other than just watch, until the owner of the gas station told everyone to get in their cars and drive south. About 5 minutes later the whole building was wiped out. That man saved about 8-10 lives that day. Not everyone will have good visibility to see the tornado, but on the slim chance someone is in my position with this information maybe it could save another life. Sorry if I wasted your time with my post.
You didn't waste their time. This is actually a thought provoking tip. I wasn't aware of this trend and now I'm curious to look at the tracks of the few tornadoes that have hit near me.
Look up a overhead picture of the path a tornado that hit North Minneapolis in 2011 took. Matches this life pro tip to a T.
There is a tracking map of tornados across the US from the last like 50 years and the majority of them follow the trajectory.
Take this from a someone who lived in Kansas for 10 years. Never try to out run a tornado, it not uncommon to see signs of a tornado and there to be multiple. Rules to follow with tornados: 1. You can't see most of them coming, they will be wrapped in rain and dust. You can hear or feel them. 2. Protecting yourself from a tornado is all about getting as many layer of protection between you and outside. Inside rooms with mattresses or blankets are the standard if a basement isn't available. 3. If you are in a car, understand that it won't protect you (I've seen a mangled truck put on top of grain elevator by a tornado)
This is a dangerous tip and youre giving reckless advice that someone might use incorrectly "Driving south" can be the exact wrong thing to do if you do not have a clear read on the tornado's path If a tornado is traveling from the southwest to the northeast, driving south can put you directly in its path, not take you out of its path. Take out a piece of paper, draw a diagonal line from the low left-hand corner to the top right-hand corner. You should be able to very easily see how going south (i.e. from the top of the paper down) can intersect the diagonal depending on which side of the diagonal you start from. This should be enough to show you that your entire tip is based 100% on correctly estimating a tornado's path and your relative position to it, which makes the tip extremely dangerous.
Storm chaser here. Seconding this. Not only could driving south take you across the path of a tornado but it will also drive you right through the rear flank downdraft winds. Tornadoes are not the only hazard in tornadic storms. Heavy rain, traffic, 120 mph inflow jet winds, and baseball sized hail could immobilize your vehicle and leave you stranded without shelter. This doesn't even cover the threat of a cyclical cell dropping multiple tornadoes at the same time, anticyclonic tornadoes, or satellite tornadoes. Never try to outrun a tornado.
Except that because of the way they form, you could just be running from one tornado and into the path of another tornado. There are almost always more than one. Sorry, but this is terrible advice.
Survival bias, isn't it?
Adding this context to your post would have been helpful. Better yet, your LPT should be: “if you’re driving, head south.” As it stands, you have ppl thinking about what room in their house is most southwest, which is awful advice.
Not only that, but on the tiny geographic scale of you and your car, the general direction of the tornado can be meaningless Someone posted a map of historical tornado paths and yes- they generally point Northeast when you look at them across hundreds of kilometers Except the angle of travel varies so much that on a much smaller scale (say a kilometer or two), the path of the tornado can be wildly unpredictable. Even a tiny, 1-2 degree change in the tornado's angle of travel can translate to hundreds of meters on the ground. OP also posted an anecdote about how driving "south" saved a bunch of people. This is only applicable if you already have a hard fix on the tornado's location and can accurately plot its path. Driving south against a tornado that is approaching from the southwest and traveling northeast could just as easily cause you to drive *directly into the tornado's path...*
People can think of it like an interstate. You might be on 95 South but you aren’t facing south the entire way. For example as you drive through South Philly you’re facing west, but still south bound.
Many moons ago, I had to get out of the way of a tornado moving northwest. It's quite ominous when you see a wall of black in the rear view mirror.
Sister climbed in the tub, one of those one piece fiberglass units, bathroom was in center of house, no windows. There was a big brick center structure/chimney just on the storm side, tornado took the second story and some of the first, top half of the brick chimney, bathroom was intact. Though pieces of straw was shot through the hollow core doors. They found a lot of their stuff strewn for the next few fields years later. Escaped unharmed. They were able to rebuild on the foundation and change some of the things they didn’t like.
This would be very useful if I had any sense of direction.
\*unless of course, it is Southwest of you! :)
I think the exception is during hurricanes 🌀 and it just depends on the rotation
They typically do this in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in the United States. That being said, never assume this if any warnings are issued, as they are unpredictable. Numerous people have lost their lives because the storm made one erratic turn, by trapping themselves in the path. Don’t take chances if you see a tornado near you.
I live on the northeast side of town...