Twisters~ do they suck up cars etc?

[Katy]

yes they can pick up a cow or a horse or a truck or a combine......especially a F5 strenghth one.

 

[Cuban Longtails]

Here's a YouTube video of a news report from 1982 when an F4 tornado hit Paris, Tx. If you watch closely, they show a tree that was ripped in two by a 2x4 in one of the shots.

 

[jackiedon]

In the 50's my parents were in a tornado. Well Dad was on the ground holding onto a tree while my mom watched it from her parents house. My dad didn't know mom had walked to my grandparents. A neighbor of theirs were feeding her girls which was very little. When it hit a tree feel across her but she watched her 3 little girls be sucked up in the tornado and she couldn't do anything. They found the girls a mile away in a tree dead.

A couple years ago a tornado came through Texas and it sucked the grass up.

jackie

 

[mom'sfolly]

About ten years ago, in Jarrel, Texas an F5 touched down and stayed on the ground al ong time. Not only did it kill people and tear up houses, it ripped the concrete foundations out of the ground. Some of the area was scoured down to bare earth. Tornados are scary!!! They can be little and harmless, or big and bad. They seem completely random. In the recent set of storms in Kentucky and Tennessee a 22 month old boy was found 300 yards from his home with minor scrapes and bruises. His home and his mother are gone. Some of the things they do are just plain strange. Here are some links to the Jarell one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Texas_tornado_outbreak
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wtxtwist.htm

 

[Yonaton]

I've watched two (at different times). One touched down but it was over a half mile away and I couldn't see the damage it was doing, but got to watch the funnell.

The second, I heard coming and grabbed a six-pack of beer and sat on the back deck and watched as it came within about 300 - 400 yards from the house. It didn't touch ground, but was right at the very tops of the trees and it was bending about an acre-sized patch at a time almost 30 degrees, then as it moved on, those trees would stand back up and the next patch would get bent...it was really neat!

As for doing strange things, yes, they've been known very well to do them. A friend of mine when he was young watched through a window in his dad's home as the roof of a neighbor directly next to them (separated by about 40 yards) the roof got lifted off the house - the *whole* roof - and got set down between the two houses. It didn't have anything broken except for where it tore out from the nails...the roof could almost have been put right back on if there were a way to lift it as a whole.

My brother-in-law and his best friend were driving on some country hiway and saw a tornado coming. There was no place for them to go, so they pulled the car over into the little ditch on the side of the road, buckled up and put their heads between their knees and waited. The tornado picke the car up, turned it upside down, took it to the other side of the road and squashed it so that the thickest part of the car was 18 inches. Ny brother-in-law got the bridge of his nose mashed by the steering wheel and some bruises...his best friend died instantly because every single bone in his body was broken. Explain how *that* happens in the same car. Some wild shiite!

 

[Chickerdoodle13]

I've always said I want to see a live tornado, but not one coming towards my house! I LOVE storms and weather, really any kind. I would love to photograph storms as a side job, so maybe one day!

My favorite movie is Twister. Not sure how much truth there is in it though. I've seen a few VERY small twisters here in NJ, but nothing large or overly scary. One knocked down a tree and the others just a few branches and what not.

 

[Buckguy20]

The movie twister was filmed mostly in Oklahoma. The one that hit the OKC metro in 1999 was the strongest every recorded. The winds were higher than the top end of an F5 so technically it was an F6 at times. There wasn't a scale that high at the time. It leveled some areas and swept the ground clean. It stayed on the ground for almost an hour and was almost a mile wide at times.
As for the movie, parts of it were exagerted but I have seen tornado damage that looked worse than what was there. Also as far picking up things, I have seen cars in tree tops and on buildings. One sad thing in the 99 tornado was that a herd of horses were picked up from a ranch and left scattered around OKC several miles from where they had lived.
An interesting note to the movie was on the night it premiered in Oklahoma (some at drive ins) there were numerous real tornado watches and warnings issued.
Can you imagine while watching that movie and hear the tornado sirens sound.

 

[bantymum]

Oh my, thats really sad, Id really still like to see them across a paddock and not see them do any damage to stock or property though.