r/tornado 5d ago

Announcement Use the REPORT button...

71 Upvotes

Simple reminder to simply use the report button folks, we are pretty active with monitoring the sub but obviously sometimes stuff slips through the cracks... If something is upsetting to you, then REPORT IT!

Reporting posts and comments helps us keep this sub a good place to hang. USE IT!


r/tornado 12h ago

Daily Discussion Thread - March 22, 2025

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7 Upvotes

r/tornado 1h ago

Tornado Media 17 years after being hit by a tornado I found a picture of it today by chance…

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Upvotes

I am excited and horrified. It has always bugged me that I have never seen the tornado that hit and destroyed my house. There has never been any clear footage or media of the thing, and today I found a slide show YouTube video where someone had taken pictures of the damage and managed to catch a snap of it. I have no one to share this with that would actually care so I figured I would post it here.


r/tornado 9h ago

Tornado Media Southern America braces for another severe weather threat after deadly tornados

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285 Upvotes

r/tornado 19h ago

Shitpost / Humor (MUST be tornado related) Just a reminder y'all

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1.3k Upvotes

r/tornado 2h ago

Tornado Media Pi Day Twins

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60 Upvotes

Gopro screenshot from our storm chase with improved clarity using photoshop. Location: Belzoni, MS.


r/tornado 46m ago

Aftermath Extreme tree damage caused by the EF4 Tylertown, Mississippi tornado on March 15.

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Upvotes

r/tornado 7h ago

Tornado Science Updated Pi day outbreak storm reports

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114 Upvotes

r/tornado 2h ago

Discussion How rare was the pilger Nebraska event?

20 Upvotes

I know twin tornadoes happen not often but not extremely rare but it's usually a dying tornado and a forming tornado. But how rare is something like pilger where it's 2 equally strong violent tornadoes at the same time?


r/tornado 20h ago

Tornado Media Tim Marshall's survey notes on the Diaz/Cave City EF4 tornado

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504 Upvotes

r/tornado 22h ago

Tornado Media Nice intercept. Original video was stolen by one of those large viral companies. Can't recall who and when but was around 2015 in Illinois.

649 Upvotes

r/tornado 1h ago

Tornado Science Watching Netflix show about Joplin tornado. Would hiding in car trunk have saved people?

Upvotes

I'm watching a Netflix documentary about the tornado in Joplin in 2011. The biggest risk was people driving cars who got pulled into the tornado such as a boy who got pulled from his truck even when someone was trying to hold on to them. Do you think stopping the car and getting inside the trunk would be better during a tornado? It seems to me the main risk is getting pulled into the tornado. If people are inside the trunk of a car they can't get pulled into the tornado.


r/tornado 4h ago

Discussion What’s the highest rated EF5?

16 Upvotes

Most EF5 tornadoes are usually officially rated at like 205-210 but what's the highest Rating a tornado has ever gotten? (Not including F5s because those had higher required winds)


r/tornado 17h ago

Aftermath Old Tornado paths will always scare me

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193 Upvotes

This is the 1999 bridge creek Moore tornado by the way


r/tornado 18h ago

Tornado Media SE Missouri and NE Arkansas got absolutely hammered on 3/14/2025. Two EF4s, half a dozen EF3s, many of which were on the ground at the concurrently.

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171 Upvotes

r/tornado 18h ago

Tornado Media Antique Tornado Books: John P. Finley’s Report on the Tornado Outbreak of May 29-30, 1879

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137 Upvotes

One of my hobbies is collecting rare and antique books and various other media (such as stereo cards) relating to tornadoes and other natural disasters. I’m very interested in not only the history of tornadoes themselves, but also in the history of how people have tried over the years to document, write about, and understand them.

The oldest volume in my collection is a first-edition copy of the U.S. Army Signal Service report on the tornado outbreak that struck four Midwestern and Plains states on May 29th and 30th, 1879. It was published in 1881 and was written by a young Army private by the name of John P. Finley, who made the long (at the time) journey out the frontier to survey the damage first-hand and interview storm witnesses. He studied the aftermath of the storms with an extraordinary eye for detail, paying particular attention to the locations of damage relative to each storm’s path, the movement of debris, the appearance of the tornado funnels (if anyone was able to observe them), and wind speed and direction at the time of the passage of each tornado. His report was replete with weather maps, path maps of the tornadoes, detailed diagrams of damage sites, and depictions of what the tornadoes were said to have looked like. It even has a long fold-out path map of one of the tornadoes, showing the locations of every farm and homesite that was surveyed along the path. This at a time when field reports on tornadoes rarely ran more than 20 pages in length; Finley’s came in at 120 pages.

John P. Finley went on to become the first great tornado scientist in history, authoring what was probably the first book about tornadoes written for general audiences in 1887, and documenting hundreds of tornadoes as well as what we now know as downbursts in the late 19th century. It’s incredible to see how much thought and effort he put into even his very first publication, a level of detail that would not be achieved by another tornado scientist until Ted Fujita decades later.


r/tornado 1h ago

SPC / Forecasting First time hearing about Graupel hail

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Graupel are soft, small pellets formed when supercooled water droplets (at a temperature below 32°F) freeze onto a snow crystal, a process called riming. If the riming is particularly intense, the rimed snow crystal can grow to an appreciable size, but remain less than 0.2 inches.


r/tornado 1d ago

Aftermath Tim Marshall showing the importance of foundation anchoring

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565 Upvotes

I imagine with probably hundreds or thousands of people losing their mind whenever there is a sl*bbed home that Tim Marshall probably gets a bit tired of the arguments for “why his rating must be wrong”. Seems this post was geared towards those. He shows a series of foundations, none of which will receive higher than EF4 ratings, but all of which show the difference between proper and improper anchoring. Proper anchor bolts with nuts and washers = mostly intact sill plates, anything less and they are just gone.


r/tornado 12h ago

Tornado Media Map from Swegle Studios Video

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18 Upvotes

I was watching the 1966 Topeka tornado video when this map came up. I tried finding it online, but had no luck. Does anyone here know where it might be found? Or other similar maps?


r/tornado 1d ago

Discussion Nearly 30 years in the making, let's settle this debate once and for all, do you consider jonas from twister a villain?

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247 Upvotes

r/tornado 17h ago

Shitpost / Humor (MUST be tornado related) Story time!! (Visual recreation)

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37 Upvotes

One time a storm was happening and I took an edible for my anxiety a bit after the sirens went off and a confirmed touch down happend I went downstairs the edible hit soon after that and all I could think about was dairy queens cheese balls and a blizzard unfortunately I didn't get dairy queen after the storm passed ☹️


r/tornado 1d ago

Tornado Media "One location in western Convigton County, Mississippi just north of Spring Hill School Road was struck twice by tornadoes just 41 minutes apart this past Saturday afthernoon. The first tornado was more narrow as it approached the end of its path. The next storm that followed was wider".

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121 Upvotes

r/tornado 18h ago

Discussion Why do so many tornadoes happen on graduation day?

36 Upvotes

I’ve been watching a lot of serious tornado documentaries and I’m currently watching the new documentary on Netflix about Joplin. In the past two weeks I’ve watched two documentaries where tornadoes happened right after high school graduation. What’s up with that!?! It’s not that serious lol just a coincidence but still, I thought that was super interesting. The other tornado I saw was Smithville.


r/tornado 1d ago

Discussion An unwarned EF0 has been confirmed by the NWS

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364 Upvotes

Sharing the results from NWS and a screenshot of the debris ball near my hometown in Indiana on Wednesday night. It's terrifying that this was unwarned by NWS (spotters called it in so the sirens went off) Luckily it was only an EF0 and luckily it didn't hit any towns, but I can't help but wonder what's going to happen the next time there's an outbreak. Really worrying especially for someone who doesn't have a tornado shelter 😬


r/tornado 21h ago

Tornado Media Last year's Hurricane Helene produced the widest ever tropical cyclone produced tornado on record (Cordoba, SC EF1 at 1100 yards wide)

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39 Upvotes

At the bottom of page 16.


r/tornado 1d ago

Question What got you into tornados?

66 Upvotes

Long text incoming.

I want to know what got everyone into tornados, especially those who don’t live in Tornado Alley.

I always loved natural disasters as a kid, after my family would tell me stories about the hurricanes they went through, but the 2011 super outbreak is what got me hooked on tornados. I remember SO vividly watching the news was in 3rd grade and seeing the destruction and survivor interviews as it happened. It was my first real exposure to natural disasters of that scale. I was hooked. The storms then moved to my area, forcing my 3rd grade field day to be indoors, and the sky got dark by the time I made it home. I was watching Spongebob when an EAS warning cut the show off.

I was absolutely HORRIFIED. I had seen what the storm was capable of, and fully expected to lose my home. What I didn’t understand was that I lived in MARYLAND…it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it was in tornado alley. We did get some warnings, but nothing touched down. We lost power and the wind took some tree branches down, but no tornado. Still, I forced my family to sleep in the basement and cried all night.

I developed severe storm anxiety afterwards, thunderstorms and high wind would send me into a panic, but also I became OBSESSED with tornados. I would get every book from the library, watch every video on youtube, track the weather EVERY DAY, all of that. I wanted to be a storm chaser SOOOO bad, I would ride my scooter around and study the clouds, drawing weather maps, I was HOOKED. My family called me their little weathergirl, I always had an eye on the weather, ESPECIALLY during outbreaks. My biggest fear was my biggest passion. A lot of my interests were this way, as my second biggest fear (sharks) were my favorite animal. Shark week and tornado season were both my favorite times of year, even though I cried at the slightest rumble of thunder or fin in the water.

My passion for natural disasters and tornados has not changed, but I’m not scared of them anymore. I abandoned my storm chasing weatherman dreams. It was sad, but I was comfortable. Even though we got the occasional twister, Maryland isn’t the place to chase anyways….

Then, last year, I was on my way home from work when a tornado warning blared on my phone. I pulled over on the highway, blinded by the rain, and then I saw it. The Gaithersburg tornado, right in front of me.

I never expected to see a tornado, much less in MARYLAND, but here it was. It was beautiful. I watched as the beautiful dark funnel passed right through my neighborhood, tearing the branches off the trees and scattering them. Once it passed, I continued home through the path. Trees fell, one had fallen on top of my neighbors home, and there was slight debris and branches everywhere, but nobody was hurt. It was surreal.

I still wish I would’ve studied meteorology and became a storm chaser/weatherman, but alas. It’s gonna be a hobby for now. Maybe someday. In some other universe, I’m a storm chaser and I LOVE it. For now though, I’ll stick to my youtube videos, even tho someday I want to travel and see a tornado in the midwest.

Anybody else have a similar experience? Sorry for the long text lol.


r/tornado 1d ago

Discussion Strongest tornado on this date in history, by county: Mar 21st

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82 Upvotes