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I grew up in the US Midwest and tornados are no joke. As a kid we weren't scared of monsters in the dark, we were terrified of being awoken by that errie tornado siren.

I saw a picture of someone's home that was destroyed by weather like this. He still had a sense of humor. He wrote on the sign, "Home For Sale. Some Assembly Required." LOL!

"If you see the dead man walking, you will soon be dead" A native American myth referring to the look of the formation of multi vortex tornadoes, that tend to form EF 4's and EF 5's, as such, seeing it in person likely means you don't have long to live.

As a American who lives in tornado and alley and who slightly obsessed with them it so funny seeing how someone from a foreign country react to something that is just a fact of life here makes me realize how easy it is to view something has normal your just used it.

“It’s not THAT the wind is blowing, it’s WHAT the wind is blowing” - Ron White

For the Joplin tornado: There was a reporter who was on site immediately after the tornado hit. She said she got PTSD from being there and for weeks after she would try to sleep but could still hear the search dogs barking in her head every time they found a body.

People don’t realize the weather America be goin through 💀 shit sucks at times. Earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes. We got it all! Even volcanos!! And it’s not like tornados are infrequent. It’s an entire season of like April to June Julyish

Really surprised that he didn’t mention the El Reno Oklahoma Tornado in May 31st of 2013, even though the damage scale from that EF5 was basically what you saw out of an EF3. But that one was significant since it was one of the deadliest/costliest storm chasing wise. The erratic movements caught even professional storm chasers from Discovery and The Weather Channel off, and they either died or got severely injured, plus it was rain wrapped meaning usually storm chasers had a corridor between the rain wall and the vortex to escape, but the rain wall was actually the edge of the tornado. It was the widest tornado ever recorded too.

One thing that people don't usually mention is all the animals/birds, etc. killed in these tornadoes; pets, wildlife, and farm animals are so vulnerable. They often have nowhere to hide, and I find that heartbreaking.

My wife and I got to the basement about 25 seconds before the Joplin tornado hit our house dead-center. To this day, we get emotional if we speak about it and weather events cause us a great deal of stress and anxiety. We climbed out and started helping look for others. It was like being in a war zone.

The eerie calm before they hit gets me everytime. The rain just stops... lighting starts strobing like a wack rave... wind picks up, then the sound of a train barreling across the land can be heard even over the rain, if it starts back.

I have a friend whose 8 year old son's life was taken in the 2013 Moore, Oklahoma, tornado. He's still obviously very devastated. Victim's name is Christopher Legg

The 1999 Moore tornado almost killed me when I was 7 years old. My mother, my 2 younger siblings, and I were all at home while my dad was deployed overseas for military work. It was a small 3 bedroom home with no basement or shelter. We huddled in a broom closet for hours listening to the tornado sirens and the local weather radio. As a kid I had no concept of the danger we were actually in. The tornado ripped through town just half a mile away from us, but we were ok where we were. I remember the next day when we saw the damaged houses I asked my mom why none of the flattened houses had closets where people could hide, and she explained that the tornado was just too strong for the closets and destroyed them too. That's when it sunk in for me how close we came to dying that night, and it was the first time I ever felt that recognition of my mortality as a kid. Things were probably even worse for my dad. The only information he had overseas was the news reports because the phone lines in my town were all damaged and not working. He spent multiple days thinking his entire family was killed. I don't remember exactly how we got the news to him that we were ok, but as a father and husband myself now I can't even imagine how stressful that would have been.

I was in the Joplin Missouri tornado in this video. I lost everything it took hours to get me out from under my house. The scariest thing I've ever been through. But the thing I remember the most about that day was the way the people came together to help each other. I'm a 58 year old woman from Chattanooga Tennessee and I'm one of your new subscribers. I hope you know how great you are. Your so funny. Please keep doing what your doing. Prayers and love from Tennessee

I’ve lived in Kansas USA my whole life and been through a couple bad tornadoes in my area. Although they’re super terrifying and can cause awful damage, tornadoes are one of the natural disasters that can be really well predicted. Obviously it’s not easy to predict exactly where they will form, but the weather conditions have to be very particular in order to birth a tornado. Us locals can typically tell day to day if it feels like “tornado weather,” and radar/ weather warnings tend to be very reliable for big storms like these. The time of year is also a good predictor for tornadoes, as most fall within the April-June tornado season. I couldn’t imagine living in an area where earthquakes are common because there’s not really a way to know when one will happen or how strong it will be.

Native Oklahoman here, and I gotta say the Oklahoma footage I all watched in person on TV, some of it close to me, but I did not receive any damage thankfully. The second tornado shown, the Moore tornado, the 20+ lives that were taken. were actually children that were trapped in a school. That is why that is one of the most well-known tornadoes of Oklahoma because it took such precious lives from us. I don’t know when this video was made that you were watching, but we recently had two EF five tornadoes. 11 years after that one even though it said there hasn’t been one since, there has now been two this year.

The best scene in Twister, (Hands down for me.) is near the end of the movie, Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt's characters try to find any shelter from the F5 chasing them. They open the door of a tool shack, only to find out it contains a crapload of sharp, rusted blades, which causes Paxton's character to say "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?"

I've lived in Tornado Alley most of my life. We just had a "tornado emergency" here in Nebraska a couple weeks ago. Tornadoes that occur at night are by far the scariest.

My childhood home was destroyed in the Joplin Missouri 2011 tornado. My family had moved away just months earlier.

Having been in a few tornadoes, feeling a deep dread of them, and living around people who are all kind of numb to the terror - it's cathartic to see your reaction

Being from Oklahoma Twister is half comedy, half public service announcement, half "yeah, I know them".

When I was 5, my family got stopped in the middle of a highway because of a tornado. My mom was an EMT at the time and told us to get to the ditch and hold on. She had my little sister with her and told my oldest brother to help get me and my other brother. On my way to the ditch the storm actually lifted me 3-4 feet off the ground and my brother grabbed my arm and pulled me to the ditch. We then watched the car rise and fall on the road. I was young enough to barely remember/believe it, but my mom and brothers always bring it up during bad storms.

Native Oklahoman here - The same day as the Wichita F5 (April 26,1991), an F5 outbreak hit the Tulsa area. I lived a mile south of where one of the F5 tornadoes hit. Fortunately, we only lost a couple of dead trees, and our home and barns were not damaged. Then during the May 3,1999 F5 tornado that hit Moore, I was finishing my sophomore year at the University of Oklahoma. I stood with several of my friends on the balcony of our house and watched as the storm passed through Moore. We couldn't see the tornado, but we could see the storm clouds. That was a very sobering moment for us. I lived my entire life in tornado alley, and have had several close calls with smaller storms. Springtime is interesting in these parts.

I live on the East Coast in the U.S., and we don’t get tornados anything as large as the tornados in this video, but to me they are still terrifying. The first tornado I ever went through was 2 weeks after having my first child. I was young and living in a mobile home. Thankfully it did actually have a basement but the only way to access the basement was through an outside entrance. So I found myself running outside into an oncoming tornado in order to get myself and my brand new baby into the basement to hide under a desk that happened to be down there. That tornado came through my yard and ripped up trees but spared my home. The second tornado I had an up close experience with was when I was home alone with my 3 kids I had at that time, ages 10,6, and 10 months old. Again a tornado came through the field next to the farmhouse we lived in. I found myself hiding on the basement stairs due to the water rushing in through my stone basement and rapidly flooding while a tornado came within a few 100 feet of my home, doing only minimal damage. I was absolutely terrified both those times so I cannot fathom living in the Midwest where these monster storms are.

You should check out the real time Joplin Missouri tornado. It’s shows the tornado from a variety of videos in real time as it happened.

I lived in Moore, Oklahoma and have first had experience of tornados. The EF4-EF5 in 2013 destroyed my childhood home while I was visiting with my husband and son. We were lucky to have had a neighbor with a storm shelter. Hearing it go overhead while holding my son then seeing my (former) bedroom completely gone afterward is something I still have nightmares about. I can confirm these storms are as terrifying as they look here.

The worst part about a Tornado is the absolute quiet right before it hits. I'll never forget my first Tornado. The sky completely black and not a sound to be heard, no dogs, no birds, no bugs, nothing.

Twister is the number one movie of my life, I just can't wait for Twisters to come out.

Canadian here, did trucking across the US last year in the mid west. One night round 11pm i was driving down some back road in my Rig and unbeknownst to me cause the darkness, i was driving a few miles ahead of one. I only learned of it the next morning driving back the other way and seeing the destruction. Locals were talking about what time it went through and it was only minutes after i drove past.

Canadian here, my house got hit by a tornado in barrie 2021 . It was terrifing as we had no warning one minute calm eating lunch , next minute chairs flying and windows breaking . We were blessed no one died especially because three kids got sucked out of their house and flung across to a feild

I grew up in Florida where tornadoes and hurricanes are pretty commonplace. Some of my earliest memories are my mom dragging me underneath the bed frame because there was nowhere to hide in our Two-Bedroom trailer... A trailer that was picked clean off the box and throne with us in it. There's nothing quite like the sound of being in a active tornado coupled with the cacophony of twisting metal all around you from the metal structure that you are currently in. 30 years later and it still gives me the heebie-jeebies

My paternal grandfather and his parents (my great-grandparents) survived the F5 Tri-State tornado in 1925. They lived in Murphysboro, Illinois. My grandfather was 5 years old at the time.

I live on the border of North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. We are currently watching tornadoes on TV in Oklahoma RIGHT NOW!! You learn to be very weather aware living in "Tornado Alley", but we don't fear tornadoes in general. A lot of people have tornado shelters now, and if you don't, most people have a plan to stay safe in such instances. But since tornadoes hit very targeted, relatively small areas, most people have never even seen one in person. We prepare, shelter and pray when necessary, and help our neighbors when tragedy strikes. It's just part of life, here.

I grew up in the Midwest. I used to sleep straight through any storm until I was 6-7. That one night I woke up to hearing the tornado sirens going off. I opened my door and my dad was immediately waking everyone else up, as I never woke up to it before and he was unsure if it was real until he saw my bedroom door open,we went downstairs to the basement and we were put in the shower just in case. Thankfully it didn't hit our house, but it was 10ft from our house. We went outside in the morning and saw trees down in the woods behind us. Haven't slept through a storm since. Still absolutely love thunderstorms and tornadoes, but definitely effects my sleep

As an American watching this is just hilarious because of Adam's reaction but me just thinking "yeah, tornado it's pretty big, just go to the mid-west, these happen"

North Texas resident here! I've never been hit but have heard the sirens and seen crazy Straightline wind and hail. Also, green skies. I saw you were wondering how they start so here what I found to explain. Tornadoes only form when a thunderstorm has a particular combination of winds. Air rising in a thunderstorm can begin to spin when it is affected by winds blowing it in different directions. It starts to rise and is pushed to the side by wind. It rises a bit more and is jostled again by wind moving in another direction. Winds moving in different speeds and directions at different altitudes cause the rising air to start spinning. Air that spins as it rises is typical in a supercell, the strongest type of thunderstorm, but not all spinning air creates a tornado. For a tornado to form, there also needs to be spinning air near the ground. This happens when air in the storm sinks to the ground and spreads out across it in gusts. Gusts of warmer air rise and gusts of cooler air sink as they blow across the land. If there are enough rising and sinking gusts, the air near the ground starts spinning. The spinning air near the ground speeds up as it is drawn inward toward its axis of rotation. This happens in the same way that figure skaters spin faster when their arms are drawn in rather than when their arms are outstretched. This is called conservation of angular momentum. The rotating air moves horizontally across the ground, and can be tilted vertically by the force of the rising, rotating air. This allows a tornado to form. Most tornadoes form during supercell thunderstorms, but not all supercell thunderstorms produce tornadoes. Usually, the rotating air near the ground doesn't rotate fast enough for a tornado to form. If the rotating air near the ground is very cold, it will spread away from the storm along the ground and slow down like a figure skater with extended arms, and a tornado will not form.

Tornadoes are terrifying but fascinating at the same time. I lived in Oklahoma for four years on an air base in my early 20's and saw a fair share of storms. One of the locals told me that "if it looks like it ain't movin', then it's coming straight towards you. Get out of it's way." I truly miss living in that state.

The Weather Channel did a series, Tornado Alley Real Time, featuring four tornados. The Joplin, Moore, Tuscaloosa, and Hattiesburg. They contain amatuer, storm chaser and news coverage in real time as it occurred during the tornados. While they can be hard to watch, the heroism and community you learn about during the interviews is truly inspiring. I'm one of your recent subscribers and just wanted to say hi. Your reactions are hysterical, great job.

I live in the Midwest/Great Lakes region. I have known smaller tornados to touch down near our home, and it can be pretty scary. We always had tornado drills in school where we'd hear the siren, file into a hallway or windowless room and crouch down, covering our head and neck and had to remain silent for instruction. That alone caused me a lot of storm anxiety!!

I live in TN, and back in 2018 one of my good friends' mom passed away in a tornado. It wasn't a particularly strong or long drawn out storm, but it was just strong enough to come down on their home and sweep it off its foundation. She was going down the stairs to get into the basement as the tornado ripped apart the house. Everyone else in the house was downstair's already and survived with minimal injuries. Almost the entire high school went to her funeral. It was an extremely sad day and I still keep in contact with him.

From around May-June (right now) in the states you can search for live storm chasers around 10pm you're time, almost any day and ride along with your choice of tornado chases. Today, May 6 is going to be huge around 5-9pm CST. If you're interested. Be careful doing any reactions though. I hear they are pretty strict with their copyrights.

Getting underground is by far your best bet for a tornado

In Nebraska in my backyard my family watched a funnel trying to touch down right in front of us. And every July 4 we had a family reunion where we watched tornadoes go by from the porch for 4 years straight. 😂

In answer to your question: When I was in elementary school we were rushed out of class into the central hallway. The tornado hit while we were sat lining the hall with our heads between our knees. I felt like someone shoved me forward really hard into the middle of the hall and most of the kids along the wall with me ended up in a heap in the middle. The storm passed and we saw that the classrooms around the hall were blown out. The "shove" I felt was the walls of the hallway being tilted to one side by the force of the storm. My side leaned forward and the other side leaned back. No one was seriously hurt and we got over a week out as they figured out where to put us.

Tornadoes are often formed from the cold air coming off the Rocky Mountains that hits the moist warm air from the Gulf Ocean that comes up through the south and hits in Tornado Alley in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and the south. Lots of storms with hail hit that area every spring/summer. I’ve been through bad winds and large hail but never a tornado, thank goodness. I had a friend who saw damage from a smaller tornado that went from Ohio through northern Pennsylvania and saw houses gone but the wood pile stacked next to the house untouched. So weird. The debris flying around kills. That’s why a lot of US homes have basements.

Midwest lady here, and Tornadoes are the worst. I will never forget where a school in Iowa was wiped out, during a school day. It still makes me cry, and breaks my heart over and over for those babies. RIP angels.

I'm a native of Wichita, Kansas. I've lived here for 35 years now. You learn very quickly how to identify when a storm has potential for tornadoes. Prior to the technology catching up there were many times you had a weather radio(NOAA), a news station's radar on your TV and your instincts while you stood on a porch and watched a storm develop. I lived way away from any town as a kid. I didn't have the luxury of a tornado siren. We had a tornado shelter that was made out of a concrete culvert dug deep into the ground with a steel lid secured by a logging chain anchor and a covered oxygen spout. I hated it down there. Humid, hot, full of friggin spiders, but if a tornado was rolling over it was our best shot at living through it. I was a baby when the 1991 Wichita/Andover tornado ripped through. We've had more tornadoes since. Most recent one I had a close encounter with was the 2022 Andover tornado. Not nearly the size and scope of these F5's you're looking at, but a threatening bit of weather no less. I watched it track east as I lived in the very southeast portion of Wichita at the time. They are scary. Hurricanes terrify me because of their sheer power, but you have a heads-up that they're coming. Tornadoes will jump on you very quickly. Our technology continues to get better and better as they can identify rotation and wind speeds/directions very quickly giving us clues that there may be a tornado happening. We're not gun shy about hitting that alarm. If they see rotation, meaning it's just circulating clouds/winds they will issue a tornado warning to give people the most heads-up they can. Cell phones have also been a huge help. I get an alert on my phone that will quickly grab your attention whenever there's a severe storm or tornado coming towards. Also the same sounds as amber alerts, so you get some very mixed emotions when you hear the noise. Regardless, it's a way of life here. Technology has most definitely given us a much better advantage now. I'm pretty thankful for that.

My mom is from Xenia - she was in Columbus at OSU when the tornado hit. My grandparents' house luckily wasn't in its path. I ended up friends with someone who as a small child was in daycare in Xenia on that day. Someone walked outside, saw the tornado coming, ran back in, and told everyone to get to the basement. She was fine, but she still has a fear of tornadoes to this day. I was born in Oklahoma and lived there till I was five. I have memories of being woken up by my parents, so we could take shelter during tornado warnings. Nothing ever hit us, though. We would also get huge hail.

I'll never forget the meteorologist that recognized his subdivision and ran off camera, still mic'ed, and his phone call was live. He called his wife and told her to get herself and their kids into the basement immediately, don't grab anything just go now. I don't remember exactly where/ when it happened but I know his family was safe afterwards

Adam, my mother was born and raised in Moore. When the sky turned green, the family hit the rootceller. The only safe place is underground. It took strong men to hold the door closed. I wouldn't live in Tornado Alley for anything. The Midwest is getting smashed right now. There's so much rain, because of the tornados, that parts of Texas are underwater. If you feel like praying, do it....they need it badly. Google. Glad you're back. I've missed you.

the most infamous part about the Newcastle/Moore E5 was that one of the news stations meteorologists, before it started getting too severe, was mistaken on what direction it was heading, so TOLD people to drive TOWARDS MOORE... so my husband and I were driving into it... we ended up stranded at a small paint company on the side of the road, who were kind of enough to let us in for shelter while our dogs sat in our car and I cried, scared that we would lose them. It was terrifying. All because Mike Morgan made that small mistake for those of us in the central OKC metro. Fun times.

"Remember when i said i wanted to move there?.... yeah ill stay here" 😂😂😂

Growing up in the Midwest I don’t really fear tornados anymore, but the sirens and atmosphere before one still fill me with dread. I still cry when watching footage of Joplin

I grew up about an hour and a half from joplin in 2011 (currently live in joplin). It was so sad and devastating, but im proud of the community and the people who came to help.

American in the Midwest here. A tornado never really sneaks up on you these days. You typically know there's a storm coming and they ring to tornado siren when they want you to start paying attention. If you're in the path of a likely tornado, you get alerts on your phone, and at that point you're probably watching storm coverage. You hunker down in your basement and hope you're not hit. Not fun, but there's no surprise about it.

In the 2013 Oklahoma City and Moore tornado I was at the dentist and had to listen to the search and rescue for like 24 elementary students and I was just bawling. Typically I was a tornado chaser and tried to help where I was needed. I'd never felt so helpless just getting a tooth pulled. The dentist kept asking if she was hurting me and I just had to point to the tv. It only missed my location by 3 miles and then it took me awhile to locate a few relatives and friends because they were mildly injured. I've never been afraid of tornadoes, I'm still not, but I certainly have respect for the power of nature.

So, as an "Army brat" growing up on military base in the Marshall Islands, Typhoon Zelda hit Thanksgiving of 9th grade. It spawned tornados that destroyed several buildings. We watched as people's patios were just blowing through the streets. Thankfully, no homes were destroyed. Army base housing was made of giant bricks and were very strong. A few residents lost their roofing, but that's it, no fatalities. Only cheap business buildings were destroyed and being Thanksgiving, they were all closed. Name of the place was Kwajalein and it was Thanksgiving of 1991 I think.

I live in Moore, OK and have been through both the May 3rd 1999 F5 (320 mph winds) and the 2013 F5. Still alive and kicking. As I'm typing this, we are under a grave tornado threat once again today, and I'm watching the weather.

Fun fact about twister: it was filmed in Iowa (which you can spot a sign that says I-80 and that runs through all of Iowa) but I think it takes place in either Oklahoma or Kansas.

Grew up on Oklahoma, and saw multiple tornadoes myself and have been through countless tornado warnings, the most recent being 2 days ago. While there are plenty of people who unwisely go outside to watch in the middle of the storm, you’re never going to have one just casually go by as you drink your coffee without warning. First of all, they’re surrounded by heavy rain, lightning, hail, sirens and high winds so you have a hint when they’re coming ahead of time. The worst is when they happen at night because that’s when more people will be unprepared and more likely to die or be injured.

I live less than a mile from where that EF5 tornado ripped through Alabama in Harvest. It took Years for the lots to regrow. My sister was down in Tuscaloosa, where one of the tornadoes ripped through and killed a bunch of people. She was less than half a mile away from it, hiding in a store. We didn't have power for weeks, so my friends parents who had a condo down in south Alabama invited me down, and we spent time on the beach, and slept in a Yacht. Good times

Washington, Illinois November 17, 2013... Tornado reached its apex over my house, felt the suction as it went over, almost burst my eardrums from the pressure, and live with PTSD from it... Still here, and it has gotten easier over time, but something I will NEVER forget...

My grandpa's large gas station was completely obliterated by an F5 in the 60's. They were auctioning off a Camaro (later found in a tree or something) and a raffle ticket for it was found in a guy's backyard 300 miles away in another state. I was just talking to my mom about it. She said that when she saw the funnel, she was like a deer in headlights because the sheer magnitude and power of that thing was beyond comprehension. I forget the number, but several people died. My SIL's sister just took a direct hit by an F3. Miraculously, nobody was injured (other than shaken up), but it badly damaged their home and numerous others and businesses (many were destroyed).

When I was in middle school we went into a full tornado lockdown for well over an hour. The main tornado was one county over from ours and there were other vortex’s (circular cloud movements showing a possible tornado formation) as well as a few funnels (a tornado that hasn’t gotten strong enough to touch the ground) all around the area. The area where the tornado did touch destroyed a lot of homes, flattening quite a few of them. Luckily, the tornado lost strength before it could travel anywhere else, but the damage was still devastating. For reference, The distance between our location and where the tornado hit was about a 15 minute drive, and that’s only because it’s all winding back roads between us and them.

1:00 that is what is known as a “wedge” tornado. Those are when the tornado is wider than it is tall, and they can get pretty big. The largest tornado ever documented hit just to the south of El Reno, Oklahoma in 2013. It was 2.6 miles (about 4.2 km) wide. Also 14:00 typically a tornado starts with rotation in the supercell that reaches down to the ground, however, water/groundspouts exist, as well as gustnadoes. Swegle Studios has a good video going over tornado terminology where he explains what different types of whirlwinds and how they form.

I am a storm chaser in Kansas, I've been chasing for 11 years, and I chased some of the tornadoes in this video. The first time I remember hearing the sirens was during the Wichita/Andover EF5 tornado. I've also had houses damaged by tornadoes that have come through my town. My Dad survived the 1966 Topeka, Kansas tornado, but his house was torn off of its foundation and they never saw that house again. (My Dad got sent to Vietnam like 2 years later,poor guy. Also random fact, Dad was originally from Connemara, Co Galway!)

Me as an Iowan gal seeing these things IRL. My dad always said we don’t go to the basement until it’s landed and coming towards us. We lived on a farm in the 90s so no tornado sirens, we just watched the skies, or slept in the basement if the weather was iffy. I’ve seen many funnel clouds and 1 tornado touch down. The reason to watch is sometimes it’s just the funnel cloud and it moves away or never actually lands. I’ve helped neighbors clean up their yards from tornadoes and my cousin passed away when I was very young after being struck in the head by debri from a tornado (she was in a car). Truly amazing weather phenomenon to witness but terrifying as hell. I can’t imagine living on the prairie way back in the day as a Native American watching these things

5:30 kinda, from Michigan and we had an EF3 rip through our town while I was at work, very surreal because at least where I'm at we don't get tornados and we don't get anything that strong, I think the last one we got was like 50 years before that one

As a young boy in 1974, my dad drove us about 100 miles to Zenia Ohio about a week after the F5 hit that town, buildings swept clean like they were sucked up by a giant vacuum and dumped back in pieces. A gas station had nothing left but the pumps and a hole in the ground where a building had stood.

I was on scene for the tornado in Portage Michigan last week. It destroyed a FedEx shipping building and over 100 people injured

I was in high school when the 1999 Moore tornado struck and leveled my aunt & uncle’s house. My cousin was an infant at the time and was nearly ripped out of my aunt’s arms. My mom frantically drove there that night where 108 tornadoes were touching down. Moore would be hit again in 2009 and 2013 by EF-4 and 5 tornadoes. I’ve rode out an EF-2 hitting my neighborhood when I was in college and just last night, an EF-3 passed within 10 miles of where I currently live. At some point, you get pretty good about gauging the weather and you pay attention to radar images of all storms passing around you. You also start getting weird when a storm is too dark or has an odd color to it. Like greenish tints, which usually accompanies hail.

my grandmother survived 5 tornados growing up in Oklahoma - two of them destroyed the family home, the second one hit right after they finished rebuilding after the first one. she told me that before one of those two, her mother had just finished making/prepping dinner and she had put the bowl of food on top of the refrigerator while everyone finished their farm duties. the tornado hit a little while later, everyone took shelter in the cellar, and when they came out, the house was gone but somehow the fridge and the bowl of food on top of it were still right there, untouched and unmoved. that same tornado also managed to take all of her fathers important documents out of his LOCKED file cabinet. the tornado somehow unlocked it, opened it, took the papers, closed it, and locked it back up.

I live in oklahoma, i was visiting moore back in 2013, my family made it to an underground shelter, as the main portion of the E-F5 tornado approached our shelter, our ears started popping from the atmospheric pressure changes, and you could feel the entire ground rumble, could feel it in my bones, the aftermath was the worse part, the entire neighborhood was wiped from the face of the earth, trees uprooted and automobiles were crumpled up like crushed soda cans. I still have nightmares.

I was outside with friends playing baseball when the supercells pasted through SW Ohio in April 1974. I'll never forget as they approached, how the sky changed to an eerily green/black, the rain, and the gratefulness that my neighborhood was spared.

I'm part of a disaster relief team here in Oklahoma City and was just in Sulphur for clean up. It's a wild place to live but we're used to it. Come out for spring sometime, it's truly something to feel the day it's supposed to get bad.

I lost two friends to the Joplin tornado. Last we heard, they were taking their dogs to a back hallway (there was no basement, if I remember correctly) and were going to try to ride out the storm there, the way they always did when there were tornado warnings, but no one had any idea how big this storm was. We thought they’d just lost power as the storm passed through. It took several days to get confirmation that they were gone and not just stranded in a neighborhood without power. Even the hospital was torn just about in half in Joplin. I think, afterward, it was the only building still recognizable in the whole neighborhood because it was big enough that it didn’t get leveled. Where do you go for help when your local hospital’s been hollowed out by the same storm, you know? To this day, I can’t think about Joplin without getting really angry. It just wasn’t survivable once you were in its path. In the video footage of Joplin, you can see the path it tore through town as it picked up strength and debris and speed, and grew wider as it moved. I’ll never look at tornadoes the same way again since Joplin.

I am from Alabama and currently live in Tennessee. When I was a kid and lived in Arkansas, right in the middle of "tornado alley," we had a tornado go between our house and our neighbor's house. It removed our shed, but didn't do any significant damage to our house. I remember my dad running out right after it went by to get the horse saddles from the yard since they were leather and would ruin. I'm still pretty scared of tornadoes, but I've never seen one so I have a very morbid curiosity now I'm older.

the Deadman Walking was truly eerie to see on video. A still photo doesn't do it justice.

I’m in Minnesota, in September of 1997 my coworker’s house was hit and destroyed and his uncle who lived close by was killed by the same tornado. I’ve never been directly hit but I have been very close, the scary thing was that the tornado was rain-wrapped so I couldn’t actually see it, all I could see was trees blowing over and an extreme downpour. I took shelter in a logging skidder but I still shutter when thinking about it, even though it was probably over in less than a minute.

I live in Moore Oklahoma since 1991 and I’ve lived through all the big ones and it’s scary as shit! You’d think it’d be the haunting sound of the tornado sirens starting up like an incoming air raid but I think it’s the sound of the tornado. It sounds like the loudest train engine you’ve ever heard and the whirling wind whipping around. Then right after it passes by it’ll be the most beautiful blue sky, it’s crazy wild.

This year in march ohio had a mini outbreak, these were all nighttime tornadoes, typically when the sirens go off my dad looks outside, keeps track of the weather instead of scaring everybody and just making us go to the basement and play the waiting game since the tornado sirens are for the ENTIRE county you are in. I just had an eerie feeling about it, my dad could see power flashes in the distance it was the first time he felt the need to get his family downstairs. The hail was so loud, the rain was so hard it was coming into the basement. The power flickered about 4 times before it went out completely, turns out the tornado directly hit about a 2 minute drive from us, so we were only experiencing the outer winds of the tornado but it was still terrifying. I remember holding my cat and being afraid for my home. A barn was completely destroyed, schools were damaged, and at least 4 transmissions towers were bent over or just completely toppled over. My dad said he remembered it being eerily calm, there was no wind before either the rain was just pouring straight down Tornadoes are definitely more common in the US but its also highly unlikely you will be hit by one, even more unlikely an EF4-EF5 will hit you. I'm 18 years old and that night in march a couple of months ago was my first time one came close.

I was on the outskirts of both of the F5 tornadoes that hit Moore Oklahoma, on this list. While I and my home suffered no damage, houses just 300 feet away were totally destroyed. In total I have been in or very near to five tornadoes since I moved to the Oklahoma City area. In fact this afternoon we are in a "High probability" warning. It's just a fact of life here and after one hits, the outpouring of support and assistance from the people in this area is amazing. Despite the dangers of tornadoes, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, because of the people here.

Born and raised in Xenia. My parents and grandparents remember that tornado, and we had another one in the early 2000's that I remember. We did monthly tornado drills at school. One time in college I was in a minivan speeding down a country road while there was a tornado in the cornfield next to us. Thankfully we made it to a safe location and no one was hurt, but yeah.. tornados are no joke. Fun fact: I went to a drive-in movie theater and they played Twister. During the scene in the movie where a tornado comes through a drive in theater, our real life tornado sirens started going off and there was a bad thunderstorm rolling in and everyone had to leave the drive-in, it was a little too real for me haha

Grew up in the Midwest and am on the edge of Tornado Valley. Just last year had a F2 go down my road and completely destroyed houses and a dairy farm. Very thankful I've never personally experienced an F5 and I hope I never have to. When that tornado went through, I was a few.miles away in town attempting to do laundry at the laundromat and was getting frustrated the power kept going out

I am from the UK. I had a PhD student from Kansas and he grew up with tornadoes when he was a child. He told me utterly terrifying stories about running to the shelter as an infant. I am given to understand that some people live in tornado areas and don't have shelters. I have seen videos where they stay on the ground for a long time and that is just terrifying. No shelter - surely you have no chance. That really makes me very sad that people are too poor to have a shelter and die.

-My Dad was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, OK (close to Oklahoma City) in the 50's and then again in the 60's. The radar man called the base commander's attention to the strange "look" (pattern) of the radar images of the clouds and he suggested that the line of bombers and other planes outside on the flight line might be in danger but the commander (who had never seen images like this before) declined to fly the planes out to another base. Sure enough a tornado touched down on the flight line and destroyed several planes and generally did a lot of damage to the base and its facilities. A month or two later the same radar man saw the same pattern of clouds setting up in the same pattern as before. Again, he informed the base commander who this time flew everything that had wings off the base and battened down every thing else. Low and behold another tornado cruised down the flight line again but this time there was little damage because the planes were gone and everything else was secured. Thus radar became the standard procedure to watch the weather, send out warnings and keep track of the weather systems that can produce twisters.

its a scary thing listening to the pounding rain and the thunder all for it to go quiet and have a tornado barring down on you. the sounds of it still make me shiver im just glad i moved more north

Texan here. We don’t have basements usually as our water table is too high. Some older homes may have outside storm shelters, although they tend to harbor flooding or snakes. We usually hide in the bathroom closest to the center of the house. No sirens near us because we live in the country. We’ve had tornadoes hit as close as mile from our home. This weekend we literally out ran a tornado. A friend of ours wasn’t so lucky but he survived and has video of his truck being spun around and an RV being flung into him. So glad he had a newer truck with side airbags. In America every state has a form of severe weather. West coast has earthquakes. The north (from east to west) get severe snowstorms and cold. Midwest is known as tornado alley for a reason. We’ve had three tornadoes this week in north Texas! East coast and south also get hurricanes. The best you can get is picking the desert of New Mexico or Arizona, although when I lived in those states as a kid my mom would hide our shoes to keep us in our own yard because temps would get over 110 F in the summer and the sidewalks were too hot for bare feet. So we all pick the weather we are most comfortable to handle and shake our heads at everyone else saying, “I could never live there!”

I'm in North Georgia, and the problem we have with tornadoes here is that they seem to be 1. at night, so you don''t know they're coming without warnings sent to your phone or tv or whatever. And 2. they tend to be rain-wrapped, so even if they're coming by day, it just looks like a bunch of rain. The tornado is hiding in the rain. Absolutely terrifying. As a follow up, check out different tornado sirens in the US. I believe this same creator made that video. The sirens are almost more scary than the storm itself!

I recognize that Northern Ireland accent! My mom is 92, and grew up in Tornado Alley. She has a few memories of these monsters-- one of having to jump out of the front door into her dad's arms as the house was being pulled away from the ground, and another hiding in the storm cellar while the storm raged overhead. She said it sounded like a freight train. She is frightened of any storm to this day-- I remember the Jarrell, TX very well. My workplace locked us in and wouldn't let us leave. Jarrell was nearly wiped off the map!

I’m from joplin. I remember the tornado, it was awful. Seeing the damage has stuck with me for life.

as someone who grew up in tornado alley (oklahoma) seeing something so normal be terrifying to a person who has never experienced a tornado is honestly so amazing. 2 years ago the little town i live in got hit by a EF2 (ik its not big but it did some good damage for such a little town) thankfully no one was injured. tornados are really no joke, praying for every state that has got hit by tornados.

“The lore” refers to their legendary status in folklore. I remember watching the news here on the Canadian prairies when they showed a tornado reaching down to a Best Buy Electronics store where my 16 year old son was working! They begin high in the cloud as a “funnel cloud” and aren’t designated as a tornado until touchdown.

Im 27 and I live in middle Tennessee and I've had to take cover for tornado warnings more times than i can actually remember, but all of them have resulted in nothing really happening, other than one very close call a few years back. I was at my parents house and my dad told me to come downstairs to be ready to take cover just in case. Just as i was on the middle platform of the stairs and my dad was at the bottom of the stairs, we both heard the wind immediately pick up to an insane sound in speed. It had to of been at least 80mph. We both were stopped in that insant, holding on to the railings just in case. Luckily whatever the gust was passed in like 10 seconds. Later the next day, as i was driving a half mile down the road i saw the small farm next to my neighborhood had some trees fallen down and tall grass and plants ripped up, along with parts of the fences. I found out later on that that "gust of wind" me and my dad experienced was a small tornado passing very quickly over the top of the house and had landed very briefly just after our house in the farm, then went back up just before reaching the next neighborhood on the other side of the street. Other than that, i haven't had any closer direct experiences with tornados. I have, however, seen massive damage from one that happened just 25 mins down the road from me. It was a very strange experience seeing a place I knew very well look unfamiliar. There are still trees to this day in that area that lean and bend toward the direction the tornado was passing them by.

I’ve lived in the Midwest for the majority of my life tornadoes are no joke. Just last month on April 26th in eastern nebraska, western Iowa Kansas and Oklahoma were all hit with tornadoes, my home state of Nebraska had several confirm tornadoes near where I live (Omaha) and more further down south near Lincoln, the tornados outside of Omaha leveled homes, and brought hail, as far as I know no one was killed but several were injured (in my state) across the whole Midwest there were at least 16 EF-2, 8 EF-3 and one EF-4 tornados. 5 of the 8 EF-3 tornadoes hit my state.

I live in Alabama and I remember the April 2011 tornado invasion. I could see the biggest tornado I had ever seen about the same distance away from me as the first clip just going down the highway like it was obeying traffic laws. But it's really the sound that sticks with you, I think about it whenever I hear a train.

I personally have never had property damage from tornadoes, but my mother has. During the 1990 Plainfield EF5 tornado, my mother's home was lifted off of the foundation, and set back down a few feet from the foundation, partially back on top of it. Her neighbor's home across the street was completely destroyed, and I remember her talking about how one of her neighbor's children was either killed or injured by debris.

I was in the May 3rd, 1999 F5 tornado. I was 15 or 16 at the time that this hit. My neighbor, at the time, rounded up everyone who didn't have a tornado shelter and put them in her storm cellar. My mother, my brother, our dog Pepper, and I included. When we shut the door, the sirens went off, and it went over my neighborhood. I lived on Gale Street, which is off of 5th Street and 12th Street in Moore, Oklahoma. When it touched ground again, it nailed Janeway, the next block over.

The 1991 Andover tornado was the first time I saw a tornado on national television. My unkle was a volunteer fire fighter in the county, stationed at McConnel AFB, and did search and rescue after it moved through Andover. Wild stuff.