This is TOO close

May 16, 2004 1:23 PM

A tornado picks up a housewhile a storm chaser tapes it. Later, he finds himself getting a little too close for comfort. (27 meg download - some swearing) Fortunately, no one was in that house at the time.
posted by pyramid termite (37 comments total)

That didn't sound like Bill Paxton at all.
posted by ColdChef at 1:34 PM on May 16, 2004

Mother Nature is one serious bitch sometimes.

Gotta say, I'm glad I live (for the most part) out of the normal disaster prone areas.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 1:34 PM on May 16, 2004

I didn't see Dorothy and Toto.
posted by PigAlien at 2:05 PM on May 16, 2004

Hmm, it looks less like a house than a farm building that might have been somewhat precarious anyway.
Still, good tornado footage.

When I was in grade school, we used to have tornado drills, just like a fire drill only everyone crowds into the basement / boiler room and waits.
posted by milovoo at 2:12 PM on May 16, 2004

I remember those drills - unfortunately, my elementary school didn't have a basement, so they periodically herded all the classes into the hallway and instructed us to practice ducking, covering, and kissing our grade-school hinders goodbye. Something about the scientific fact that if you're sucked into a twister, if you're curled into a tiny little human ball, you wouldn't fly about as fast as you would if you were flailing your arms and legs around, because they act like sails or something. Strangely, they never told us what to do, preparation-wise, for when we would be hurled back towards the ground after our fun little ride. Good times.
posted by dakotadusk at 2:53 PM on May 16, 2004

I always felt cheated when we went to all that trouble and didn't actually get to see a tornado.
posted by Potsy at 3:29 PM on May 16, 2004

ah, the hell with you tornado kids...try growing up in south Florida. a girlfriend of mine in college sat in her closet as Andrew tore her roof off.
posted by NationalKato at 3:37 PM on May 16, 2004

MetaFilter: 27 meg download - some swearing
posted by Nelson at 3:51 PM on May 16, 2004

a girlfriend of mine in college sat in her closet as Andrew tore her roof off.

That's what she said.
posted by ColdChef at 4:04 PM on May 16, 2004

a girlfriend of mine in college sat in her closet as Andrew tore her roof off.

Which is infinitely preferable to having him kick in her back door I suppose?

*ducks*
posted by dmt at 4:41 PM on May 16, 2004

hurricanes are for wimps. real windstorm freaks love tornados. this is some of the best footage i have ever seen, and i've been a tornado freak since 1965, when an F4 passed 1/4 mile away from my house and provided the fright of my 12 year old self's experience to that point. of course, these days, i'm far more frightened of the bush administration...
posted by quonsar at 5:20 PM on May 16, 2004

Obviously fake.
posted by Hildago at 5:57 PM on May 16, 2004

Right on, quonsar. Hurricanes are "lucky" to have winds in the 100-125 mpg range...but a tornado can easily top 200 mph, and the May 3, 1999 twisters that struck OKC set the known record for wind: 318 mph. Truly incredible.
posted by davidmsc at 5:57 PM on May 16, 2004

Dakotadusk: I know you're probably being facetious, but the "duck and cover" part of tornado drills was to help shield you from falling debris, as well as reducing your size as a target. It also sacrificed the rest of your body to at least attempt to protect your head.

Of course, in a real tornado the chances we would be lined up in neat little turtle-esque rows was indeed highly unlikely.
posted by Ynoxas at 7:53 PM on May 16, 2004

Metafilter: lined up in neat little turtle-esque rows.
posted by davidmsc at 8:06 PM on May 16, 2004

Either that, or "duck and cover" was a sly marketing gimmick to get us to ask our parents about Aflac.
posted by dakotadusk at 8:50 PM on May 16, 2004

Hmm, it looks less like a house than a farm building that might have been somewhat precarious anyway.
Still, good tornado footage.

Nah, it was a new house under construction (not sure how complete it was). I didn't actually expect the storms to do much that evening or I might have went chasing. Silly me. I don't really have the spare cash (or time) to spend on gas to drive for hours and hours at the moment anyway, that is the real discouraging factor in storm chasing.

I need to dig around and see what that particular storm was rated at, assuming they actually got around to surveying the site. Travis Meyer out of Tulsa was saying that the radar was indicating wind speeds of 160+ in that storm, the strongest that had been seeing in the general area in a few years. There was nothing at all going on in the Tulsa area so they talked about the storms for a while even though they were all well north of the viewing area.
posted by bargle at 9:06 PM on May 16, 2004

MetaFilter: sacrificing the rest of your body.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:01 PM on May 16, 2004

MetaFilter: obviously fake.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 10:41 PM on May 16, 2004

Don't you start that again!
posted by dmt at 2:32 AM on May 17, 2004

quonsar - Agreed. I lived in Tampa for 9 years and the hurricanes didn't have shit on the lightning storms, which were some of the best in the world. Hurricanes aren't localized enough, the winds not hard enough, the terror not specific enough.

With a tornado, you get the terror of an oncoming front developing like a black tsunami in the air, followed by the physical manefestation of mother nature, the bitch.

Now that I'm in Nebraska, I have this overwhelming urge to go storm-chasing whenever a storm approaches. This video gives me pause.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:24 AM on May 17, 2004

I'm a participant in the opposite of storm chasing: storm fleeing.

Oddly, it is not considered quite as glamorous.
posted by Ynoxas at 6:37 AM on May 17, 2004

Ok It's my turn

Metafilter: sitting in a closet is not gay if a hurricane is coming your way.
posted by elpapacito at 6:49 AM on May 17, 2004

she's out of the closet now, by the way.

ba-dum-bump.
posted by NationalKato at 8:01 AM on May 17, 2004

Wow. Awesome, in the literal sense of the word...
posted by mkultra at 8:16 AM on May 17, 2004

Yikes! Never been through a tornado, but we did have some fun last July. 100+ MPH straight line winds are plenty for me thankyouverymuch.
posted by JeffK at 8:54 AM on May 17, 2004

That oncoming front photo brought back memories. In July 1996, I was driving home from work and it was apparent a storm was in the offing. I remember as I got out of my car in the driveway, facing west, the clouds on the horizon were deep, dark blue, melting into an ominous black. Above me, the rest of the sky had an orangey hue (reminding me of the Cars song). It was the most forboding sky I'd ever seen.

Our house escaped major damage, but the billboard on our corner - just six houses down - looked as though a giant hand had crumpled it like an empty cigarette pack. And all that was just residual damage; the actual tornadoes had hit in nearby Grosse Pointe and Hamtramck.
posted by Oriole Adams at 8:55 AM on May 17, 2004

We live in the part of texas that still considered Tornado Alley, but fortunately, I've never seen one up close. They're stunning in their power, but damn, they spook me. This is amazing footage...I'm always astounded by the people willing to chase a force of nature.
posted by dejah420 at 9:22 AM on May 17, 2004

My SO huddled in his closet with his parents while a tornado tore the front of their house away. The pictures of the aftermath are amazing, terrifying. This was many years ago, no lives were lost and the property damage has been compsenated by insurance so now we can all laugh about how his father's underwear somehow ended up in the freezer.
posted by jennyb at 9:30 AM on May 17, 2004

This is amazing footage...I'm always astounded by the people willing to chase a force of nature.

If you know what you are doing, you are usually pretty safe chasing. Surprises happen, but if you don't just take off driving with no clue what you are looking at or where you are going, the surprises will be few and far between.

If you do not know what you are doing, the chances are good that you will put yourself in danger.

It's the stupid thrill-seeking goofballs driving their trucks through fields so they can get closer to a tornado that are the biggest danger, to themselves and other people. Not to mention being a huge headache for all other chasers. There has been so much of that shit that chasers sometimes get harassed and/or arrested by police in areas where other chasers have caused problems in the past.

Of course some chasers who have the knowledge still have no common sense or respect for other people's property, it isn't just dumb kids that will drive through a pasture if the road is not taking them where they want to go.
posted by bargle at 10:08 AM on May 17, 2004

I always hated those tornado drills as during my growth spurts, they would kill my knees. Add on teachers that were vehement about making sure your neck was completely covered, and the thrill of getting out of class, even for a few minutes, was destroyed.

I've only seen one tornado IRL, when I was very young from our basement window, and it was pretty far away, but it was still pretty fascinating. I have seen more than my fair share of wall and funnel clouds though. My dad still will sit out on the back porch with his headphones tuned into an AM station and watch severe storms. It's one of his favorite, well, hobbies for lack of a better word.

bargle, since you seem to have some knowledge, how open are good or pro chasers to civilian ride-alongs? Obviously it's something next to impossible to schedule, but I'd love to tag along with someone who knows what they're doing.
posted by Ufez Jones at 11:09 AM on May 17, 2004

said a ways above by davidmsc:

Hurricanes are "lucky" to have winds in the 100-125 mph range...but a tornado can easily top 200 mph, and the May 3, 1999 twisters that struck OKC set the known record for wind: 318 mph. Truly incredible.

Yeah 300+ is impressive, but remember that hurricane winds can blow at 100 mph for HOURS at a time, over a wide piece of territory. IIRC, Andrew broke the wind meter at the Hurricane Center at somewhere around 180mph and was still getting stronger at that point. Also IIRC there is no precise estimate as to how fast the fastest sustained winds in Andrew were.

I saw aerial footage of the destruction Andrew left in its wake, and basically it looked like what a tornado does, except the damage was as far as the eye could see in every direction. It looked like someone with a 10-mile wide bulldozer had simply driven across Florida and sheared everything off 6 inches above ground level. (Ironically, that footage was presented as part of a TV show here in SoCal about earthquake preparedness - showing that Andrew's damage was much, much worse than both the Northridge and Loma Prieta quakes. And it was; after the quakes only a few structures had collapsed... nothing was left after Andrew blew thru.)

Admittedly, Andrew was an unusually powerful hurricane, one of the most powerful ever measured, but still you had 150+ mph winds (tornado speed for sure) spread over a 30- or 40- mile wide swath of land for 3-5 hours.

That's not a fun day. At least a twister blasts you in a few seconds. Then again, with modern satellite methods we know when a hurricane is coming, and people can get out of the way. Twisters are like the finger of God coming down to blot stuff from the earth.

Also, IIRC, most deaths in hurricanes nowadays are caused by storm surge - the ocean coming in many feet higher than usual and smashing everything up.

I'm glad I live in SoCal now, where only the ground shakes from time to time. :)
posted by zoogleplex at 1:25 PM on May 17, 2004

any mirrored links to the video?
posted by thomcatspike at 2:22 PM on May 17, 2004

bargle, since you seem to have some knowledge, how open are good or pro chasers to civilian ride-alongs? Obviously it's something next to impossible to schedule, but I'd love to tag along with someone who knows what they're doing.

Well, really most chasers are amateurs/hobbyists. Only a small handful of people could be called "pro" since they make their living from storm photography, books and that type of thing. And if you want to call them professional chasers, the ones that are chasing on behalf of a television station or something like that probably would not even be able to bring you along if they wanted, but who knows.

As far as the experienced amateurs go, you might get lucky just because of the costs of chasing… if you can find someone in your area. Or can travel to meet up with one outside of your area. It takes a lot of gas, plus unless you only chase near home you are going to be looking at motel stays as well. Someone might appreciate having another along to chip in on those costs.

If you think it is too risky looking for some random person to chase with (since you have to take them at their word when they say they know what they are doing), you have another option as these days there are a lot of chasing tours. Some are reasonable, some are extremely expensive. Lasting from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, you pay your own way regarding food and lodging + whatever the fee is. Some are just "come along, see the storms" and some are more of a training course in storm spotting and chasing. Of course you might pay $XXX and then not see a single tornado or even a significant storm, if mother nature was not being cooperative.

Some of the tours you go in a convoy of sorts, they only allow a few people to sign up for the group and some are in a couple or a few vehicles driven by the chasers with room for one to three people in each car to go along. I really have not looked into these since I will just go on my own when I get a good opportunity (rare these days) but a quick google search should bring up several.

hurricanes vs tornadoes

It is worth mentioning that tornadoes can develop within hurricanes and can create localized areas of more severe destruction than what the hurricane itself was creating. Andrew spawned many tornadoes, some of which were responsible for fatalities. Most of the time tornadoes in hurricanes are short-lived and on the weak side.
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posted by bargle at 2:37 PM on May 17, 2004

Thanks for the breakdown, bargle. If this is something I really want to consider, it looks like there's some investigation to be done.
posted by Ufez Jones at 3:03 PM on May 17, 2004

Ufez - you could attend Mr. T's Storm Chase School.
posted by Wet Spot at 8:10 PM on May 17, 2004

I wish I had thought to do so. Damn. Mirror it, that is.
posted by Samizdata at 1:13 PM on May 18, 2004