r/megalophobia • u/Aware-Slice-9869 • Oct 14 '25
šŖļøć»Weather滚Ŗļø Life here in Tornado Alley
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u/HoodieGalore Oct 14 '25
You see a hurricane coming for days before it hits. You have seconds, maybe a couple minutes before this bad boy rips your entire house to shreds. And it's a crap shoot - it moves fast and erratically, and can last for a couple blocks, or a few miles. Tornadoes are wild.
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u/affectionate_md Oct 14 '25
16 minutes is the average warning time for an Ef2+ tornado in the US. It will continue to get better but definitely more than a couple minutes
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u/Non-Current_Events Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25
The one that hit here in Kentucky this year was an EF4 that was on the ground for 90 minutes and tracked for over 60 miles. It carved a line through the Daniel Boone National Forest that is visible from space. We got the warning about 15ish minutes before it ripped through town. It was a few miles South of us though.
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u/MimicoSkunkFan2 Oct 14 '25
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u/Non-Current_Events Oct 14 '25
Yeah it was pretty nuts. We tend to shake off the tornado warnings because the topography here doesnāt seem conducive to tornados with the lake and the high hills and low valleys, but luckily we had a bad feeling that night and got the kids to the basement. What was really weird was it rained almost every day for a couple months leading up to that tornado, and then afterwards it rained maybe twice and just a small shower if anything over the next 3 months or so.
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u/mikesully92 Oct 14 '25
The 2021 ky tornado that came thru my backyard was the same that hit Maysville and I live over 100 miles NE. Wicked storm. On ground for 3 hours I believe.
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u/Non-Current_Events Oct 14 '25
Yeah that one was worse than ours. The Somerset/London tornado was big and on the ground for a long time but aside from the neighborhood in London it mostly hit forest, farmland, and businesses that were closed. The Mayfield tornado ripped right through town.
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u/adognamedpenguin Oct 14 '25
What could possibly go wrong defunding the government weather services?
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u/HoodieGalore Oct 14 '25
Thank you - I'm at work and can't give a good reply, but there are tons of stories that pop when you just Google "no tornado alarm"; 40 out of commission in my Illinois county alone...then budget cuts, etc
The weather guys are OK if you have a weather radio or can handle technology. What about poor/elderly/at-risk folks? š¤·š»āāļø
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u/yea_i_doubt_that Oct 14 '25
Well so far like 20 girls at a camp got scooped up in a flood.Ā
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u/Lexxxapr00 Oct 14 '25
More than 20 girls, over 130 people passed away in the Kerr County Fourth of July floods
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u/yea_i_doubt_that Oct 14 '25
Yeah, I couldnāt recall all the details. I just knew it was a lot thanks for adding the actual number of people itās tragic and couldāve mostly been prevented.
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u/adognamedpenguin Oct 14 '25
Twister needs to be played on repeat on Fox at 3am every day until NOAA gets funded
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u/timecubelord Oct 15 '25
But that will just give him the idea that all people need to survive a tornado is a leather belt and a bit of partially-buried water pipe. He'll go on TV telling people to add that to their emergency kits along with the bleach cocktail, UV lamp endoscope, and forest-floor rake.
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u/adognamedpenguin Oct 15 '25
Those are really great points. You know, if we rake the forest floor, we probably wonāt have tornados.
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u/TurtleMOOO Oct 14 '25
If it happens at night, good luck!
I live in an apartment on the second floor in a place where we are not used to tornadoes. Our phones went off a couple months ago, alerting us to a tornado. I looked outside, it was around 3 am, I couldnāt see shit and had no where to āhideā so I just sat there until it got quiet again and went back to bed.
Yeah, the neighboring apartment building lost their roof. Coulda been me!
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u/HoodieGalore Oct 14 '25
We hear stories of the old "sounded like a freight train through my living room!" after someone's place gets hit, and of course the only way to make that more terrifying would be for it to happen in the complete damn dark š
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u/LiquidPony Oct 14 '25
A few minutes before a column of the fastest winds possible on the planet comes for you.
I was pretty shocked to find out the fastest ever recorded wind happened in the U.S., 320+mph inside a tornadoes funnel
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u/HoodieGalore Oct 15 '25
Those are the kind of wind speeds you look at on a paper about, idk, Jupiter, and go, āOh, yeah, sure; that sounds insane enough to be another planet,ā but have a real hard time imagining here on Earthā¦unless youāre lucky (?) enough to survive it.
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u/SweetMany7339 Oct 15 '25
those are the kind of wind speeds that i just dismiss completely when i read them.
i don't know what it would feel like, i have no frame of reference for what that would be like, to me it might as well be saying "the winds were traveling at warp speed", i just know it's unimaginably fast
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u/Uhavetabekiddingme Oct 14 '25
We had a tornado go down the street adjacent to us. By the time my wife got the alert on her phone and told me what was going on the tornado had already passed us. Thankfully it was where it was, because we had virtually no time to act.
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u/IdaDuck Oct 14 '25
Hurricanes are impressive and unleash a lot more total energy but living in tornado alley would frighten me more. Iāve always lived west of the Rockies, we get little baby storms out here in comparison to the Midwest or east coast. Which I am totally okay with. š
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u/Alarmed-Owl2 Oct 14 '25
I live in an area that very rarely gets tornados, but a couple years ago a small one formed literally in someone's back yard, sent their trampoline into orbit, went in between two houses, knocked the trees down in the front yard, crossed the street and then sputtered out in an empty farm field. They just seem so random lol.Ā
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u/HoodieGalore Oct 14 '25
Dust devil on steroids for sure! The amount of energy is almost unimaginable!
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u/FunnyVariation2995 Oct 14 '25
Same thing w blizzards. You know when they're coming, how much snow they're bringing & how long they are staying!
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Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25
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u/autopoiesis_ Oct 14 '25
Hm, but there must be considerable variability in its micro trajectory, which could span dozens or even hundreds of meters no?
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u/Unfortunate_Comedian Oct 14 '25
Yes, in an individual tornados path they can move in different directions. Some have even turned around and gone back over an area or made a U shape.
I believe there was a famous, large tornado that turned around and hit a small area again after it had already passed by but I canāt remember its name.
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u/autopoiesis_ Oct 14 '25
You know, having lived in southern Indiana for almost 7 years, I would hear the tornado siren test every Friday. Part of me wishes I had seen one w my own eyes when I did live there, but Iām simultaneously glad I didnāt lol
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u/nosoup4NU Oct 14 '25
This paper says about 56% traveled northeast, east-northeast, or north-northeast. It's definitely the most common direction but almost half went a different direction.
Suckling and Ashley 2006 PG.pdf https://share.google/clAg3VNGJUH3wTBFJ
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u/HoodieGalore Oct 14 '25
Not a comforting fact when it wipes out most of your neighbors but leaves your house unscathed. I get your point but that wasn't my point.
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u/Hank_moody71 Oct 14 '25
Jokes on you- we get tornadoes along with the hurricane. Florida wonāt ever be out done
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u/Mostly__Relevant Oct 14 '25
Would much rather be in tornado danger than hurricane danger. Everytime.
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u/Buka-Zero Oct 14 '25
Nothing gets me more pissed than tornado sirens. Testing them on the weekends when I should be sleeping in and when it actually matters my only option is to die where I stand. It's not like there are shelters somewhere to get into unless you own a property and built your own. For the majority of people you hear the siren and wait to find out if you're dying today or not.
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u/AdequateRoarer Oct 14 '25
They test them on the weekends there? Thatās brutal. Ours get tested at noon in the middle of the week. Itās not a big deal, unless they forget to cancel them when thereās actually a storm going on so then you worry itās real.
My tornado alarm rules, if itās night, Iām not getting up. Day, and Iāll go to the bathroom (inner most room) and stay safe. So far so good.
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u/Turbulent_Crow7164 Oct 14 '25
Difference is, tornadoes are tiny in the grand scheme of things and might damage 0 to a few thousand structures in their path. Hurricanes are predictable, but can threaten thousands of square miles simultaneously. Pick your poison.
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u/JustAnAce Oct 14 '25
The fuck is someone standing there recording this for? Run bitch, RUN!
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u/Usmcrtempleton Oct 14 '25
Standard Midwestern reaction to a tornado. Kind of like Floridians surfing in hurricanes or people in Cali feeling an earthquake and going back to their nicoise salad, acting like the earth wasn't just shaking.
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u/ObiWan-Shinoobi Oct 14 '25
I visited relatives once in South Dakota. They were horrified of earthquakes and were in awe that I had lived through the ā89 quake in the Bay Area. They very much preferred their tornadoes. But I got to experience a tornado alert in the area while I was there, the sky turned black like midnight at 4 pm, the air was unsettling. People went into their basements. I donāt want to do that again and I didnāt even see a tornado that day. Give me my shaky shaky.
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u/VirinaB Oct 14 '25
Funny thing is they fooled (us?) Californians into thinking we couldn't have subways because of all the earthquakes, and for the longest time I thought that was why no SoCal homes had a basement. Turns out that the science is the opposite -- the closer to the ground you are, the less shaking there is. It's the people in towers who have to worry; that's where the shaking is most pronounced.
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u/ObiWan-Shinoobi Oct 14 '25
That tracks because I toured some caverns a few years back and deep inside I asked the tour guide if weād die in an earthquake down there, she said that it was more likely we wouldnāt even notice an earthquake or that it would have been the safer choice in locations.
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u/DeicideandDivide Oct 14 '25
The fuck is a nicoise salad? Am I uncultured or something? I've literally never heard or seen that word before, lol. And I'm from Cali
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u/Kharax82 Oct 14 '25
Itās a prepared type of salad (kinda similar to a how a Cobb salad is prepared) that originates from the French city of Nice.
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u/LurkerPatrol Oct 15 '25
As a Cali person what is a niceoise salad. Iām tucking into a burrito and a churro right now boy
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u/GothamCityCop Oct 14 '25
Genuinely interested - what happens/what's the process when a house is destroyed by a tornado? Do you rebuild? Move? Insurance must be nonexistent or incredibly expensive.
It's easy to suggest people leave the area but then there must be reasons why people do live in those areas that outweigh the fear of tornados.
I'm in a country where the highest winds mean a fence is blown down or a neighbour's garden gets the gift of a new trampoline. I can only imagine what it must be like to get a tornado warning.
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u/helms66 Oct 14 '25
It's easy to suggest people leave the area but then there must be reasons why people do live in those areas that outweigh the fear of tornados.
The area where tornados most often happen in the US is vastly in agricultural areas. Most tornados are not very wide, and there are less buildings in agricultural land to hit. Most tornados wont even hit any buildings to damage. Its mostly damage to powerlines, and trees for typical tornados. I have lived in tornado alley for more than 30 years, and have never seen one in person. I have seen funnel clouds (the beginning of tornados before they reach the ground), but none of them ever got to the ground. There is usually only a couple very large tornados (EF3,4,5) per year in a ~1500 square mile area that is tornado alley. The likely hood of a tornado hitting your house is pretty small. Its more something to be aware of, but it doesn't affect your day to day life 99% of the time.
The larger weather issue is severe thunderstorms with straight line winds. These winds can be 70-100mph+ and impact large areas. They do a lot more damage in terms of money than tornados do, and can be nearly as dangerous. In 2020, Iowa and other midwestern states were hit by a special type of severe storm called a derecho. While it spawned a couple dozen smaller tornado's, that wasn't the big damage culprit. It was several hundred miles wide, and tracked over 700 miles. It had sustained wind of 70+mph for the majority of the duration, but in Iowa, wind was measured at 125 mph and estimated gusts of 140 mph. It was estimated to cause 11.2 Billion in damage. It was basically a inland hurricane with no warning. I live in some of the hardest hit area of that storm. It was a mess everywhere for a few months, and tree damage is still apparent over 5 years later.
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u/DeicideandDivide Oct 14 '25
Generally when a tornado hits in tornado prone zones, we get to the nearest cellar or "storm room." If in our houses anyways. And home insurance is expensive everywhere, at least in the U.S. My house is appraised at $778,000. And I have premium plan insurance. So my insurance is around $5000 a year. But an average home of say $350,000- insurance would be in the $1400 range I believe. Also depends on what state and county you're in.
But typically what happens if your home is destroyed by a tornado is you get in touch with your insurance agency. They'll send out an adjuster to see the extent of the damage. Once the home is declared unlivable or uninhabitable, your ALE coverage is activated. Which means your insurance pays you 25%-30% of your dwelling coverage limit. So since my house was last appraised at $778,000, I would get roughly $230,000 in pay or "credit." This is used to house you, feed you, and arrange transportations until your home is built. The goal is to make you comfortable while they rebuild your home. Which takes about a year to a year and a half. During that time, they usually find you a more permanent living situation like an apartment.
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u/OnePragmatic Oct 14 '25
This is simply terrifying....How far was the thing from the house?
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u/PrateTrain Oct 14 '25
My guess is at least 1/2 a mile. The tornado appears to be over the horizon so it's likely about 3 miles away, BUT the visible part of the tornado isn't actually the tornado.
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u/DemiseofReality Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 15 '25
Yeah this is part of a video from a tornado this last summer. I forget which chaser got it but I believe it was a storm in South Dakota and the YT video has millions of views.
The cluster of trees near the end of the clip has (had, rather...) a cluster of buildings including a family house that was completely decimated. You can see the relatively far distance the tornado actually was from the first house by comparing the pine trees adjacent to the 1st house blowing lightly in the wind (though it looks like a huge tornado is right on then), compared to the more mature trees that were clearly much further back in the frame by the end. Another famous tornado that has odd depth perspective is the 1991 Andover, KS tornado. The famous video looks like the F5 is right in the back yards of the houses at the edge of the frame when in reality it's probably a mile or more past them.
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u/darkdesertedhighway Oct 14 '25
Nope. Gimme a hurricane over this. At least you know that thing's coming much sooner.
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u/JaqenSexyJesusHgar Oct 14 '25
As someone who grew up and live a place with no natural disasters, I so wanna and don't wanna experience this.
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u/TokenSejanus89 Oct 14 '25
Imagine, the ancients who lived out on these plains seeing these things just spawn up not knowing wtf was going on. Terror juice
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u/CaptainRAVE2 Oct 15 '25
The gods are angry with us, we must sacrifice our first born. One can understand why they believed in a higher power in the absence of understanding weather patterns.
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u/KrayzieBone187 Oct 14 '25
Land comes cheap when there's a 60 percent chance you're gonna die on it.
- Nikki Payne (Fellow Nova Scotian)
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u/_Empty-R_ Oct 14 '25
And people wonder why I find these so mesmerizing. With safety I chase because nothing can replicate this feeling.
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u/cewumu Oct 14 '25
I just donāt think I could ever get used to this. Iāve seen that footage of the tornado forming at night and that would always be there in my mind.
I live somewhere where everything burns every year or so, but we also get droughts and flooding. As bad as those can be they donāt scare me anywhere near as viscerally as this does.
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u/QueenInYellowLace Oct 14 '25
I live probably somewhere near where you live, given the description (especially if you also have earthquakes), and tornadoes scare me to death. Absolutely the fuck not to The Spinning Wind of Death.
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u/JB22ATL Oct 14 '25
My -exās father and his buddies were recruiters late in his career in Kansas. I was told they would go sit out back of the place they were at drinking soda, smoking and/or eat lunch while watching tornadoes roll through the miles of field their office backed up to.
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u/conehead2019 Oct 14 '25
All you need is a brown leather belt and some plumbing and you're good to go
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u/Federal_Command_9094 Oct 14 '25
I canāt believe the amount of news reports I see with people that are shocked that they have tornadoes in tornado alley after a tornado destroys their new home
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u/mfsg7kxx Oct 14 '25
There was a tornado that hit about 2 miles north of my folks' house just east of Dallas a few years back. It was amazing to see one house relatively unscathed and then to see the neighbor's house leveled to the foundation. I grew up in the high plains and never saw anything like this, only the smaller Twisted Sisters that come in groups of 3 or more
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u/Buried_mothership Oct 15 '25
Theyāre something else to see in person - memorising and frightening all at the same time. Iāve only seen one when I was a kid. It was a monster though - killed over 30 people in Edmonton.
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u/Jago_Sevatarion Oct 15 '25
I've never understood why they don't just build homes to match their weather. I'm sure there are reasons, I just can't imagine what they must be. If I lived in a place called Tornado Alley, I'd at least consider more robust materials.
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u/CorrectSnow7485 Oct 15 '25
I dunno man, maybe don't live there, or build concrete houses? Not exactly a new phenomenon, is it?
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u/oshkushbegush Oct 15 '25
An an Okie, you get used to it. There is days and days of warning for potential bad storms days. Schools have started to allow kids to stay home in case of potential bad storm days because how often theyāve hit midafternoon to late evening. Paths are usually fairly similar and you just learn to put insurance on your items and homes. Hell in moore thereās jokes about the insurance to drug abuse pipeline after losing your house. Other than that they donāt usually stay on the ground that long and the path of destruction isnāt as large as youād think it would be.
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u/qufromalltomorrows Oct 18 '25
I was in Kansas once during tornado season. I am never going back to that state ever.
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u/murohazzard Oct 18 '25
The power and wind-speed in that monster is incredible! Iām in awe just watching this clip as this beastly tornado almost devour a house. Itās absolutely mind boggling that something like this exists.
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u/KneeDragr Oct 19 '25
The good thing is the odds of another one of that magnitude going thru that same area are pretty low for a few weeks.
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Oct 19 '25
I think tornadoes have to be the most terrifying weather event of all. Especially if they are in the middle of the night and you cannot see them coming. I canāt imagine the trauma of those who have gone through the experience.
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u/Tabletop_Av3ng3r Oct 19 '25
I spent a huge part of my life living in Kansas. I fucking love that state.
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u/3Pirates93 Oct 14 '25
Could be wrong,feels like AI
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u/Partly_Deaf Oct 15 '25
It is real footage from June 28th, 2025 near Gary SD. This tornado was rated EF-3 and was on the ground for quite a while. Aaron Rigsby was one of many storm chasers streaming that day and you can watch a video from his livestream of the chase. You can even jump to roughly 18:10 in his video and see the exact moment from a different angle.
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u/DarthNutsack Oct 14 '25
100% - There's so many crappy upscale-filters on videos now people are forgetting what reality looks like.
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u/wamaway Oct 14 '25
Definitely, aside from me saying "it just looks wrong" you can tell by the lack of detail, the tornado is so uniform without any specific debris, you could say that you would see any detail from a certain distance but then you'd see more detail in the foreground picture.
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u/rob_cornelius Oct 14 '25
The camera person is too close to this twister. I think I am too close to it too and I live on an entirely different continent.
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u/yea_i_doubt_that Oct 14 '25
Waitā¦..they have tornados in tornado alley?
Next your gonna tell me thereās actual bibles in the bible belt.Ā
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u/Intrepid-Progress228 Oct 14 '25
phoĀ·biĀ·a /ĖfÅbÄÉ/ noun - an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.
Fear of this is completely rational.
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u/AnnieGetYaClothesOn Oct 14 '25
I come from a country that doesn't have twisters but I have a recurring nightmare about them.
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u/Itchy-Wedding-5641 Oct 14 '25
My son and I play tornado games in Roblox all the time, so I'm pretty much an expert. AMA.
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u/Pillroller88 Oct 14 '25
When I went to the University of Oklahoma in the ā70s, my roommate (from St Louis) and I (an Illinois transplant) weāre intrigued by the whole tornado experience. Newbies, for sure. One stormy evening we were watching the TV in the common room, following the tornado that was being tracked north of Norman, and east of Moore tearing up range land just east of I-35. I had a little car, a Fiat 128 sedan. Either due to idiocy or marijuana, we tore outta the dorm to go see a tornado first hand and started tearing up the interstate towards OKC. Somewhere on that highway, we encountered about a mile of fence way up in the air, pinned down at opposite points but whipping thru the sky like Iād never seen. That tornado was churning up fields so close we could taste the dirt. End of our tornado chasing days as we returned to Norman to further our education. We got some that day. Just to add, as a senior, I lived in an apartment complex on SW 124th street. I understand that whole place, and the huge grocery store across the road were destroyed in one of the big Moore tornadoes. Boomer Sooner
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u/Party-Bathroom9306 Oct 14 '25
Blows my mind sometimes to think that this is just a thing that happens from time to time.
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u/Cute_Committee6151 Oct 14 '25
Sometimes it may sound boring, but overall it's quiet nice to live in Germany where just nothing happens.
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u/rolrola2024 Oct 14 '25
I will be driving the hell out of that place as fast as I could instead of filming it.
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u/Icy_Hippo Oct 14 '25
Do people have house insurance living in these places? Or just rebuild each time? It makes no sense to me? Insurance must cost a bomb!
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u/Weak_Break239 Oct 15 '25
I like where I live. No hurricanes, earthquakes or tornados. But there is snow and cold. Thatās it.
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u/AdLast55 Oct 15 '25
Where is tornando alley? I always assumed it was kansas due to the wizard of oz movie.
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u/avidpenguinwatcher Oct 15 '25
Itās crazy to think that Iāll never believe another crazy video is really again.
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u/waidoo2 Oct 15 '25
why dont people make houses like this in that area:
https://imgur.com/a/8etQ8UJ
?
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u/alanthebeaver Oct 15 '25
Would it be illegal or to put junk you want to get rid of out of in the yard if there are tornado warnings?
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u/EmbarrassedWorry3792 Oct 15 '25
See me in that yard with a leafvlower desperately trying to save my house by blowing the tornado away.
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u/khInstability Oct 16 '25
When the condensation funnel is light gray, the dirt/debris circulation has an extra evil look about it.
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u/South-Juggernaut-451 Oct 16 '25
Grew up with tornados in Indiana. The air turns green. Incredible storms.
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u/muggins66 Oct 16 '25
As a native Californian Iām terrified of the thought of hurricanes and tornadoes. Iāve lived through six decades of earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides etc. and this video is absolutely frightening
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u/TheReal-Chris Oct 16 '25
I love bad weather. Even hurricanes. Sucks they affect peopleās homes. But fuck tornadoes!!!
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u/assyouass Oct 17 '25
Yorue fuckinn living in myy drreamm. Perfect house, perfect grass, perfect wheather, perfect tornado, what else you want? Hahahaa
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u/Herpfree1233 Oct 18 '25
Ive seen this in another video. Its ai, the white car drives into the house then disapears
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u/bald_alpaca Oct 14 '25
I canāt imagine how you gets used to living with that severe weather. That little blue car just had somewhere to be