I remember the 1990 Plainfield tornado and how there was no warning. It was such a hot, humid day. I watched it swirling in the sky above our house immediately before the storm hit and we had to run for cover. The tornado touched down in the field in front of our house about a half mile away. It was an unforgettable experience and I’m so thankful it hadn’t touched down before it passed over us. I’m probably one of the few people that actually saw it before it became rain wrapped.
Incredible story!!!!! I was on my way home from Wisconsin that afternoon when the tornado was happening. I could see the massive dark clouds off to the SW which was producing the devastating tornado. I will never forget that moment for as long as I live. Thankfully you made it through and I thank you for your story.
I'm a storm chaser and even I experienced an unwarned tornado. Just after midnight the night of March 6th 2017, a squall made it's way across MO, and I watched a very obvious QLCS tornado develop about 25 miles west of me. It had the inflow notch, it had the little mini-couplet, and it had the CC debris ball. I watched it track about 20 miles over the course of 25-ish minutes. It was well within radar range, too. It lifted a few miles west of my town, the couplet disappeared, and then I found out the next morning that a second tornado dropped about a mile north of my house and went through the middle of town. Fortunately they were both only EF1s with a few minor injuries, but that storm was not tornado warned at ALL during it's entire lifecycle. NWS St. Louis is very liberal with warnings now after that fuck-up.
As a normie, that's insane to me. I'm just now getting into weather content so I don't know much. But the fact that tornadoes can hit without any warning is a problem I thought we solved years ago with radar. So to find out that not only can they hit with no warning, but entire TOWNS are at risk of being demolished with zero prior notice or evacuation, is mind blowing.
Very similar thing happened in western north dakota. It 1230 am thankfully only a ef1 came though the man camps. Based on where the closest radars were(Bismarck nd, and butte mt) it went undetected because the radars couldnt read low enough(curvature of the earth and all) 3 months later they were building a new radar in williston nd and tornado sirens were installed
I've had a very similar situation while chasing. It turned and came back at me and I was so freaked out I no longer chase or report as a SkyWarn spotter ALONE at night. Radar definitely doesn't show everything and we are needed but from now on, I'm not alone at night if intentionally tracking and getting info to the NWS. If I'd had a second set of eyes in the car, I may have spotted the turn around earlier. I was looking down at Doppler radar to see where the central point was because it was just forming and really getting going. It turned on me so fast I never expected it. We KNOW it's a risk but some things occur without much or any warning and I want people to have as much time as possible to get into shelter. I now also use more than just the NWS resources when out spotting.
There was a QLCS tornado in December 2019 outside of Tulsa that wasn't detected until 2 minutes after it had already touched down. It was only a few blocks away from me, I was watching the squall come in when the warning happened and I scrambled into the shelter. Thankfully it was only an EF0 and nobody was hurt.
Yep, I remember hearing about that. I remember the 2017 one too. Claremore also had a small nado come through the south side in march 2016. Was a quarter mile from my house.
That one was crazy. but the 2017 one was more insane. It wasn't warned until it had already gone from 38th and yale to like 51st and memorial. I lived at 38th and yale. It went through my backyard and we had no damage aside from one small section of our old rickety fence got knocked down. The power went out after it hit my area and thats what woke me up. It was probably hitting the movie theatre when I woke up. Whats even more insane is my power was only out for 2 hours. It was at like 1:30am and I am normally up at that time but that night I decided to sleep early for some reason. I regret it.
I've experienced an unwarned tornado, but thats because the UK doesn't have a tornado warning system, while tornados are some what common and happen every year in the UK we just don't have a system for it as we don't tend to get destructive ones, and a lot of the radar products except reflectivity are not publically available. i'm also pretty sure the UK only got doppler capabilities in 2019. We had a little spin up tornado from a linear storm system that came through, mostly because the hilly western coast of Scotland tends to provide uneven orthographic lift and it does funky things to storms. I've found the difference in weather coverage and the public access to weather information a bit whiplashy when I moved to the USA last year. It's really been an experience and a half. The one tornado we did get near by here last summer (which is rare because its upstate NY) was warned with plenty of time. I was impressed.
Although they are weak there is no such thing as a "nondestructive tornado". EF0s can still cause damage and in rare cases kill someone. The UK should really invest in an early warning system.
That must have been a bit of culture shock to come here, with all our information available. I had no idea the UK's weather warning system was so minimal. Thanks for the info Samantha!
I had a tornado warning come on as soon as it went over my home, I live in Connecticut we don’t really see tornados often, but in 2020 late August to Early September there was an alert that went from severe thunderstorm watch to warning to tornado watch to tornado warning roughly 2 minutes before it hit, luckily it only took trees and power lines down and no ones homes were affected severely
@@weatherboxstudios It's less that the UK's weather warning system is minimal, its just moreso geared to weather events that happen both with regularity and destruction. They also tend to be geographically different, so the Midlands in England are very focused on Flood warnings, Highlands for blizzards, Islands and Coasts for storms (and resultant storm surges). While tornados do happen, theyre often in largely rural areas and are far less destructive than the gale force winds and heavy rainfall that come from the same storm.
@@weatherboxstudios I sat next to a UK meteorologist on a flight. I asked about tornado warnings. He said they would never warn the public as they did not want to cause a panic. Ignorance it seems is bliss.
I'm a 30+ year experienced spotter, sighted over 120 local tornadoes. And still our local NWS in Ohio (ILN) chose to ignore us spotters most of the time then not. One such incident was the Blue Ash Ohio tornado when several of us called in and were ignored... 4 people died that morning.
well in our culture/country , you arent an actual person/human unless you are well off. so no one with power or authority is going to mind losing a few million working class subhumans.
I used to be super paranoid about storms before my daughter (at the time age 9) wanted to become a spotter (she loved watching Reed and Tim Samaras). I remember the day she became fascinated with storms. I had my lap top in my lap watching the radar on the loop (Like I said I was paranoid). The kids new that as soon as we went warned we would have to run down stairs to the basement. We lived in the mountains so my husband and kids would tease me - they never lived in Kansas. The radar loop went full purple and I yelled at the kids as I grabbed the baby rushing down the stairs. We were not even half way down when it went right over our house (luckily) snapping the huge shade tree about 25 feet up before it flung it down (took out the back deck and left my house). If that tree had falling flat we would probably not been lucky. A friend of ours (Volunteer Fireman) happened to be driving home and say it from about a mile away. He drove up to our house in a hurry to make sure we were safe. That storm never even had a Sever Thunder Storm Warning on it. Tons of damage all around us. From that day she was hooked - we did the classes and watched endless shows... spotted around our house . Until Tim died. She cried for days. I cried for days. My heart is with his family.
I live in northwest arkansas, and just a couple weeks ago we had a tornado come through springdale, which is right in the middle of our population Center. It ended up destroying an elementary school gymnasium, and destroying several trailer homes in the trailer park, and demolished a warehouse before going on to dissipate in our airport. There was zero warning, the first tornado warning did not pop off until approximately one minute after the tornado had lifted, there were 7 injuries. Worst part is this occured at 4 Am. There was one trailer that had three trees fall on it, and a man was pinned under the tree
The Dryline I lived in apts just east o AQ chicken house, worked at the hospital. one night I was going back to Springdale from Tulsa,followed one that hit few trees along the hiway & turnpike. It hit Fayetteville & believe was the one that hit Ft SMITH & Van Buren! it was in mid 1990s.
Same with Kentucky I think I seen a barn just collapse like the roof just caved in I'm not sure if it was the bad wind days ago or it came there but Sirins were going off in the Louisville area
As someone who spends a lot of time in Charlotte, I definitely agree there needs to be another radar built, maybe in Concord or Gastonia. It's frustrating when I'm trying to look at different radar sites and none of them really show the reflectivity with any quality
Im in kannapolis we had an ef0 that drop for a couple mins a mile from my house. There was also a funnel cloud that formed over carolina mall thank god it didnt drop.
I live in Mooresville I had never had any instance of a tornado. I had a big fear of them and tornado drills in my school amplified my fear of them. Only to realize they really don't really pose a threat here. Because the strongest of the storm hits the mountains first. Then loses it's momentum.
I live 2 hours NE of you, and yeah, we need a much better warning system. I'm blind, so I didn't see it, but I listened to the Pelham tornado that had been on the ground 20-30 minutes, and assured and reassured my husband, sister, and all 7 kids that we'd be ok because I couldn't hear the leaves rustling yet. I grew up in tornado alley, and we happened to be in the cone of silence as I listened to that EF3 eat everything in its path until it pulled up after turning away from us. It was scary as hell, being unable to see it and watch it like I always had until I was 38. Thankfully, I was able to track it with my ears.
To me the late night twisters while your sleeping is a terrifying possibility. My phone would give me a alert which is a good thing, but scrambling in the middle of the night for cover would not be fun.
The closest I came to experiencing a tornado was at about 3 a.m. ... woke up and heard a strange howling sound to the wind, but didn't feel like getting out of bed, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. The next morning, my sister is calling me in a panic, saying I had a tornado and was I ok. Didn't go in to work that day, between them not having power and other employees helping out with emergency/repair. It missed my house by about a quarter of a mile.
@@bruderlein8514I had a dream last night about a series of night time tornados that appeared outside of my window.. I woke up terrified thinking that they were real. There were three or four vortices all in a single file line. I've had tornado dreams before sporadically over the years. I would hate to be in one, especially at night.
Although I've been a tornado junkie since I was a 12 year old kid and saw the '65 Palm Sunday tornado form (I lived outside Pittsfield Oh.) I have never learned so much about tornado radar signatures as you presented in the 8 minutes 37 seconds of this video. Good job sir.
You're 70? So much life behind of you, so much left if you lived healthily. I hope you don't smoke. I wish you're well and have a nice day. Anyway have you ever ridden a horse? Just asking out of curiosity
In Ohio, back in the early 90's, we lived right across the street from the fire station where the sirens were. Nice day, we're out on the porch when a tornado just dropped out of the sky over the woods and right at us. I had time to grab my toddlers hand to run inside, and it came so fast it lifted the toddler off the ground. No injuries, no real damage, but it dropped like a missile out of the sky. The sirens never did go off.
Clinton County Tornado Sirens failed earlier in March. Countywide EMS computer outage/glitch. Clarksville got hit on the outskirts of town. Fortunately it was a touch and go.
I grew up near the Charlotte area (1993-2012). I remember a few instances of hearing about people spotting a funnel or tornado, but no warning from news stations, which baffled me. This explains a lot.
Back in the old days, a QLCS was known as a squall line. I’ve seen a spin-up appear and disappear quickly during those storms. Great video content as usual. 👍
Last summer, as I was road tripping back home from my college, my dad and I drove past a tornado as we were driving through Arkansas. We knew about it because I was checking Twitter and had found more amateur livestreamer filming it. The National Weather Service didn't issue any tornado warnings until after it had lifted. People were pissed off but luckily no one was hurt (or killed). Just some property damage.
@@weatherboxstudios We were driving south down interstate 55 in Arkansas as it touched down in Munford, Tennessee, which is really close to one of the radar stations in the map you showed in your video. I also remember scrolling through twitter and seeing radar images of the storm (and seeing the tornado in those images). Seems like the National Weather Service just screwed up with not reporting it in time. It happened on like, May 9th or 10th of 2021 if your interested. There’s multiple videos of this tornado around online.
I have experienced two bad tornadoes in the past 8 years of my life. An EF3 that was 2 miles away from our house and an EF2 that was 6 miles away from our house. One leveled a whole trailer park and the other destroyed 3 houses. We knew they were going to happen long before they touched the ground. We live in the southeast where we rarely see tornadoes and we still got great coverage and knew what was going on. I am impressed and very thankful for the National Weather Service.
@@paulspomer16 In the past 2 years we have only gotten 34 tornadoes in South Carolina. The majority of those happening on the April 13, 2020 and April 7, 2022 outbreaks. Oklahoma, which is smaller than South Carolina, can get more than that in a single day if they have a bad outbreak. Not 2 years, A SINGLE DAY. Saying the southeast gets a lot of tornadoes is the most ignorant shit I have heard in a while.
@@UltraMagaFan In 2020 there were 57 tornadoes in South Carolina, in 2021 there were 24 and so far this year there has been 20. South Carolina gets a decent amount, but not nearly as much as MS/AL/GA. And also you mean April 5 2022 not April 7
@@paulspomer16 My point was we do not get as many tornadoes as other parts of the country. States like Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas can get the number of tornadoes we get here in a year in one day. Compared to the Midwest the number of tornadoes we in the southeast is minuscule. I still think what you said is pretty ignorant even though my statistics were a little off. We do not get a lot of tornadoes. Period. Yes, I'm aware that may not be the case every year but the majority of the times it is.
Back in the early 80s (i wasnt around yet), my family in Edmonton experienced an F4 tornado on what is now called Black Friday. Tornados were not known to happen in the area, so most hadnt even heard of a tornado. As a result there wasnt a need for adequate tornado detection. My grandfather knew someone who lost his wife, kids, even the dog. The tornado is one of the biggest environmental disasters in the area, only suprassed by the drought of the 1930s. Almost every time i see a rotating cell, it seems to follow a similar path that the tornado took. I also noticed that any type of weather seems to be stronger along that path. Rip those driving through that on the east side of the Henday o_o
I grew up in Plainfield. I only lived 1/4 mile from the high school. I was 12 yrs old and the day before school was supposed to start. I remember sitting in my room and the sky turned green. I ran downstairs to our living room. My grandma was visiting us from Florida and she said something bad is going to happen. Within 10 minutes, my oldest brother came in saying the town was gone. He and my other brother were supposed to be at the high school, putting their books away. It was a rough couple years after that. My class was the 1st freshmen in the new high school. Now Plainfield is huge and has 4 high schools.
When I was a kid in the mid 2000's, I lived in Emigrant Montana. One day I was playing in the yard when I noticed a dark funnel shape going all the way to the ground across the valley beneath a large dark cloud. I remember taking 1 good look at that thing and then running straight for the house. By the time I got to the house and notified my parents it had lifted and disappeared. Just goes to show that these things can spawn in out of nowhere. Even in the mountain ranges. A decade or so later I remember seeing a couple of tornados out on the flat lands near Scobey Montana. Not sure how big they were but they didn't look particularly small. I think we were still rocking flip phones at that point. No looking up radar in those days.
There were tornados in New York City 14 years ago as crazy as that sounds. The one that happened where I was was only on the ground for 10 minutes and still managed to kill at least one person (tree fell on her car). But I didn't even know it was happening until my cousin got home and told me .
The radar hole part hits so much harder after the event of Friday (nov 4) where many possibly violent tornadoes touched down in the radar holes of the arklotex region.
Finally I found that one get some mention. The most recent Tornado Outbreak with a EF4+ Tornado- the November 4th, 2022 Tornado Outbreak. That EF4 being the infamous Idabel, OK EF4 Tornado. The EF4 rating is controversial as no EF4 Damage area was found, but nevertheless it deserves that EF4 rating with how destructive it was. That one Tornado might've changed the history of the town. You definitely can't compare the Jarrell F5 damage to it, but the effects to the small cities are all so much different, but at the same time, all too much the same when a violent Tornado is at their doorstep.
Yesterday in Western NY we had a squall line come through and my area was under a severe thunderstorm warning. Minutes later the NWS tagged it as a TOR possible & there was some rotation showing! No tornado though, just wind damage. Also, I am a storm spotter and I could not be happier to be one! ♥️ Edit: NWS just confirmed there WAS a tornado!!! EF-0
I mean, the Knoxville EF2 tornado that happened last week happened only under a severe thunderstorm warning and never a tornado warning. Additionally, the EF3 wedge in northern New York wasn’t warned until it was gone already, but luckily, I was watching meteorologist Andy Hill and he pointed out the debris ball.
This happened twice 2 years in a row here in central Pennsylvania. There's a well known radar hole in this area and we had 2 tornado's that the state college NWS missed and i could clearly see the tornado with my own eyes the first time. Radar holes are a big problem in this country and need to be addressed!
Thank you so much for making this after my previous comment in one of your last videos! Yeah, the tornado producing storm that happened in my town of Springdale did have a warning issued but the area they pointed the warning out in was not the area that ended up getting hit, so I'm guess a QLCS tornado happened with that one that just wasn't foreseen. Also, nobody even knew a tornado had actually happened until well after the fact. Our local station around 4:10am told us that any rotation was miniscule or absent from the storm and we didn't have much to worry about WHILE the tornado was actually on the ground, rocking a couple neighborhoods and a school. The one that hit my town ended up with an EF-3 rating and was pretty terrifying, but I do understand that this kind of thing happens and we haven't perfected radar technology yet. We'll get there soon, though. Great work as always!
Thank you! The first thing I looked at was the Springdale storm, but I couldn't really find a lot of information on when the warning was issued vs where the tornado formed. That is the only reason why I chose the Tulsa and Charlotte tornadoes, they were very clear cut and could be shown quickly. But the same points apply to the Springdale situation. Thanks again for the fantastic video suggestion!
I'm in North West Arkansas as well, I was just about to comment about the Springdale tornado. My apartment was just about 10 minutes away from the path, and my job took a direct hit
@@weatherboxstudios QLCS tornadoes can spring up in a minute or two which is what happened in Charlottre, which btw has some of the best severe weather radar and staff manning it that you'll find anywhere. Read my other reply to understand.
I’m from Tulsa and I remember that crazy out of nowhere tornado. Some damage is still visible to this day. It happened so fast and with no warning that many didn’t believe it was a tornado and insisted it was just a bad microburst.
I've been in 3 tornadoes, one was unwarned, or should I say warned right about as it hit. It was a rain-wrapped EF-0, path of about 1/4 mile, and lasted about two minutes. I was on the road and traffic stopped, boxing me in just inside the main circulation. Rain was so intense you couldn't see the end of your car hood, and my van rocked up onto two wheels twice before it was over. It was all in the open with not even a ditch for refuge. Spooky, and I thought I'd never see that again, but boy was I wrong.
I remember last year on September 27th here in the UK, an eastern coastal town called Cleethorpes had minor tornado damage from a QLCS moving through and there was not no warning of anything, not even for thunderstorms or wind. Even then, people here wouldn’t take it seriously.
I remember that Tulsa tornado you mentioned from 2017 very vividly. It was somewhere around 1:00 in the morning? The winds got super intense outside my house and after hearing that we decided to jump into our bathroom for shelter. The funnel went over our house and didn't touch down it until it hit the 41st Street area. The next morning we went to go out and look at the storm damage and it was crazy how destroyed that Whataburger and TGI Fridays were. It's probably the closest I've ever been to a tornado.
As someone who lives in a radar gap, I appreciate your breakdown on this. I’ve had 3 tornadoes without warning in about 10 years and many more in my life. Luckily nothing deadly but I’ve learned to watch the skies and radar myself.
Me neither, and I'm glad I have access to videos like this!!! I'm 50+ years old and have been fascinated and terrified of severe weather (especially 🌪's!) since I can remember, over 45 years. I watch live weather broadcast streams on youtube all the time. One I really like is "Ryan Hall Y'all". Anyone who has a passion or interest in tornadoes or severe weather in the US should definitely check his channel and broadcasts out! P.S. Pecos Hank and Reed Timmer are storm chasers that I highly recommend checking out on youtube if you haven't. There are some people who don't like Reed's personality, but there is no denying he is a very good storm chaser and has a passion for it! There are a lot of chasers and meteorologists who do a great job, just too many to name. I wanted to give a few of the names and channels I personally think have great video and content associated with tornadoes and severe storms.
Yeah, I've seen Reed Timmer mention them a couple of times lately but didn't know what they were (and obvs didn't take the time to look them up, just figured it was meteorologist-speak). I've learned something, too!
I’ve experienced 7 tornado warnings in my 14 years of life. I live about 30 minutes away from Omaha ne. I was outside during a storm once and watched a tornado form in a field a couple miles away and it was gone in only a minute. No warning, no reason for a warning. I want to go to college for meteorology.
I have been in an unwarned tornado. It was in Fort Worth, TX in the summer of either 85 or 86, on the east side of Loop 820. We were getting strong gusty winds and that scent you get before a storm. Then we got a few drops of rain, not even enough to fully wet the parking lot. Then we heard what we thought was a low flying jet. The wind came up, like a fast thunderstorm with a little debris, and then it went up a lot, howling and roaring with debris that hurt when it hit. I was outside a warehouse with doors open on both sides. I was close enough to grab the doorway and pull myself back in. Other people were blown down and skidded across the parking lot. It began to sound like hail too, but that was debris hitting everything. Then the dumpster across the parking lot flipped it's lid, trash lofted way up and it tipped over and blew away. Cars began to move in their parking spaces. My 1972 International Harvester pickup got turned about 45°. One car got the back of another set on its hood. We had sheets of ¾ MDF that got blown around and broken up inside the shop. About 10 mins after it hit the sirens went off. Edit: This might be reported as straight line winds, which also existed, but there was also rotation and lift. Several dumpsters were emptied of trash that went up in spirals before the metal dumpsters got blown along the ground. I saw cars that I thought were going to get blown away because the rear tires were several feet in the air.
There was a QLC that happened to me not to long ago in Kentucky. It was luckily caught on the radars and warning were sent out! So glad I got to learn about these thank you!
This is really good. Love the layout and order of how the video was done. If I didn't know anything about weather, this definitely would be an easy to follow video that would get me interested! Good stuff, and hope to see more from you!
While storm chasing in 2005, an F0 tornado dropped directly on top of our van while we were watching rainbands against the sunset. The storm we were under was ~35 miles behind the main convective event, a bow echo moving 45 miles an hour across southern Nebraska. We were asked by our college professor to not report this in our convective journals for that day but I think 20 years is enough time to talk about it now.
An unwarned tornado struck the southwest side of Omaha, NE on March 27, 1975. At the time, NWS switched radar on and off seasonally, so it wasn't active at the time. Sirens sounded _20_ minutes after this F2 dissipated. Afterwards, the radar was turned on for the season. NWS also made the rounds on the local TV and radio stations to prepare the public for the severe season. When an F4 tornado struck on May 6, it was preceded by a _15 minute_ lead time (in 1975!) and people knew what to do. The costliest, most damaging tornado in US history (at the time) killed only 3 people.
Had a friend experience an unwarned tornado. They were lucky it was only an f1 (possibly f0), especially since it ripped off part of their roof (and only theirs, none of the neighbors had damage like that). They didn't even realize the roof was damaged until someone knocked on their door asking if they were ok! And related to radar gaps, county specific coverage is also a major problem. I live near Dallas County (in Rockwall County specifically) and for the longest time they would cover the storm up until it left Dallas County, then would stop. Back to regular programming. We just had to hope nothing major happened. This did change when the 2015 Rowlett EF-4 tornado happened, but the fact that it took such a destructive tornado to change things is frustrating.
Anytime I hear a broadcaster say the sirens are not sounding in a location where they should be sounding, it gives me chills. "We're getting reports that the sirens are down, if you know anyone here then call them now, tell them to get to safety" absolutely terrifying words
We had a unwarned tornado this year in Ocala Florida. Went right behind my house. No warning, and the next day the news said it's because most of my county is in a radar gap. It was on the ground for over 20 miles and never was seen. Pretty scary and unacceptable. Luckily nobody was killed, but lots of damage.
Just 2 days ago there was an unwarned tornado that hit my city of Fayetteville North Carolina, interestingly enough there was a small couplet that was clearly visible on the South Carolina radar yet on KRAX it was barely visible. Thankfully it was a very minor tornado probably ef0 and only knocked down some trees and a few power lines. Awesome video as always!
I'm an avid storm enthusiast,, especially interested in supercells and tornadoes and even I didn't know about this phenomenon! Thanks for the knowledge, and I'm looking forward to watching more of your videos!
About 22 years ago, I was driving home from relatives when I saw a tornado form. There was no watches, no warnings, no storm really at the time (it was cloudy bc it rained earlier). But this twister just dipped out of the sky, touch the ground, but immediately dissipated. It was so amazing.
I was happy to see you included a still from the Troy tornado of January 2020 in your video because that was the one I was going to mention! Completely unwarned, the sirens didn't even go off until 5 minutes after it had passed through our neighborhood and put a tree through our neighbor's bedroom. I was driving home at the time and didn't know a tornado was even on the ground until I started passing downed power lines and trees in the road. I didn't even know the radar could miss some tornadoes until then, so thanks for the video!
I will NEVER forget this tornado. I lived in Joliet at the time… my mom’s best friend lived in Crest Hill. I never saw rain fall sideways and intense lightning. Luckily my mom made a quick stop at a store before we got to the apartment complex. Her friend and two kids, that my brother and would play with… THEY SURVIVED. 💯💙
I don’t know if it was a QLCS tornado or not, but Ohio does get a lot of those types of tornadoes. When I was little we lived in a mobile home in this really small town. And I remember one day it was storming but nothing seemingly too serious. My dad was doing laundry and all of the sudden, out of nowhere, the wind picked up and you could hear this roar and part of the roof started coming off. My dad bolted into the living room and grabbed me and my baby brother, and was getting ready to jump out the back door into the creek bed. And just as quickly as it has started it was over again. I can still hear the sound of the roof peeling off at 24 years old.
I was in my office that was about 8 miles away from the Plainfield tornado. Even at that distance there was a sudden violent change to the strong storm i was in when the tornado struck. I suddenly could not see past my window due to incredibly fast moving horizontal rain. Along with that there was what sounded like hail and my ears started popping. The thing that was frightening was the ceiling tiles were lifting out of the grid and the light fixtures were physically vibrating as the suction was working to pull them out. After about 15 minutes, the storm suddenly stopped and there was blue sky. I went outside and there was no sound of any kind. Then the emergency service sirens started and ran 24 hours a day for about a week. I'll never forget....
Last year, in August, Knoxville bizarrely had an EF2 drop on top of an apartment complex with no warning whatsoever. Luckily, it only damaged part of the complex and everyone got away with no injuries that I can recall. I thought it was so weird that nobody caught it. But now it makes a little more sense.
Just experienced a derecho that produced tornadic winds, we had mere minutes to prepare our backyard and front porch for the storm, then I got recommended this video, coincidence?
the first time i heard about the plainfield tornado i was stunned, i lived in Naperville for a long time and a friend of mine grew up in plainfield (i also liked to visit a ttrpg store there a lot), and neither of us had never known such a significant tornado happened so close to where we lived. Of course this happened before my friend and i were even born, but its crazy to hear about such a devastating event in such a familiar place.
Farm experience here - looked up once and saw directly overhead what looked exactly like a rotating Hurricane. Had white clouds, dark clouds swirled into the center and there was a clear blue sky eye of the Hurricane. No tornado touched down, no warn. But 17 miles later a tornado did touch down with very little warning. circa '86
Living in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, there were many times where I had been in Tulsa during unwarned tornados. During 2017, I was on my way to an Oilers Hockey game, encountered a tornado on the road, it was a scary moment, came out of nowhere. I still remember driving through Tulsa minutes after the tornado, it was so eerie.
Hello! I was camping in Mississippi and there were no tornado sirens where I was at. The storm turned green, saw the wall cloud, and 80MPH winds hit the campsite. Nobody died, but lots of people hurt and lots of people left. Craziest thing ever to ride out a storm in a tent.
Me and my family moved to Plainfield years after the tornado, but one thing I remember my teachers telling me is that tornado happened the day before that high school that got demolished was supposed to open for the school year. Great work on the video!
Bravo with this video. I learned a lot from this. A heartfelt thank you for the effort you placed in making this video to educate others. If you're open to questions, I've seen storm chasers use three other radar overlays along with the Correlation Coefficient you explained at 3:28. Those other overlays are Spectrum Width, Differential Reflectivity, and Specific Differential Phase. What are they and why are they frequently used by tornado chasers?
Yes they most definitely can happen without warning. On January 1, 2022 at 8 am I had to take cover cause a tornado popped up right in front of my house and there was no warning before. The sirens didn't go off until after the tornado had came and gone but it was way to late at that time. Thank God we didn't get hurt. It was a very scary day for us.
Yes it caused a lot of damage quickly it ripped a lot of buildings apart. it sounded like nothing I had ever heard before like a giant vacuum cleaner, it sucked all the air out of the house and it was so scary.
When I lived in Leawood, KS in 2017 an unwarned EF0 touched down in my neighborhood and tore the side of a house off before it disappeared. That same supercell went on to produce the Oak Grove, MO EF3. I felt like I dodged a bullet that night.
I have seen many wall clouds, funnel clouds and even brief tornadoes that had zero warnings at all on radar or by the NWS. Heck, just last year (2021) I had a weak EF-0 narrowly miss my home in northwest Indiana on Father's Day. It had a path length of about 4 miles and damaged lots of homes, properties and vehicles, and no warnings on radar or from the NWS. Thank goodness I'm a trained spotter whose been chasing storms for over 20 years. So yes, many many tornadoes go undetected by radar. And by the way, the tornado that narrowly missed my home was imbedded in a QLCS. It was a rocky night to say the least. Great video sir!
This is crazy I lived in the area 20 miles away. I remember like it was yesterday it was devastating saw the damage first hand and being 8 years old in the tri state 1974 out break my first time seeing a tornado 🌪. And then lived through the April 27 2011 tornado out break. Great video.
Back on June 22, 2017 when Tropical Storm Cindy was over the state of Alabama we had a spin up that hit Fairfield with literally no warning at all. The sirens went off at least 2 minutes after the tornado went through producing EF-1 damage. According to my father who is a Lieutenant for the fire dept there says "I was just amazed that considering the time of day no one was dead." One the iconic scenes of that day was an ABC (beer store) had it's roof completely peeled off and walls gone but the bottles never moved or damaged. Truly insane.
When I was a kid I lived out in a farm in southern MN. I remember one day I was at the kitchen table and eating something in a storm and looked outside to see a tornado back lit by lightning. I ask dad "is that a tornado?" and I just remember him grabbing me and telling my mom to get my brother and sister into the basement. Luckily nothing was damaged and the tornado just tracked across open field missing all structures. That image of the tornado being lit up by lightning is forever burned in my mind though. It wasn't until I was older that I realized how rare a thing I had witnessed.
In my hometown of Grand Rapids, Mi, we had an unwarned EF1 occur back in 2014 in a pretty populated area. I had no idea it had happened until they surveyed the damage the next day.
I appreciate you putting this video about the Plainfield f5. I've told the story over the years you can't tell you how I'm alive to this day. So here we go again. I left my job site roughly Ogden avenue and Lincoln highway which is US route 30 and 34 because of the supercell you actually showed video of, heading south on Lincoln highway towards Plainfield and my apartment in Cresthill. I can tell you this, there's a bit of a windy drive and you can see stuff kind of flying around has I headed down Lincoln highway doing a pretty high rate of speed. I raced through Plainfield I made a left on Renwick road instead of continuing down route 30 to my apartment in Crest Hill. I took Renwick road all the way to Lockport then south by the prison the back west to my apartment. When I got close to my apartment, there was debris everywhere. Im still guessing but by the time I was in downtown Plainfield, thats when the tornado hit the highschool. I couldn't see anything out my back window of the car driving that way. I cant tell you why I made that left on Renwick. The apartment was about another 10 minutes away instead of the 20-30 minute detour I took. In my drive, I heard no sirens. Just black behind me. Occasionally something blowing across the road in front of me. Being buffeted by winds and hard hard rain. What I can tell you is this. After that. I started chasing tornados around the midwest. I still feel like I can warn people help them if 1 strikes. I'm older now and don't chase as much as I used to. I'm really glad and thankful to see the advancements in advance warning systems for those that have to deal with tornadoes. Say I was lucky say I was good say God was watching over me it doesn't matter I'm still here in witness firsthand what does F5 did and the only thing that still bothers me about it what's there was no warning
I experienced a tornado with no warning in Western Oregon in Sept. 2017. There was another one recorded that day about 10 miles to the south that hopped along in the hills and damaged barns. I was driving home headed North and could see the sky turning dark behind me, and a downpour along the edge of the storm front. The funnel dropped down out of the clouds, tracked across a field and a road, damaging trees and then dissipating as fast as it came. We don't get very many tornadoes at all here but there have been a handful EF0-1 and one EF2 in the Willamette Valley near my hometown during my lifetime. I never thought I'd actually witness a tornado here though!
In 2013, northeastern WI was hit by a small outbreak of like 5-6 EF1 tornadoes maybe even 1 EF2. It was night time (we knew there would be a thunderstorm) but there were no warnings issued. I woke up in the morning with storm damage everywhere and it seemed like no one knew what happened. No one got unalived but still, I remember all the surrounding towns/villages (a small town in WI with a population less that 20,000 people) we’re extremely upset because there was no warning or anything. And we have one of those radars almost quite literally in our back yard. One of the tornadoes was less than 1/4 mile away from me when it finally lifted. More warnings is way better.
My uncle's house was hit by an unwarned tornado in a QLCS in May, 2011. He heard the characteristic roar of the tornado -- and 30 seconds later, it was over.
Great video! Someone else touched on this I think in some previous comments but look into the Springdale, Arkansas Tornado on March 30, 2022. A line of storms formed in Eastern Oklahoma with some small hail and gusty winds around 3 am. The storm motion was nearly 60 mph. When the line moved into Arkansas it developed some weak rotation along the leading edge of the line. A line break developed near where the weak rotation was and a surge developed increasing the rotation significantly near the community of Johnson causing a tornado to touch down. This was close to 4 am and there was no warning at the time, not even a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. Shortly after the rotation ramped up (the tornado was already on the ground at this point) the NWS did issue a Severe Thunderstorm Warning with a "Tornado Possible" tag. Within 3 radar scans the rotation was gone. The last radar scan did show strong rotation and they finally issued a Tornado Warning however by the following radar scan the rotation had dissipated and Tornado had lifted. The tornado twisted and destroyed a cell tower as well as damaged homes and businesses in Johnson. When it moved into Springdale it went right through the heart of town damaging many homes and businesses causing significant damage to an Elementary School Gym, Large Industrial Plant and Mobile Home Park. It was rated EF3 at peak intensity (majority of damage was EF1-EF2) with 145mph winds, 350 yds wide (was considered a "drillbit" at a couple points based on damage found) travelled 5.2 miles in 8 minutes with 7 injuries including at least 1 critical but thankfully no fatalities considering the time of day and no lead warning.
Just found your channel and binge watched pretty much everything. This is stuck out to me. After dealing with tornados most of my life, Missouri resident, I've been incredibly paranoid over storms and every time something shows potential my go bag is on and radar is up. That being said, I've had to learn everything from watching our what I've been able to read since time to take a spotter class or even go back to school for meteorology and have gotten pretty good at spotting tornados. Most recent was earlier this year in St.Louis the little f1/2 that came up 44. At a friend's shop right off the highway and i noticed some stuff on radar that spiked my anxiety and we got the hell out of there to their house a few miles away. Watched it form, drop, touch and travel right towards us as we go into their house. Anxiety can be good at times I guess.
Independence, Iowa, 23 April 2001. The night before was full of severe thunderstorms as a cold front passed through. The rain ended late in the evening and the weather cooled. The next morning, it was mostly sunny with puffy clouds indicating fair weather was starting to take hold. It was early morning and children were getting on the bus for school. A rogue tornado developed out of a couple of puffy clouds and moved through town, narrowly missing some kids getting on a bus, and doing damage to roofs, destroying some outbuildings, and hitting a trucking company, flipping semi trailers over. The siren sounded almost too late as the damage was pretty well done. A study was done on the tornado which can be found online. It was one of the freakiest tornadoes that I've ever known. Truly a fair-weather tornado out of the blue. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt.
This makes me wonder if some of the hook echos I've seen on the radar that did not have anything mentioned in the news were rural tornadoes with no damage that were missed. I remember seeing a very well-defined hook recently late summer early fall in Wisconsin that was in a rural area with no mention of it being a tornado. I didn't get a chance to check the velocity data though, I could very well be wrong.
Fellow ohioan here, in June 2022 several small ef0-ef1 tornadoes went through Morrow, Knox, and Richland counties. I live in the middle of all three so I was up all night watching the weather but sirens didn't go off (from what I've heard). Even though they were small it was still scary seeing Mount Gilead and Chesterville knowing there were no sirens.
Had an unwarned short lived ef0 tear through my front yard at 1030 pm back in 2017, snapped full grown pine trees and twisted off branches on oaks, even up rooted one. The roar was insane escpecially since we weren’t expecting it and where all still awake. One of the most 0 to 100 moments of my life.
P.S. Hey Steve, I think you are really onto something here! I just found your channel the other day. I subscribed today and will tell everyone I know about your channel. It looks like you have been doing this for about 1 year and have 6.3k subscribers. I have a feeling your channel is gonna grow quickly. I've been searching and watching tornado videos (any type possible) and anything related for over 40 years! I can say you have some of the best I've seen when it comes to education! P.S. I really like your "Google Earth" videos!
There was one in Naperville, IL last June 20th that was rare because it had all the markings of a qlcs but stayed on the ground for over 10 miles and briefly caused EF3 damage.
There had been a risk of severe weather over the Chicago area, but nothing was happening. Then the low level jet arrived, and everything went nuts after 7pm.
@@davidschaefer1981 It had been so boring that when I saw the line coming, I think it was around 10pm, I just shrugged it off because "nothing ever hits here" and went to sleep, missing the show.
I really don’t even know what to call this one, but on December 31st, 2021, shortly before 5:35PM, an isolated supercell appeared out of nowhere and dropped an EF1 in north-central GA. The storm had enough time to cause the vast majority of its damage and lift before it was even tornado warned. The wild part is that the sky was nearly perfectly clear before it hit.
Well, it wasn't a EF-5, but back in Aug 2016, a tornado outbreak caught people in Illinois and ind off guard. In my home town of Windsor Ont Canada, a small rainstorm crossed the river from Mich, it must have hit a rain cooled boundary or something, bc within a few mins it charged up, dropped a EF-1 cone in the neighbouring town of LaSalle, then preceded to drop a strong EF-2 wedge right in the middle of Windsor. Happened so fast, Environment Canada didn't drop a tornado warning until 20 min AFTER the tornado hit. Luckily no one was seriously hurt.
Sir, you NEED to be a meteorology instructor! You are concise, extremely knowledgeable, and break it down to let laymen understand it! For someone so young you must have had studying weather in your blood since you could walk! If you don't work for the Weather Channel, they NEED to hire you and give you a show on meteorology education! Awesome video and you have a fan!!
When I was a little kid, what most people in the area at the time were pretty sure was an unwarned tornado passed through my neighborhood in the night. It wasn't ever officially designated as a tornado, but the damage path was narrow and well defined, in a way that defies attribution to other types of storms. & This was the early 90s and we were on a military base at the time, so that might have contributed to it not being recognized. Anyway, I wish I could relay what it was like but honestly, I slept through it completely - despite it passing close enough the house across the street lost its roof and my next-door neighbor lost shingles and boards (I was a really heavy sleeper). I don't remember the house I lived in having any damage, but I was also 5 so it's pretty likely I was just distracted by the more dramatic damages. I just woke up the next morning to the entire neighborhood basically littered with debris, tree limbs, and wreckage. In the most intense area of damage, it took a huge ancient tree over 6' wide at its base, plucked it up out of my friend's front yard and laid it flat across the road, roots and all. It was at right angles with the road, like someone laid it there on purpose. If it had gone the other way, my childhood best friend would have died horribly, because in the opposite direction laid her bedroom, and she slept right through all the excitement, too. The damage came through as a line a couple hundred feet wide - outside the line, there'd be very mild damage, like twigs missing off trees, but in the line the damage was substantial. That basically sparked a years-long obsession for me where I was nicknamed "tornado girl" (not affectionately, I was the weird kid growing up) because I figured out some way to include the subject in my school assignments at every opportunity. It just amazed me how on one side of the street it was just wreckage, a couple houses even missed parts of their second floors, lots of missing roofs, debris all over the place, trees shredded, etc, but on the other side - the houses and trees mostly looked untouched. I'd guess it was probably a high end ef1? Still, it made a big impact on me. Somehow nobody was even seriously injured let alone killed despite no warnings and most people being in bed asleep when it hit. Lots of people got really lucky that day, me being one of them. I literally slept through it as it passed less than 100ft away.
2 stories for you: 1. I never saw it, but an EF1 hit an HEB in Corpus Christi Texas one evening. No one was hurt, but cars were damaged. 2. Also taking place in Corpus Christi... Was the 1990s. I was about to leave for school when I looked up and saw what appeared to be a funnel cloud inching down but quickly went back up. No one said anything about it nor were there any storms
A storm system back in the early "aughts" knocked out the nearest NWS station; while it was out of commission, an undetected tornado formed in a rural area, hit a friend's trailer, and flipped it over with her inside! (In a perfect example of how weird tornadoes can be, the family dog was tied up outside, but except for being scared out of its wits, it came through without any injury. My friend was injured by having furniture land on her, but recovered just fine.) As for me...last year I was riding home with friends in a storm, and the lightning revealed a tornado just ahead of us! However, three lightning flashes later, the funnel had completely vanished. My friend, a veteran of driving in situations like that, said that most tornadoes are reabsorbed minutes after they form. It was still freakin' scary, though.
I was in Troy AL in 2015 when an unwarned tornado struck Walmart. Local weather had actually said there was no threat of severe weather that day. The storm dropped a tornado that went through the store, across the parking lot, into an outlet store, and dissipated before crossing the main road. Sirens went off after the tornado had already dissipated. It did not help that this occurred at night, (though walmart was open during the storm)
The tornado that instilled my fear of them was unwarned (I have panic attacks whenever there’s a warning for one in my area). On July 8th 2014 I was at home with my mom and brother, playing outside. I don’t think there was any bad weather at all, it was sunny. And then everything got really still and quiet, and my mom told us to get into the basement. EF1 tornado, no sirens or alerts or anything, it just happened. I don’t have the best memory of it, but I do remember that my dog was on our (screened-in) porch the whole time, barking at it, and afterwards there were wires and branches down all over our yard when my grandma came to pick us up. The traffic lights were down as well, so that drive was kinda scary. What’s funny is that afterwards my mom told me about tornado sirens, and the next Saturday when I was at a local park that noon siren thing went off and I was so scared that it was a tornado siren that I ran to my mom crying.
There were two unwarned EF 1 tornados on 8/9/2020 in Vilas County, WI. This is an area that is within one of the known radar gaps. They formed from isolated afternoon thunderstorms which became tornadic. I live about 2 miles from the track of one of them and never even had a drop of rain. Luckily there was no loss of life or injury despite the fact that one of them went through a campground immediately after touchdown. All in all it was mostly tree and property damage which occurred.
Just stumbled onto your videos recently and have been binge watching them. I have experienced an unwarned tornado in Brunswick, OH on June 24th, 2014. I remember noticing how dark the sky was when I was driving home about a half hour before. I even had the local news on once I got home and there were severe thunderstorm warnings out, but no tornado warnings. The only real warning I had was my dog behaving strangely and trying to stay low to the ground and hide under a coffee table. I believe it ended up being rated an EF1, but it took most of the second story off of a few homes around the corner from my house at the time. We received a call from the city about 5 minutes after it happened letting us know a tornado had touched down.
A few years back my neck of the woods experienced something like this. My hometown is located roughly eighty miles north of Jonesboro, Arkansas and roughly eighty miles south of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Neither of their weather teams could see the rotation on their radar, but thank God, one of our local spotters could see what was going on. He called the city fathers and had them sound our sirens. No harm was done as the storms produced funnel clouds and not tornadoes, but it was still a hairy experience.
When i was younger there was a water spout that formed less than 200 yards from where i was standing. Really close to the lake shore. The thing died the moment it touched the sand but there was no warning whatsoever. It went from a hot humid clear day to dark and terrifying in a matter of seconds.
In the early 90’s, this happened in Goddard, Kansas and West Wichita during the day. A non-linear storm produced a tornado w/o warning and proceeded to kill a couple of people and heavily damage a dealership. The NWS radar was roughly 3 miles away from the storm, so it was in the cusp of the radar blind spot. In 2004, a linear QLCS F1 touched down south of Wellington, KS. This tornado was not supposed to be there, according to the NWS. I personally “chased” (it traversed maybe 200 yards in the half-hour it was on the ground) this tornado after seeing questionable attributes coming from the storm on radar and decided to step outside to see a tornado only a couple miles away. I’m in constant amazement at how we have come so far in weather technology, but still am relieved that spotters and chasers are needed to relay activity back to the weather officials.
There was one morning that I woke up to the roar of a tornado and then heard it fade, only to be issued the warning after it had passed. Luckily my house wasn't hit & it was a weak tornado, but still really scary. I was in the suburbs of Atlanta
I have experienced an unwarned tornado, though I am not sure why exactly a warning wasn't issued. I live in NC, though not Charlotte. A few years ago we had a line of severe storms come through. I have some knowledge of tornado development and became concerned by what I was seeing on radar so I kept an eye to the sky. Ended up seeing a funnel cloud over the woods behind our house and then watched as it went directly over our house and touched down in a neighbors yard. I called in to a local weather station and they announced to the viewers however NWS still hadn't issued a warning. The tornado destroyed/badly damaged a couple dozen homes before lifting back up right before it reached the heart of the city I live in. Only once it had lifted back up did a tornado warning finally get issued. I was in disbelief as I really thought we had gotten to the point that unwarned tornadoes were very rare. Couple my experience with your video and I see that is not the case. Thanks for making this video! It helps bring to light this issue so people can be more aware during a thunderstorm, even without a warning.
Awesome video showing why QLCS are so hard to predict. As a meteorology student, I actually do research on tornadic QLCSs and can confirm we know less about the mechanisms behind tornado formation in QLCSs than supercells
Out here in Tulsa, there was a tornado event a few years ago in town that happened so quickly, there was no warning and no reports it even happened until after the damage was done. It ripped up the R building, and took out a Whataburger and TGI Friday's. There's a video on TH-cam somewhere of people standing in the Friday's, watching the storm until the tornado ripped it up. They had literally no idea.
We had a small EF-0 tornado touch down in our town back in July of last year. It was a low-top, low-precipitation supercell that developed along a stationary warm front and moved southeast. AccuWeather sent an AccuWeather tornado immanent threat alert but there was never an actual NWS tornado warning. Our township’s 911 center activated the sirens after the tornado had already passed through town as law enforcement reported funnel cloud sightings, but never an official NWS tornado warning.
I almost experienced an unwarned tornado. I was camping with my kids in Port Austin MI in 2021. The weather was just gross and when I saw an upgraded severe risk that morning, I decided to call our trip off and head home. I had barely gotten to my house when my mom called and told me an EF2 barely missed where we were staying. An unwarned EF2 that the radar simply didn't see due to poor coverage in that area. Calling people who live and recreate in radar holes "insignificant" is insulting. Especially after that close call.
The tri state tornado of 1925 happened without warning. Though there was no warning system in place and no mass communication device available to give warnings except for telephones and radio.
I experienced a QLCS tornado in Lynchburg, VA in April 2018. The storm was TorWar as it came into the city as it had produced a tornado further south. However, the TorWar was dropped cause there wasn't anything showing on radar that indicated a tornado anymore. Note, it wasn't allowed to expired. The warning was dropped. That lasted for all of a few minutes as the NWS quickly reissued one due to the report of a tornado on the ground within city limits. It was an EF2 within the city and strengthened to an EF3 once it crossed the James River and leveled the town of Elon, VA.
Sometime in the 1990's, I was driving to work. A small cloud was overhead, not even ominous looking, and I knew it was supposed to rain, as I had watched the weather just before I left. The wind suddenly went crazy. Small debris like leaves and sticks were flying past me. I thought to myself, "If I didn't know any better, I'd think this was a tornado." It was at that time, an emergency alert went across my radio announcing a tornado warning for my town. It wasn't that bad. An EF-0. Flattened a little grass and a few small trees to the left of where I was driving(as reported by our local news the next day, per the farmer who owned the land). But by the time the warning went out, it was gone.
Strongly agree: there is no excuse for leaving people vulnerable to storms and tornadoes because of a radar gap. Whoever passed off that report claiming it didn’t matter should not be a spokesperson, let alone an “expert.” The gaps must be filled to save lives.
During the derecho in 2006 I was camping with my family on Manitoulin Island. The nearest place that had a forecast was in Sudbury which was not even on the Island and was an hour's drive away. For most of the day it was clear until sometime during Happy hour when my mom saw some dark clouds and waved for my dad and sister to come in. It took a bit, but by the time they swam in (they were not far) the winds picked up and everyone ran. My family and another close family ran to my grandparents trailer, but the parents of the other family tried to take down their tent to avoid damage, but it flew away. They ran back inside and right as my dad closed the door, the plastic table on the deck pinned his arm in the door. When my parents got my dad's arm free my mom looked out the window and saw a tornado coming right towards us from the lake. We didn't have time to lift the latch and get under the trailer, so my mom threw me and my sister on the bed and laid on top of us as it passed over. Nobody at camp was hurt and only one person died on the island from a tornado. A tree went around the trailer and went into that family friends' car. Another trailer was completely crushed and a fiberglass kayak was bent around a tree while my dad's inflatable kayak only needed a few patches. A tree at camp lost all of its branches and was just a giant stick in the ground. The camp had wood for almost ten years after that tornado.
I remember the 1990 Plainfield tornado and how there was no warning. It was such a hot, humid day. I watched it swirling in the sky above our house immediately before the storm hit and we had to run for cover. The tornado touched down in the field in front of our house about a half mile away. It was an unforgettable experience and I’m so thankful it hadn’t touched down before it passed over us. I’m probably one of the few people that actually saw it before it became rain wrapped.
Incredible story!!!!! I was on my way home from Wisconsin that afternoon when the tornado was happening. I could see the massive dark clouds off to the SW which was producing the devastating tornado. I will never forget that moment for as long as I live. Thankfully you made it through and I thank you for your story.
How big was the tornado when it formed?
Wow 😮
I moved out to the Chicagoland area in 21 and was blown away when my friend in Plainfield told me about the F5 that hit. WOW.
Did your house survive?
I'm a storm chaser and even I experienced an unwarned tornado. Just after midnight the night of March 6th 2017, a squall made it's way across MO, and I watched a very obvious QLCS tornado develop about 25 miles west of me. It had the inflow notch, it had the little mini-couplet, and it had the CC debris ball. I watched it track about 20 miles over the course of 25-ish minutes. It was well within radar range, too. It lifted a few miles west of my town, the couplet disappeared, and then I found out the next morning that a second tornado dropped about a mile north of my house and went through the middle of town. Fortunately they were both only EF1s with a few minor injuries, but that storm was not tornado warned at ALL during it's entire lifecycle. NWS St. Louis is very liberal with warnings now after that fuck-up.
As a normie, that's insane to me. I'm just now getting into weather content so I don't know much. But the fact that tornadoes can hit without any warning is a problem I thought we solved years ago with radar. So to find out that not only can they hit with no warning, but entire TOWNS are at risk of being demolished with zero prior notice or evacuation, is mind blowing.
Used to live in St. Louis, guess I’m happy I’m outa there😭😭
Very similar thing happened in western north dakota. It 1230 am thankfully only a ef1 came though the man camps. Based on where the closest radars were(Bismarck nd, and butte mt) it went undetected because the radars couldnt read low enough(curvature of the earth and all)
3 months later they were building a new radar in williston nd and tornado sirens were installed
& they're lucky it was only an ef1 tornado. Imagine it was worse.
I've had a very similar situation while chasing. It turned and came back at me and I was so freaked out I no longer chase or report as a SkyWarn spotter ALONE at night. Radar definitely doesn't show everything and we are needed but from now on, I'm not alone at night if intentionally tracking and getting info to the NWS. If I'd had a second set of eyes in the car, I may have spotted the turn around earlier. I was looking down at Doppler radar to see where the central point was because it was just forming and really getting going. It turned on me so fast I never expected it. We KNOW it's a risk but some things occur without much or any warning and I want people to have as much time as possible to get into shelter. I now also use more than just the NWS resources when out spotting.
There was a QLCS tornado in December 2019 outside of Tulsa that wasn't detected until 2 minutes after it had already touched down. It was only a few blocks away from me, I was watching the squall come in when the warning happened and I scrambled into the shelter. Thankfully it was only an EF0 and nobody was hurt.
Qlcs spin ups happen so fast
Yep, I remember hearing about that. I remember the 2017 one too. Claremore also had a small nado come through the south side in march 2016. Was a quarter mile from my house.
Hey my ex wife lives there, and she’s kind of a biggg POS! Could you not give her a warning before it hits? Thanks!
That one was crazy. but the 2017 one was more insane. It wasn't warned until it had already gone from 38th and yale to like 51st and memorial. I lived at 38th and yale. It went through my backyard and we had no damage aside from one small section of our old rickety fence got knocked down. The power went out after it hit my area and thats what woke me up. It was probably hitting the movie theatre when I woke up. Whats even more insane is my power was only out for 2 hours. It was at like 1:30am and I am normally up at that time but that night I decided to sleep early for some reason. I regret it.
QLCS tornadoes are very sneaky. When you’re looking at them on a modern Doppler system, you have to know what to look for.
I've experienced an unwarned tornado, but thats because the UK doesn't have a tornado warning system, while tornados are some what common and happen every year in the UK we just don't have a system for it as we don't tend to get destructive ones, and a lot of the radar products except reflectivity are not publically available. i'm also pretty sure the UK only got doppler capabilities in 2019. We had a little spin up tornado from a linear storm system that came through, mostly because the hilly western coast of Scotland tends to provide uneven orthographic lift and it does funky things to storms. I've found the difference in weather coverage and the public access to weather information a bit whiplashy when I moved to the USA last year. It's really been an experience and a half. The one tornado we did get near by here last summer (which is rare because its upstate NY) was warned with plenty of time. I was impressed.
Although they are weak there is no such thing as a "nondestructive tornado". EF0s can still cause damage and in rare cases kill someone. The UK should really invest in an early warning system.
That must have been a bit of culture shock to come here, with all our information available. I had no idea the UK's weather warning system was so minimal. Thanks for the info Samantha!
I had a tornado warning come on as soon as it went over my home, I live in Connecticut we don’t really see tornados often, but in 2020 late August to Early September there was an alert that went from severe thunderstorm watch to warning to tornado watch to tornado warning roughly 2 minutes before it hit, luckily it only took trees and power lines down and no ones homes were affected severely
@@weatherboxstudios It's less that the UK's weather warning system is minimal, its just moreso geared to weather events that happen both with regularity and destruction. They also tend to be geographically different, so the Midlands in England are very focused on Flood warnings, Highlands for blizzards, Islands and Coasts for storms (and resultant storm surges). While tornados do happen, theyre often in largely rural areas and are far less destructive than the gale force winds and heavy rainfall that come from the same storm.
@@weatherboxstudios I sat next to a UK meteorologist on a flight. I asked about tornado warnings. He said they would never warn the public as they did not want to cause a panic. Ignorance it seems is bliss.
I'm a 30+ year experienced spotter, sighted over 120 local tornadoes. And still our local NWS in Ohio (ILN) chose to ignore us spotters most of the time then not. One such incident was the Blue Ash Ohio tornado when several of us called in and were ignored... 4 people died that morning.
That is so tragic! Do you think they may have survived if you weren't ignored? Just curious. 🤔
Ive heard alot of bad stuff from iln before.
Wish I could chase here in Ohio. What's the secret?
That is upsetting they ignore spotters . We need better systems and we need to listen to spotters
well in our culture/country , you arent an actual person/human unless you are well off. so no one with power or authority is going to mind losing a few million working class subhumans.
I used to be super paranoid about storms before my daughter (at the time age 9) wanted to become a spotter (she loved watching Reed and Tim Samaras). I remember the day she became fascinated with storms. I had my lap top in my lap watching the radar on the loop (Like I said I was paranoid). The kids new that as soon as we went warned we would have to run down stairs to the basement. We lived in the mountains so my husband and kids would tease me - they never lived in Kansas. The radar loop went full purple and I yelled at the kids as I grabbed the baby rushing down the stairs. We were not even half way down when it went right over our house (luckily) snapping the huge shade tree about 25 feet up before it flung it down (took out the back deck and left my house). If that tree had falling flat we would probably not been lucky. A friend of ours (Volunteer Fireman) happened to be driving home and say it from about a mile away. He drove up to our house in a hurry to make sure we were safe. That storm never even had a Sever Thunder Storm Warning on it. Tons of damage all around us. From that day she was hooked - we did the classes and watched endless shows... spotted around our house . Until Tim died. She cried for days. I cried for days. My heart is with his family.
I live in northwest arkansas, and just a couple weeks ago we had a tornado come through springdale, which is right in the middle of our population Center. It ended up destroying an elementary school gymnasium, and destroying several trailer homes in the trailer park, and demolished a warehouse before going on to dissipate in our airport. There was zero warning, the first tornado warning did not pop off until approximately one minute after the tornado had lifted, there were 7 injuries. Worst part is this occured at 4 Am. There was one trailer that had three trees fall on it, and a man was pinned under the tree
The Dryline I lived in apts just east o AQ chicken house, worked at the hospital. one night I was going back to Springdale from Tulsa,followed one that hit few trees along the hiway & turnpike. It hit Fayetteville & believe was the one that hit Ft SMITH & Van Buren! it was in mid 1990s.
Same with Kentucky I think I seen a barn just collapse like the roof just caved in I'm not sure if it was the bad wind days ago or it came there but Sirins were going off in the Louisville area
I live in Arkansas as well and I remember having at least 3 tornado warnings in the span of an hour
@@SplashyMagikarpEatsTomNook that's Arkansas for you lol
Van buren citizen here, I think I remember that
As someone who spends a lot of time in Charlotte, I definitely agree there needs to be another radar built, maybe in Concord or Gastonia. It's frustrating when I'm trying to look at different radar sites and none of them really show the reflectivity with any quality
Im in kannapolis we had an ef0 that drop for a couple mins a mile from my house. There was also a funnel cloud that formed over carolina mall thank god it didnt drop.
I live in Mooresville I had never had any instance of a tornado.
I had a big fear of them and tornado drills in my school amplified my fear of them.
Only to realize they really don't really pose a threat here.
Because the strongest of the storm hits the mountains first. Then loses it's momentum.
You put it in Gastonia and its bound to be shot up lol, def concord, near campus.
I live 2 hours NE of you, and yeah, we need a much better warning system. I'm blind, so I didn't see it, but I listened to the Pelham tornado that had been on the ground 20-30 minutes, and assured and reassured my husband, sister, and all 7 kids that we'd be ok because I couldn't hear the leaves rustling yet. I grew up in tornado alley, and we happened to be in the cone of silence as I listened to that EF3 eat everything in its path until it pulled up after turning away from us. It was scary as hell, being unable to see it and watch it like I always had until I was 38. Thankfully, I was able to track it with my ears.
scary! that's like having no vision in our everyday lives
To me the late night twisters while your sleeping is a terrifying possibility. My phone would give me a alert which is a good thing, but scrambling in the middle of the night for cover would not be fun.
The closest I came to experiencing a tornado was at about 3 a.m. ... woke up and heard a strange howling sound to the wind, but didn't feel like getting out of bed, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. The next morning, my sister is calling me in a panic, saying I had a tornado and was I ok.
Didn't go in to work that day, between them not having power and other employees helping out with emergency/repair. It missed my house by about a quarter of a mile.
Absolutely agree. It's really difficult for me to sleep during tornado seasons for just this reason. I've had too many close calls.
@@bruderlein8514I had a dream last night about a series of night time tornados that appeared outside of my window.. I woke up terrified thinking that they were real. There were three or four vortices all in a single file line. I've had tornado dreams before sporadically over the years. I would hate to be in one, especially at night.
Although I've been a tornado junkie since I was a 12 year old kid and saw the '65 Palm Sunday tornado form (I lived outside Pittsfield Oh.) I have never learned so much about tornado radar signatures as you presented in the 8 minutes 37 seconds of this video. Good job sir.
You're 70? So much life behind of you, so much left if you lived healthily. I hope you don't smoke. I wish you're well and have a nice day. Anyway have you ever ridden a horse? Just asking out of curiosity
In Ohio, back in the early 90's, we lived right across the street from the fire station where the sirens were. Nice day, we're out on the porch when a tornado just dropped out of the sky over the woods and right at us. I had time to grab my toddlers hand to run inside, and it came so fast it lifted the toddler off the ground. No injuries, no real damage, but it dropped like a missile out of the sky. The sirens never did go off.
Clinton County Tornado Sirens failed earlier in March. Countywide EMS computer outage/glitch.
Clarksville got hit on the outskirts of town. Fortunately it was a touch and go.
@@AJKPenguinglitch or hacked by the CCP
I grew up near the Charlotte area (1993-2012). I remember a few instances of hearing about people spotting a funnel or tornado, but no warning from news stations, which baffled me. This explains a lot.
Back in the old days, a QLCS was known as a squall line. I’ve seen a spin-up appear and disappear quickly during those storms. Great video content as usual. 👍
Last summer, as I was road tripping back home from my college, my dad and I drove past a tornado as we were driving through Arkansas. We knew about it because I was checking Twitter and had found more amateur livestreamer filming it. The National Weather Service didn't issue any tornado warnings until after it had lifted. People were pissed off but luckily no one was hurt (or killed). Just some property damage.
I'm glad everyone involved was safe, I wonder if it happened near the radar gap
@@weatherboxstudios We were driving south down interstate 55 in Arkansas as it touched down in Munford, Tennessee, which is really close to one of the radar stations in the map you showed in your video. I also remember scrolling through twitter and seeing radar images of the storm (and seeing the tornado in those images). Seems like the National Weather Service just screwed up with not reporting it in time. It happened on like, May 9th or 10th of 2021 if your interested. There’s multiple videos of this tornado around online.
Thats Arkansas for you, we are a pretty goofy state
@@LegoBeachtrooper
More like we suffer from statewide endemic government corruption which leads to underfunding and mismanagement
NWS is federal
I have experienced two bad tornadoes in the past 8 years of my life. An EF3 that was 2 miles away from our house and an EF2 that was 6 miles away from our house. One leveled a whole trailer park and the other destroyed 3 houses. We knew they were going to happen long before they touched the ground. We live in the southeast where we rarely see tornadoes and we still got great coverage and knew what was going on. I am impressed and very thankful for the National Weather Service.
Where in the southeast? Because the southeast gets a LOT of tornadoes…
@@paulspomer16 In the past 2 years we have only gotten 34 tornadoes in South Carolina. The majority of those happening on the April 13, 2020 and April 7, 2022 outbreaks. Oklahoma, which is smaller than South Carolina, can get more than that in a single day if they have a bad outbreak. Not 2 years, A SINGLE DAY. Saying the southeast gets a lot of tornadoes is the most ignorant shit I have heard in a while.
@@UltraMagaFan In 2020 there were 57 tornadoes in South Carolina, in 2021 there were 24 and so far this year there has been 20. South Carolina gets a decent amount, but not nearly as much as MS/AL/GA. And also you mean April 5 2022 not April 7
@@paulspomer16 My point was we do not get as many tornadoes as other parts of the country. States like Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas can get the number of tornadoes we get here in a year in one day. Compared to the Midwest the number of tornadoes we in the southeast is minuscule. I still think what you said is pretty ignorant even though my statistics were a little off. We do not get a lot of tornadoes. Period.
Yes, I'm aware that may not be the case every year but the majority of the times it is.
Back in the early 80s (i wasnt around yet), my family in Edmonton experienced an F4 tornado on what is now called Black Friday. Tornados were not known to happen in the area, so most hadnt even heard of a tornado. As a result there wasnt a need for adequate tornado detection. My grandfather knew someone who lost his wife, kids, even the dog. The tornado is one of the biggest environmental disasters in the area, only suprassed by the drought of the 1930s.
Almost every time i see a rotating cell, it seems to follow a similar path that the tornado took. I also noticed that any type of weather seems to be stronger along that path. Rip those driving through that on the east side of the Henday o_o
Ah yes, the infamous Edmonton Tornado. And it actually happened on July 31, 1987. I hope your family was okay.
I grew up in Plainfield. I only lived 1/4 mile from the high school. I was 12 yrs old and the day before school was supposed to start. I remember sitting in my room and the sky turned green. I ran downstairs to our living room. My grandma was visiting us from Florida and she said something bad is going to happen. Within 10 minutes, my oldest brother came in saying the town was gone. He and my other brother were supposed to be at the high school, putting their books away. It was a rough couple years after that. My class was the 1st freshmen in the new high school. Now Plainfield is huge and has 4 high schools.
When I was a kid in the mid 2000's, I lived in Emigrant Montana. One day I was playing in the yard when I noticed a dark funnel shape going all the way to the ground across the valley beneath a large dark cloud.
I remember taking 1 good look at that thing and then running straight for the house. By the time I got to the house and notified my parents it had lifted and disappeared.
Just goes to show that these things can spawn in out of nowhere. Even in the mountain ranges.
A decade or so later I remember seeing a couple of tornados out on the flat lands near Scobey Montana. Not sure how big they were but they didn't look particularly small. I think we were still rocking flip phones at that point. No looking up radar in those days.
There were tornados in New York City 14 years ago as crazy as that sounds. The one that happened where I was was only on the ground for 10 minutes and still managed to kill at least one person (tree fell on her car). But I didn't even know it was happening until my cousin got home and told me .
The radar hole part hits so much harder after the event of Friday (nov 4) where many possibly violent tornadoes touched down in the radar holes of the arklotex region.
Finally I found that one get some mention. The most recent Tornado Outbreak with a EF4+ Tornado- the November 4th, 2022 Tornado Outbreak. That EF4 being the infamous Idabel, OK EF4 Tornado. The EF4 rating is controversial as no EF4 Damage area was found, but nevertheless it deserves that EF4 rating with how destructive it was. That one Tornado might've changed the history of the town.
You definitely can't compare the Jarrell F5 damage to it, but the effects to the small cities are all so much different, but at the same time, all too much the same when a violent Tornado is at their doorstep.
Yesterday in Western NY we had a squall line come through and my area was under a severe thunderstorm warning. Minutes later the NWS tagged it as a TOR possible & there was some rotation showing! No tornado though, just wind damage. Also, I am a storm spotter and I could not be happier to be one! ♥️
Edit: NWS just confirmed there WAS a tornado!!! EF-0
I was watching that squall come through, we had an unwarned tornado earlier in NE Ohio possibly from the same line!
I mean, the Knoxville EF2 tornado that happened last week happened only under a severe thunderstorm warning and never a tornado warning. Additionally, the EF3 wedge in northern New York wasn’t warned until it was gone already, but luckily, I was watching meteorologist Andy Hill and he pointed out the debris ball.
This happened twice 2 years in a row here in central Pennsylvania. There's a well known radar hole in this area and we had 2 tornado's that the state college NWS missed and i could clearly see the tornado with my own eyes the first time. Radar holes are a big problem in this country and need to be addressed!
Thank you so much for making this after my previous comment in one of your last videos! Yeah, the tornado producing storm that happened in my town of Springdale did have a warning issued but the area they pointed the warning out in was not the area that ended up getting hit, so I'm guess a QLCS tornado happened with that one that just wasn't foreseen. Also, nobody even knew a tornado had actually happened until well after the fact. Our local station around 4:10am told us that any rotation was miniscule or absent from the storm and we didn't have much to worry about WHILE the tornado was actually on the ground, rocking a couple neighborhoods and a school.
The one that hit my town ended up with an EF-3 rating and was pretty terrifying, but I do understand that this kind of thing happens and we haven't perfected radar technology yet. We'll get there soon, though.
Great work as always!
Thank you! The first thing I looked at was the Springdale storm, but I couldn't really find a lot of information on when the warning was issued vs where the tornado formed. That is the only reason why I chose the Tulsa and Charlotte tornadoes, they were very clear cut and could be shown quickly. But the same points apply to the Springdale situation. Thanks again for the fantastic video suggestion!
E
Ye
I'm in North West Arkansas as well, I was just about to comment about the Springdale tornado. My apartment was just about 10 minutes away from the path, and my job took a direct hit
@@weatherboxstudios QLCS tornadoes can spring up in a minute or two which is what happened in Charlottre, which btw has some of the best severe weather radar and staff manning it that you'll find anywhere. Read my other reply to understand.
I’m from Tulsa and I remember that crazy out of nowhere tornado. Some damage is still visible to this day. It happened so fast and with no warning that many didn’t believe it was a tornado and insisted it was just a bad microburst.
I've been in 3 tornadoes, one was unwarned, or should I say warned right about as it hit. It was a rain-wrapped EF-0, path of about 1/4 mile, and lasted about two minutes. I was on the road and traffic stopped, boxing me in just inside the main circulation. Rain was so intense you couldn't see the end of your car hood, and my van rocked up onto two wheels twice before it was over. It was all in the open with not even a ditch for refuge. Spooky, and I thought I'd never see that again, but boy was I wrong.
I remember last year on September 27th here in the UK, an eastern coastal town called Cleethorpes had minor tornado damage from a QLCS moving through and there was not no warning of anything, not even for thunderstorms or wind. Even then, people here wouldn’t take it seriously.
I remember that Tulsa tornado you mentioned from 2017 very vividly. It was somewhere around 1:00 in the morning? The winds got super intense outside my house and after hearing that we decided to jump into our bathroom for shelter. The funnel went over our house and didn't touch down it until it hit the 41st Street area. The next morning we went to go out and look at the storm damage and it was crazy how destroyed that Whataburger and TGI Fridays were. It's probably the closest I've ever been to a tornado.
As someone who lives in a radar gap, I appreciate your breakdown on this. I’ve had 3 tornadoes without warning in about 10 years and many more in my life. Luckily nothing deadly but I’ve learned to watch the skies and radar myself.
Thanks for this post - with all that I watch about tornadoes, I've never heard of a QLCS tornado so I learned something today.
Thanks Holly, glad you learned something new!
Qlcs spin ups happen so fast
Me neither, and I'm glad I have access to videos like this!!! I'm 50+ years old and have been fascinated and terrified of severe weather (especially 🌪's!) since I can remember, over 45 years. I watch live weather broadcast streams on youtube all the time. One I really like is "Ryan Hall Y'all". Anyone who has a passion or interest in tornadoes or severe weather in the US should definitely check his channel and broadcasts out!
P.S. Pecos Hank and Reed Timmer are storm chasers that I highly recommend checking out on youtube if you haven't. There are some people who don't like Reed's personality, but there is no denying he is a very good storm chaser and has a passion for it! There are a lot of chasers and meteorologists who do a great job, just too many to name. I wanted to give a few of the names and channels I personally think have great video and content associated with tornadoes and severe storms.
Yeah, I've seen Reed Timmer mention them a couple of times lately but didn't know what they were (and obvs didn't take the time to look them up, just figured it was meteorologist-speak). I've learned something, too!
I’ve experienced 7 tornado warnings in my 14 years of life. I live about 30 minutes away from Omaha ne. I was outside during a storm once and watched a tornado form in a field a couple miles away and it was gone in only a minute. No warning, no reason for a warning. I want to go to college for meteorology.
I'm 16 and I remember Pilger and a few others, I'm from NE of kearney and West of GI
I have been in an unwarned tornado. It was in Fort Worth, TX in the summer of either 85 or 86, on the east side of Loop 820. We were getting strong gusty winds and that scent you get before a storm. Then we got a few drops of rain, not even enough to fully wet the parking lot.
Then we heard what we thought was a low flying jet. The wind came up, like a fast thunderstorm with a little debris, and then it went up a lot, howling and roaring with debris that hurt when it hit. I was outside a warehouse with doors open on both sides. I was close enough to grab the doorway and pull myself back in. Other people were blown down and skidded across the parking lot.
It began to sound like hail too, but that was debris hitting everything. Then the dumpster across the parking lot flipped it's lid, trash lofted way up and it tipped over and blew away. Cars began to move in their parking spaces. My 1972 International Harvester pickup got turned about 45°. One car got the back of another set on its hood.
We had sheets of ¾ MDF that got blown around and broken up inside the shop. About 10 mins after it hit the sirens went off.
Edit: This might be reported as straight line winds, which also existed, but there was also rotation and lift. Several dumpsters were emptied of trash that went up in spirals before the metal dumpsters got blown along the ground. I saw cars that I thought were going to get blown away because the rear tires were several feet in the air.
There was a QLC that happened to me not to long ago in Kentucky. It was luckily caught on the radars and warning were sent out! So glad I got to learn about these thank you!
I experienced an un-warned baseball sized hailstorm a few years ago. I live in a radar gap in a state that’s partly in tornado alley.
This is really good. Love the layout and order of how the video was done. If I didn't know anything about weather, this definitely would be an easy to follow video that would get me interested! Good stuff, and hope to see more from you!
The legend himself! Thanks for the comment sir, I love watching your severe weather coverage. Thanks for everything you do for the community. Cheers!
While storm chasing in 2005, an F0 tornado dropped directly on top of our van while we were watching rainbands against the sunset. The storm we were under was ~35 miles behind the main convective event, a bow echo moving 45 miles an hour across southern Nebraska. We were asked by our college professor to not report this in our convective journals for that day but I think 20 years is enough time to talk about it now.
An unwarned tornado struck the southwest side of Omaha, NE on March 27, 1975. At the time, NWS switched radar on and off seasonally, so it wasn't active at the time. Sirens sounded _20_ minutes after this F2 dissipated.
Afterwards, the radar was turned on for the season. NWS also made the rounds on the local TV and radio stations to prepare the public for the severe season.
When an F4 tornado struck on May 6, it was preceded by a _15 minute_ lead time (in 1975!) and people knew what to do. The costliest, most damaging tornado in US history (at the time) killed only 3 people.
Had a friend experience an unwarned tornado. They were lucky it was only an f1 (possibly f0), especially since it ripped off part of their roof (and only theirs, none of the neighbors had damage like that). They didn't even realize the roof was damaged until someone knocked on their door asking if they were ok!
And related to radar gaps, county specific coverage is also a major problem. I live near Dallas County (in Rockwall County specifically) and for the longest time they would cover the storm up until it left Dallas County, then would stop. Back to regular programming. We just had to hope nothing major happened. This did change when the 2015 Rowlett EF-4 tornado happened, but the fact that it took such a destructive tornado to change things is frustrating.
Anytime I hear a broadcaster say the sirens are not sounding in a location where they should be sounding, it gives me chills.
"We're getting reports that the sirens are down, if you know anyone here then call them now, tell them to get to safety" absolutely terrifying words
We had a unwarned tornado this year in Ocala Florida. Went right behind my house. No warning, and the next day the news said it's because most of my county is in a radar gap. It was on the ground for over 20 miles and never was seen. Pretty scary and unacceptable. Luckily nobody was killed, but lots of damage.
Just 2 days ago there was an unwarned tornado that hit my city of Fayetteville North Carolina, interestingly enough there was a small couplet that was clearly visible on the South Carolina radar yet on KRAX it was barely visible. Thankfully it was a very minor tornado probably ef0 and only knocked down some trees and a few power lines. Awesome video as always!
I'm an avid storm enthusiast,, especially interested in supercells and tornadoes and even I didn't know about this phenomenon! Thanks for the knowledge, and I'm looking forward to watching more of your videos!
Thanks Dana!
About 22 years ago, I was driving home from relatives when I saw a tornado form. There was no watches, no warnings, no storm really at the time (it was cloudy bc it rained earlier). But this twister just dipped out of the sky, touch the ground, but immediately dissipated. It was so amazing.
I was happy to see you included a still from the Troy tornado of January 2020 in your video because that was the one I was going to mention! Completely unwarned, the sirens didn't even go off until 5 minutes after it had passed through our neighborhood and put a tree through our neighbor's bedroom. I was driving home at the time and didn't know a tornado was even on the ground until I started passing downed power lines and trees in the road. I didn't even know the radar could miss some tornadoes until then, so thanks for the video!
I will NEVER forget this tornado. I lived in Joliet at the time… my mom’s best friend lived in Crest Hill. I never saw rain fall sideways and intense lightning.
Luckily my mom made a quick stop at a store before we got to the apartment complex. Her friend and two kids, that my brother and would play with… THEY SURVIVED. 💯💙
I don’t know if it was a QLCS tornado or not, but Ohio does get a lot of those types of tornadoes. When I was little we lived in a mobile home in this really small town. And I remember one day it was storming but nothing seemingly too serious. My dad was doing laundry and all of the sudden, out of nowhere, the wind picked up and you could hear this roar and part of the roof started coming off. My dad bolted into the living room and grabbed me and my baby brother, and was getting ready to jump out the back door into the creek bed. And just as quickly as it has started it was over again. I can still hear the sound of the roof peeling off at 24 years old.
I was in my office that was about 8 miles away from the Plainfield tornado. Even at that distance there was a sudden violent change to the strong storm i was in when the tornado struck. I suddenly could not see past my window due to incredibly fast moving horizontal rain. Along with that there was what sounded like hail and my ears started popping. The thing that was frightening was the ceiling tiles were lifting out of the grid and the light fixtures were physically vibrating as the suction was working to pull them out.
After about 15 minutes, the storm suddenly stopped and there was blue sky. I went outside and there was no sound of any kind. Then the emergency service sirens started and ran 24 hours a day for about a week.
I'll never forget....
Last year, in August, Knoxville bizarrely had an EF2 drop on top of an apartment complex with no warning whatsoever. Luckily, it only damaged part of the complex and everyone got away with no injuries that I can recall. I thought it was so weird that nobody caught it. But now it makes a little more sense.
Just experienced a derecho that produced tornadic winds, we had mere minutes to prepare our backyard and front porch for the storm, then I got recommended this video, coincidence?
the first time i heard about the plainfield tornado i was stunned, i lived in Naperville for a long time and a friend of mine grew up in plainfield (i also liked to visit a ttrpg store there a lot), and neither of us had never known such a significant tornado happened so close to where we lived. Of course this happened before my friend and i were even born, but its crazy to hear about such a devastating event in such a familiar place.
Farm experience here - looked up once and saw directly overhead what looked exactly like a rotating Hurricane. Had white clouds, dark clouds swirled into the center and there was a clear blue sky eye of the Hurricane. No tornado touched down, no warn. But 17 miles later a tornado did touch down with very little warning. circa '86
Living in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, there were many times where I had been in Tulsa during unwarned tornados. During 2017, I was on my way to an Oilers Hockey game, encountered a tornado on the road, it was a scary moment, came out of nowhere. I still remember driving through Tulsa minutes after the tornado, it was so eerie.
Fully appreciating the old-school Local Forecast images in the background 😊👍
Hello! I was camping in Mississippi and there were no tornado sirens where I was at. The storm turned green, saw the wall cloud, and 80MPH winds hit the campsite. Nobody died, but lots of people hurt and lots of people left. Craziest thing ever to ride out a storm in a tent.
Me and my family moved to Plainfield years after the tornado, but one thing I remember my teachers telling me is that tornado happened the day before that high school that got demolished was supposed to open for the school year. Great work on the video!
Bravo with this video. I learned a lot from this. A heartfelt thank you for the effort you placed in making this video to educate others. If you're open to questions, I've seen storm chasers use three other radar overlays along with the Correlation Coefficient you explained at 3:28. Those other overlays are Spectrum Width, Differential Reflectivity, and Specific Differential Phase. What are they and why are they frequently used by tornado chasers?
Been waiting a few days since discovering your channel for the next video, great work. Glad to see that sub count is rising!
Thanks Matt!
Yes they most definitely can happen without warning. On January 1, 2022 at 8 am I had to take cover cause a tornado popped up right in front of my house and there was no warning before. The sirens didn't go off until after the tornado had came and gone but it was way to late at that time. Thank God we didn't get hurt. It was a very scary day for us.
Did it cause any damage?
Yes it caused a lot of damage quickly it ripped a lot of buildings apart. it sounded like nothing I had ever heard before like a giant vacuum cleaner, it sucked all the air out of the house and it was so scary.
There does not appear to be any damage reports from January 1st at roughly 8 am.
There is a lot of damage.
When I lived in Leawood, KS in 2017 an unwarned EF0 touched down in my neighborhood and tore the side of a house off before it disappeared. That same supercell went on to produce the Oak Grove, MO EF3. I felt like I dodged a bullet that night.
I have seen many wall clouds, funnel clouds and even brief tornadoes that had zero warnings at all on radar or by the NWS. Heck, just last year (2021) I had a weak EF-0 narrowly miss my home in northwest Indiana on Father's Day. It had a path length of about 4 miles and damaged lots of homes, properties and vehicles, and no warnings on radar or from the NWS. Thank goodness I'm a trained spotter whose been chasing storms for over 20 years. So yes, many many tornadoes go undetected by radar. And by the way, the tornado that narrowly missed my home was imbedded in a QLCS. It was a rocky night to say the least. Great video sir!
This is crazy I lived in the area 20 miles away. I remember like it was yesterday it was devastating saw the damage first hand and being 8 years old in the tri state 1974 out break my first time seeing a tornado 🌪. And then lived through the April 27 2011 tornado out break. Great video.
Back on June 22, 2017 when Tropical Storm Cindy was over the state of Alabama we had a spin up that hit Fairfield with literally no warning at all. The sirens went off at least 2 minutes after the tornado went through producing EF-1 damage. According to my father who is a Lieutenant for the fire dept there says "I was just amazed that considering the time of day no one was dead." One the iconic scenes of that day was an ABC (beer store) had it's roof completely peeled off and walls gone but the bottles never moved or damaged. Truly insane.
When I was a kid I lived out in a farm in southern MN. I remember one day I was at the kitchen table and eating something in a storm and looked outside to see a tornado back lit by lightning. I ask dad "is that a tornado?" and I just remember him grabbing me and telling my mom to get my brother and sister into the basement. Luckily nothing was damaged and the tornado just tracked across open field missing all structures. That image of the tornado being lit up by lightning is forever burned in my mind though. It wasn't until I was older that I realized how rare a thing I had witnessed.
In my hometown of Grand Rapids, Mi, we had an unwarned EF1 occur back in 2014 in a pretty populated area. I had no idea it had happened until they surveyed the damage the next day.
I appreciate you putting this video about the Plainfield f5. I've told the story over the years you can't tell you how I'm alive to this day. So here we go again. I left my job site roughly Ogden avenue and Lincoln highway which is US route 30 and 34 because of the supercell you actually showed video of, heading south on Lincoln highway towards Plainfield and my apartment in Cresthill. I can tell you this, there's a bit of a windy drive and you can see stuff kind of flying around has I headed down Lincoln highway doing a pretty high rate of speed. I raced through Plainfield I made a left on Renwick road instead of continuing down route 30 to my apartment in Crest Hill. I took Renwick road all the way to Lockport then south by the prison the back west to my apartment. When I got close to my apartment, there was debris everywhere. Im still guessing but by the time I was in downtown Plainfield, thats when the tornado hit the highschool. I couldn't see anything out my back window of the car driving that way. I cant tell you why I made that left on Renwick. The apartment was about another 10 minutes away instead of the 20-30 minute detour I took. In my drive, I heard no sirens. Just black behind me. Occasionally something blowing across the road in front of me. Being buffeted by winds and hard hard rain. What I can tell you is this. After that. I started chasing tornados around the midwest. I still feel like I can warn people help them if 1 strikes. I'm older now and don't chase as much as I used to. I'm really glad and thankful to see the advancements in advance warning systems for those that have to deal with tornadoes. Say I was lucky say I was good say God was watching over me it doesn't matter I'm still here in witness firsthand what does F5 did and the only thing that still bothers me about it what's there was no warning
I experienced a tornado with no warning in Western Oregon in Sept. 2017. There was another one recorded that day about 10 miles to the south that hopped along in the hills and damaged barns. I was driving home headed North and could see the sky turning dark behind me, and a downpour along the edge of the storm front. The funnel dropped down out of the clouds, tracked across a field and a road, damaging trees and then dissipating as fast as it came.
We don't get very many tornadoes at all here but there have been a handful EF0-1 and one EF2 in the Willamette Valley near my hometown during my lifetime. I never thought I'd actually witness a tornado here though!
In 2013, northeastern WI was hit by a small outbreak of like 5-6 EF1 tornadoes maybe even 1 EF2. It was night time (we knew there would be a thunderstorm) but there were no warnings issued. I woke up in the morning with storm damage everywhere and it seemed like no one knew what happened. No one got unalived but still, I remember all the surrounding towns/villages (a small town in WI with a population less that 20,000 people) we’re extremely upset because there was no warning or anything. And we have one of those radars almost quite literally in our back yard. One of the tornadoes was less than 1/4 mile away from me when it finally lifted. More warnings is way better.
My uncle's house was hit by an unwarned tornado in a QLCS in May, 2011. He heard the characteristic roar of the tornado -- and 30 seconds later, it was over.
Great video! Someone else touched on this I think in some previous comments but look into the Springdale, Arkansas Tornado on March 30, 2022. A line of storms formed in Eastern Oklahoma with some small hail and gusty winds around 3 am. The storm motion was nearly 60 mph. When the line moved into Arkansas it developed some weak rotation along the leading edge of the line. A line break developed near where the weak rotation was and a surge developed increasing the rotation significantly near the community of Johnson causing a tornado to touch down. This was close to 4 am and there was no warning at the time, not even a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. Shortly after the rotation ramped up (the tornado was already on the ground at this point) the NWS did issue a Severe Thunderstorm Warning with a "Tornado Possible" tag. Within 3 radar scans the rotation was gone. The last radar scan did show strong rotation and they finally issued a Tornado Warning however by the following radar scan the rotation had dissipated and Tornado had lifted. The tornado twisted and destroyed a cell tower as well as damaged homes and businesses in Johnson. When it moved into Springdale it went right through the heart of town damaging many homes and businesses causing significant damage to an Elementary School Gym, Large Industrial Plant and Mobile Home Park. It was rated EF3 at peak intensity (majority of damage was EF1-EF2) with 145mph winds, 350 yds wide (was considered a "drillbit" at a couple points based on damage found) travelled 5.2 miles in 8 minutes with 7 injuries including at least 1 critical but thankfully no fatalities considering the time of day and no lead warning.
Just found your channel and binge watched pretty much everything. This is stuck out to me. After dealing with tornados most of my life, Missouri resident, I've been incredibly paranoid over storms and every time something shows potential my go bag is on and radar is up.
That being said, I've had to learn everything from watching our what I've been able to read since time to take a spotter class or even go back to school for meteorology and have gotten pretty good at spotting tornados. Most recent was earlier this year in St.Louis the little f1/2 that came up 44. At a friend's shop right off the highway and i noticed some stuff on radar that spiked my anxiety and we got the hell out of there to their house a few miles away. Watched it form, drop, touch and travel right towards us as we go into their house. Anxiety can be good at times I guess.
Independence, Iowa, 23 April 2001. The night before was full of severe thunderstorms as a cold front passed through. The rain ended late in the evening and the weather cooled. The next morning, it was mostly sunny with puffy clouds indicating fair weather was starting to take hold. It was early morning and children were getting on the bus for school. A rogue tornado developed out of a couple of puffy clouds and moved through town, narrowly missing some kids getting on a bus, and doing damage to roofs, destroying some outbuildings, and hitting a trucking company, flipping semi trailers over. The siren sounded almost too late as the damage was pretty well done. A study was done on the tornado which can be found online. It was one of the freakiest tornadoes that I've ever known. Truly a fair-weather tornado out of the blue. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt.
This makes me wonder if some of the hook echos I've seen on the radar that did not have anything mentioned in the news were rural tornadoes with no damage that were missed. I remember seeing a very well-defined hook recently late summer early fall in Wisconsin that was in a rural area with no mention of it being a tornado. I didn't get a chance to check the velocity data though, I could very well be wrong.
I actually saw something similar late summer ish in Wisconsin (I'm in Minnesota so check radars around me fairly often.)
Fellow ohioan here, in June 2022 several small ef0-ef1 tornadoes went through Morrow, Knox, and Richland counties. I live in the middle of all three so I was up all night watching the weather but sirens didn't go off (from what I've heard). Even though they were small it was still scary seeing Mount Gilead and Chesterville knowing there were no sirens.
Had an unwarned short lived ef0 tear through my front yard at 1030 pm back in 2017, snapped full grown pine trees and twisted off branches on oaks, even up rooted one. The roar was insane escpecially since we weren’t expecting it and where all still awake. One of the most 0 to 100 moments of my life.
P.S. Hey Steve, I think you are really onto something here! I just found your channel the other day. I subscribed today and will tell everyone I know about your channel. It looks like you have been doing this for about 1 year and have 6.3k subscribers. I have a feeling your channel is gonna grow quickly. I've been searching and watching tornado videos (any type possible) and anything related for over 40 years! I can say you have some of the best I've seen when it comes to education!
P.S. I really like your "Google Earth" videos!
Thanks Anthony!
There was one in Naperville, IL last June 20th that was rare because it had all the markings of a qlcs but stayed on the ground for over 10 miles and briefly caused EF3 damage.
Wow that's a long path!
There had been a risk of severe weather over the Chicago area, but nothing was happening. Then the low level jet arrived, and everything went nuts after 7pm.
@@davidschaefer1981 It had been so boring that when I saw the line coming, I think it was around 10pm, I just shrugged it off because "nothing ever hits here" and went to sleep, missing the show.
I really don’t even know what to call this one, but on December 31st, 2021, shortly before 5:35PM, an isolated supercell appeared out of nowhere and dropped an EF1 in north-central GA. The storm had enough time to cause the vast majority of its damage and lift before it was even tornado warned. The wild part is that the sky was nearly perfectly clear before it hit.
Well, it wasn't a EF-5, but back in Aug 2016, a tornado outbreak caught people in Illinois and ind off guard. In my home town of Windsor Ont Canada, a small rainstorm crossed the river from Mich, it must have hit a rain cooled boundary or something, bc within a few mins it charged up, dropped a EF-1 cone in the neighbouring town of LaSalle, then preceded to drop a strong EF-2 wedge right in the middle of Windsor. Happened so fast, Environment Canada didn't drop a tornado warning until 20 min AFTER the tornado hit. Luckily no one was seriously hurt.
Sir, you NEED to be a meteorology instructor! You are concise, extremely knowledgeable, and break it down to let laymen understand it! For someone so young you must have had studying weather in your blood since you could walk! If you don't work for the Weather Channel, they NEED to hire you and give you a show on meteorology education! Awesome video and you have a fan!!
When I was a little kid, what most people in the area at the time were pretty sure was an unwarned tornado passed through my neighborhood in the night. It wasn't ever officially designated as a tornado, but the damage path was narrow and well defined, in a way that defies attribution to other types of storms. & This was the early 90s and we were on a military base at the time, so that might have contributed to it not being recognized.
Anyway, I wish I could relay what it was like but honestly, I slept through it completely - despite it passing close enough the house across the street lost its roof and my next-door neighbor lost shingles and boards (I was a really heavy sleeper). I don't remember the house I lived in having any damage, but I was also 5 so it's pretty likely I was just distracted by the more dramatic damages. I just woke up the next morning to the entire neighborhood basically littered with debris, tree limbs, and wreckage. In the most intense area of damage, it took a huge ancient tree over 6' wide at its base, plucked it up out of my friend's front yard and laid it flat across the road, roots and all. It was at right angles with the road, like someone laid it there on purpose. If it had gone the other way, my childhood best friend would have died horribly, because in the opposite direction laid her bedroom, and she slept right through all the excitement, too. The damage came through as a line a couple hundred feet wide - outside the line, there'd be very mild damage, like twigs missing off trees, but in the line the damage was substantial.
That basically sparked a years-long obsession for me where I was nicknamed "tornado girl" (not affectionately, I was the weird kid growing up) because I figured out some way to include the subject in my school assignments at every opportunity. It just amazed me how on one side of the street it was just wreckage, a couple houses even missed parts of their second floors, lots of missing roofs, debris all over the place, trees shredded, etc, but on the other side - the houses and trees mostly looked untouched. I'd guess it was probably a high end ef1? Still, it made a big impact on me.
Somehow nobody was even seriously injured let alone killed despite no warnings and most people being in bed asleep when it hit. Lots of people got really lucky that day, me being one of them. I literally slept through it as it passed less than 100ft away.
2 stories for you:
1. I never saw it, but an EF1 hit an HEB in Corpus Christi Texas one evening. No one was hurt, but cars were damaged.
2. Also taking place in Corpus Christi... Was the 1990s. I was about to leave for school when I looked up and saw what appeared to be a funnel cloud inching down but quickly went back up. No one said anything about it nor were there any storms
A storm system back in the early "aughts" knocked out the nearest NWS station; while it was out of commission, an undetected tornado formed in a rural area, hit a friend's trailer, and flipped it over with her inside! (In a perfect example of how weird tornadoes can be, the family dog was tied up outside, but except for being scared out of its wits, it came through without any injury. My friend was injured by having furniture land on her, but recovered just fine.)
As for me...last year I was riding home with friends in a storm, and the lightning revealed a tornado just ahead of us! However, three lightning flashes later, the funnel had completely vanished. My friend, a veteran of driving in situations like that, said that most tornadoes are reabsorbed minutes after they form. It was still freakin' scary, though.
I was in Troy AL in 2015 when an unwarned tornado struck Walmart. Local weather had actually said there was no threat of severe weather that day. The storm dropped a tornado that went through the store, across the parking lot, into an outlet store, and dissipated before crossing the main road. Sirens went off after the tornado had already dissipated.
It did not help that this occurred at night, (though walmart was open during the storm)
The tornado that instilled my fear of them was unwarned (I have panic attacks whenever there’s a warning for one in my area). On July 8th 2014 I was at home with my mom and brother, playing outside. I don’t think there was any bad weather at all, it was sunny. And then everything got really still and quiet, and my mom told us to get into the basement. EF1 tornado, no sirens or alerts or anything, it just happened. I don’t have the best memory of it, but I do remember that my dog was on our (screened-in) porch the whole time, barking at it, and afterwards there were wires and branches down all over our yard when my grandma came to pick us up. The traffic lights were down as well, so that drive was kinda scary. What’s funny is that afterwards my mom told me about tornado sirens, and the next Saturday when I was at a local park that noon siren thing went off and I was so scared that it was a tornado siren that I ran to my mom crying.
There were two unwarned EF 1 tornados on 8/9/2020 in Vilas County, WI. This is an area that is within one of the known radar gaps. They formed from isolated afternoon thunderstorms which became tornadic. I live about 2 miles from the track of one of them and never even had a drop of rain. Luckily there was no loss of life or injury despite the fact that one of them went through a campground immediately after touchdown. All in all it was mostly tree and property damage which occurred.
Just stumbled onto your videos recently and have been binge watching them. I have experienced an unwarned tornado in Brunswick, OH on June 24th, 2014. I remember noticing how dark the sky was when I was driving home about a half hour before. I even had the local news on once I got home and there were severe thunderstorm warnings out, but no tornado warnings. The only real warning I had was my dog behaving strangely and trying to stay low to the ground and hide under a coffee table. I believe it ended up being rated an EF1, but it took most of the second story off of a few homes around the corner from my house at the time. We received a call from the city about 5 minutes after it happened letting us know a tornado had touched down.
A few years back my neck of the woods experienced something like this. My hometown is located roughly eighty miles north of Jonesboro, Arkansas and roughly eighty miles south of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Neither of their weather teams could see the rotation on their radar, but thank God, one of our local spotters could see what was going on. He called the city fathers and had them sound our sirens. No harm was done as the storms produced funnel clouds and not tornadoes, but it was still a hairy experience.
When i was younger there was a water spout that formed less than 200 yards from where i was standing. Really close to the lake shore. The thing died the moment it touched the sand but there was no warning whatsoever. It went from a hot humid clear day to dark and terrifying in a matter of seconds.
In the early 90’s, this happened in Goddard, Kansas and West Wichita during the day. A non-linear storm produced a tornado w/o warning and proceeded to kill a couple of people and heavily damage a dealership. The NWS radar was roughly 3 miles away from the storm, so it was in the cusp of the radar blind spot. In 2004, a linear QLCS F1 touched down south of Wellington, KS. This tornado was not supposed to be there, according to the NWS. I personally “chased” (it traversed maybe 200 yards in the half-hour it was on the ground) this tornado after seeing questionable attributes coming from the storm on radar and decided to step outside to see a tornado only a couple miles away. I’m in constant amazement at how we have come so far in weather technology, but still am relieved that spotters and chasers are needed to relay activity back to the weather officials.
There was one morning that I woke up to the roar of a tornado and then heard it fade, only to be issued the warning after it had passed. Luckily my house wasn't hit & it was a weak tornado, but still really scary. I was in the suburbs of Atlanta
I have experienced an unwarned tornado, though I am not sure why exactly a warning wasn't issued. I live in NC, though not Charlotte. A few years ago we had a line of severe storms come through. I have some knowledge of tornado development and became concerned by what I was seeing on radar so I kept an eye to the sky. Ended up seeing a funnel cloud over the woods behind our house and then watched as it went directly over our house and touched down in a neighbors yard. I called in to a local weather station and they announced to the viewers however NWS still hadn't issued a warning. The tornado destroyed/badly damaged a couple dozen homes before lifting back up right before it reached the heart of the city I live in. Only once it had lifted back up did a tornado warning finally get issued. I was in disbelief as I really thought we had gotten to the point that unwarned tornadoes were very rare. Couple my experience with your video and I see that is not the case. Thanks for making this video! It helps bring to light this issue so people can be more aware during a thunderstorm, even without a warning.
Awesome video showing why QLCS are so hard to predict. As a meteorology student, I actually do research on tornadic QLCSs and can confirm we know less about the mechanisms behind tornado formation in QLCSs than supercells
Out here in Tulsa, there was a tornado event a few years ago in town that happened so quickly, there was no warning and no reports it even happened until after the damage was done. It ripped up the R building, and took out a Whataburger and TGI Friday's. There's a video on TH-cam somewhere of people standing in the Friday's, watching the storm until the tornado ripped it up.
They had literally no idea.
We had a small EF-0 tornado touch down in our town back in July of last year. It was a low-top, low-precipitation supercell that developed along a stationary warm front and moved southeast. AccuWeather sent an AccuWeather tornado immanent threat alert but there was never an actual NWS tornado warning. Our township’s 911 center activated the sirens after the tornado had already passed through town as law enforcement reported funnel cloud sightings, but never an official NWS tornado warning.
I almost experienced an unwarned tornado. I was camping with my kids in Port Austin MI in 2021. The weather was just gross and when I saw an upgraded severe risk that morning, I decided to call our trip off and head home. I had barely gotten to my house when my mom called and told me an EF2 barely missed where we were staying. An unwarned EF2 that the radar simply didn't see due to poor coverage in that area. Calling people who live and recreate in radar holes "insignificant" is insulting. Especially after that close call.
I drive through the path of that Harrisburg EF2 QLCS tornado every day on my way to work. I didn’t expect to see it in this video as a local.
The tri state tornado of 1925 happened without warning. Though there was no warning system in place and no mass communication device available to give warnings except for telephones and radio.
I experienced a QLCS tornado in Lynchburg, VA in April 2018. The storm was TorWar as it came into the city as it had produced a tornado further south. However, the TorWar was dropped cause there wasn't anything showing on radar that indicated a tornado anymore. Note, it wasn't allowed to expired. The warning was dropped. That lasted for all of a few minutes as the NWS quickly reissued one due to the report of a tornado on the ground within city limits. It was an EF2 within the city and strengthened to an EF3 once it crossed the James River and leveled the town of Elon, VA.
Sometime in the 1990's, I was driving to work. A small cloud was overhead, not even ominous looking, and I knew it was supposed to rain, as I had watched the weather just before I left. The wind suddenly went crazy. Small debris like leaves and sticks were flying past me. I thought to myself, "If I didn't know any better, I'd think this was a tornado." It was at that time, an emergency alert went across my radio announcing a tornado warning for my town. It wasn't that bad. An EF-0. Flattened a little grass and a few small trees to the left of where I was driving(as reported by our local news the next day, per the farmer who owned the land). But by the time the warning went out, it was gone.
Strongly agree: there is no excuse for leaving people vulnerable to storms and tornadoes because of a radar gap. Whoever passed off that report claiming it didn’t matter should not be a spokesperson, let alone an “expert.” The gaps must be filled to save lives.
During the derecho in 2006 I was camping with my family on Manitoulin Island. The nearest place that had a forecast was in Sudbury which was not even on the Island and was an hour's drive away. For most of the day it was clear until sometime during Happy hour when my mom saw some dark clouds and waved for my dad and sister to come in. It took a bit, but by the time they swam in (they were not far) the winds picked up and everyone ran. My family and another close family ran to my grandparents trailer, but the parents of the other family tried to take down their tent to avoid damage, but it flew away. They ran back inside and right as my dad closed the door, the plastic table on the deck pinned his arm in the door. When my parents got my dad's arm free my mom looked out the window and saw a tornado coming right towards us from the lake. We didn't have time to lift the latch and get under the trailer, so my mom threw me and my sister on the bed and laid on top of us as it passed over. Nobody at camp was hurt and only one person died on the island from a tornado. A tree went around the trailer and went into that family friends' car. Another trailer was completely crushed and a fiberglass kayak was bent around a tree while my dad's inflatable kayak only needed a few patches. A tree at camp lost all of its branches and was just a giant stick in the ground. The camp had wood for almost ten years after that tornado.