I say “turnado” instead of “tornado” a lot in this video lol. My bad. If you have any footage of the Jarrell F5 tornado upload it to TH-cam plz. Thanks for watching!
The most terrifying thing about the Jarrell tornado was that due to it being slow-moving and having 260+ mph winds, it shredded the debris to the point of having a sandblasting effect. Basically anything in its path simply ceased to exist.
@@Mr_Originality no, to an certain extent he is absolutely right. Some materials did get vaporized in the tornado if they weren’t dense enough. Obviously metal did not, but plastic and wood were reported to be damaged to that degree.
@@Mr_Originality, not false by any means, the slower the F5 tornado was traveling with it's F5 intensity the more damage it'll do, it'd be like using a giant belt-sander with course sandpaper on anything in it's path, anybody with common sense can figure that out. It's obvious you've never used a sandblaster, know anything about barometric pressures, aerodynamics, or examined the aftermath of different strengths or speeds of tornado damage.
That was captured by Dave Demko and Heidi Farrar of Weather Beat, besides the still image, it's one of, if not the best video's of "The Dead Man Walking" imo...
“The dead man has just walked into Jarrel.” CHILLS. So many chills, every time. I’m very interested in tornadoes so I know a lot about all the major ones, but the Jarrel tornado really does seem like a malevolent being of some kind rather than a mere funnel of wind.
Yes, it was one of the great TLC ( the learning channel ) documentaries back when reality TV was actual reality . It was during the VHS days so not many quality copies out there.
Just imagine this; You've been in your basement for 2 days, you're running low on food and water. When over the radio, you hear "The dead man has walked into jarrel." "Lockdown lifted." Are they really talking about a tornado? Or something different..?
I'd be really interested to see a video on how Native folks have interacted with tornadoes. They've been dealing with them for centuries, certainly the Plains tribes anyway. I've always wondered how those experiences shaped their beliefs and mythologies. Would be super interesting to see a deep dive on the subject. Also - wow, remember when TLC actually made educational content! How times have changed!
Most of our monsters and demons are based on things that could and did kill us in the past, wild animals with glowing eyes, dragons/thunder birds that are really descriptions of earth quakes etc. And I miss when Discovery , TLC and the learning channel had real shows on
Both of my parents saw this horrifying event unfold, my dad had to spend the entire ordeal under a bridge because they weren't near any tornado shelters and they were practically in the middle of nowhere. I can't overstate how much the Jarrell tornado has impacted not only my family, but this part of Texas as a whole. My mother has such terrible trauma from witnessing this thing and having such little time to get to safety that to this day she still struggles every time a storm hits. Just recently a pretty bad storm was playing out similarly to the one that created the Jarrell tornado and she had a meltdown from the pure terror of "reliving the worst part of her childhood" as she put it. I obviously wasn't born yet so I can't say anything about how bad this was for every other person who witnessed this and survived, but the fact that both of my parents were so impacted by this that just storms by themselves scare them into preparing the tornado shelter I think says a lot about how truly devastating this was for Jarrell and people on the outskirts of it all who couldn't do anything but just and watch the devastation.
@plasticrabbits I lived in Belton, not too far from Jarrell. I remember that day. I remember the storm building and passing over my house. We had one of those crocheted plant holders in one of our big oaks out front, when the storm hit, I looked out the window and it was horizontal in the wind. It was very scary, and I'm not surprised that your Mom is traumatized.
Hey heads ul, sheltering from a tornado under a bridge or in a tunnel is actually super dangerous because it makes the wind move faster passing through it
I have survived floods, hurricanes, blizzards and even a volcano in my 66 years. Yet, the most unnerving was a tornado encounter in Kansas, returning home from a funeral. The car I was driving was totaled as I cowered in a ditch. I moved to the Midwest in 1980 after losing everything to the lahars of Mount Saint Helens and I've had multiple encounters with tornadic storms striking close to my home. Actually, having a funnel cloud passing near my house on two occasions and still have the photograph of the last one.
I’m definitely interested in the Native American History of Tornadoes video. It sounds fascinating. Also, the Dead Man walking myth is interesting because (unlike many supposed omens of death) it actually has more than a grain of truth. If you see the dead man walking, you are looking at a multiple vortex tornado and those can absolutely kill you.
Reminds me of the sweater curse, for the unaware the idea that if you knit a sweater for a girl/boyfriend you will break up. Theories include the time it takes to knit a sweater (almost a year I think) leading to the relationship dissolving naturally and tension from a gift requiring hard work not being received well , etc. Another folk omen with some possible logical explanation(s).
My aunt and her daughter (thankfully) survived the Jarrell, TX tornado in 1997. It came within a hair’s breadth of their apartment complex, which was situated across the road from Double Creek estates. They lost multiple friends and still carry residual trauma from the experience to this day.
I know it’s already a myth, but this phenomenon is a goldmine for analog horror. Imagine giant monsters hiding in natural disasters. Also, you have a new subscriber
Since I was young (now 23) I’ve always had nightmares about sentient tornadoes with creepy, evil eyes that sit outside your house and stare through your window.
I was actually talking with my dad about this tornado yesterday, apparently he knew a few of the individuals that perished from this tornado as we lived not too far from the area. While an incredible tornado it was a horrible event for the town and even worse when they got hit again later on.
I had wondered about this, that the area was struck again, but I can't find much about it. Do you know when that second 'nader came thru? Did this second one also move to the South-West?
@Baldevi It's ambiguous whether OP is talking about the same outbreak or not. Not aware of a second hit that day, but I could be wrong. I do recall hearing that Jarrell had been struck several years earlier. As for recent history, they got hit once in 2022, nearly twice. The second one was bad, and was just narrowly outside town. Lots of photos of that one.
If I remember correctly? The Jarrell F5 was the second to hit that area. So there was one a few years before the “dead man walking “ tornado. I saw a documentary or a segment of a show that told the story pretty well. It came out shortly after the 1997 Jarrell tornado. And I haven’t been able to find it since. It probably aired in 1998? But it was the most descriptive piece of media I’ve ever seen on this tornado. It featured/had the sheriff or first responder ( please bear with me as I try to recall) . It showed where the tornado had crossed a paved road and literally dug a trench to the asphalt before ripping the asphalt off the road and carrying on to the Double Tree estates. I can remember the sheriff saying something like “ the next thing I knew I was riding on a dirt road that should’ve been asphalt “ as he was heading toward Double Tree Estates and it gave him an indication of its power. They also went into a little detail about the condition of the victim’s bodies and the fact that ( with all due respect) they were basically sandblasted to death. The tornado was a roughly a mile wide and moving at 8 mph and Double Tree took a direct hit for about 7 and a half minutes of hell on earth. This documentary stated that this particular tornado was “unsurvivable above ground “. And this piece of media also showed what they said was the only people to survive at the Double Tree Estates. I remember it was a Hispanic family. I believe a mother and a couple of children, I don’t believe the father was home at the time of the tornado. But they were the only family at Double Tree to have an underground storm shelter. The underground shelter was built by the dad. And the reason he built it was because they had been hit by a tornado at Double Tree Estates earlier ( I believe late 80’s early 90’s) and lost everything except their lives, even though it was a weaker tornado and being a smart husband and father, he never wanted his family to have to potentially ride out another tornado in an interior room above ground again. And in this show they said they were the only one to survive at Double Tree Estates. And after surveying the damage they came to the conclusion that the Jarrell tornado was “ unsurvivable above ground “. I have since seen something saying there was one family or person to survive above ground, but personally I believe they confused those survivors with the family that sheltered below ground. I also believe there was a family that outran it in their car. And that information came with the caveat that normally trying to outrun a tornado isn’t advised BUT with this particular slow moving, unsurvivable above ground monster of a tornado their best was to try to outrun it since they didn’t have a below ground shelter. If anyone knows of the documentary or segment of informational programming I’m referring to please let me know. I believe I’ve seen portions taken from it since, but I’ve never seen the whole thing again. I don’t know if it got shelved because it was a little to graphic or raw ? Maybe out of respect for the families? IDK? I didn’t find it disrespectful but I didn’t lose a loved one there. It showed the family that survived, their shelter, them using their shelter, the slab of concrete where their house stood and the deep trench through the asphalt. I believe it was like 18” below the surface of the remaining asphalt. I had and have never since seen anything quite like it. It’s what , as a severe storm junkie I’ve measured every tornado by since. I didn’t mean to write this much but the unique destruction and power of this tornado can’t be summed up easily. So , I believe the secondary tornado happened prior to the Jarrell tornado everyone knows about and Mr. Swegle’s advice to seek shelter in an interior room would have and did unfortunately ( to the best of my knowledge) get everyone killed that attempted it at Double Tree Estates with this particular tornado
@@MrGrowler20 hi!!! i am also on the spectrum, so i hope its ok if i answer for op. a lot of times those of us who deal w autism get hyperfixations or special interests Extremely easily and they become overwhelming/all consuming of our time and energy. its not always a bad thing!! here is the definition of hyperfixation from a quick google search: "Autistic brains are often really good at focusing deeply on one thing at a time; they may struggle to split attention between topics. 'Hyperfixation' is being completely immersed in something to the exclusion of everything else. It's more common in autistic people and can be a great asset." weather is one of my hyperfixations and i always get so excited when i see another swegle vid, its great. :] hope this helps
This tornado not only defined the intesity of an F5. But also a catalyst for the creation of the EF scale along with the Bridge Creek-Moore Tornado of 1999
Yep. They realized after Double Creek that they did not really have good DI's listed for the worst tornadoes and that the DOD indicators for some (like wall anchoring) Needed a re-think.
I am in England so we don’t get tornadoes like these. Only small funnel clouds now and again. But this ‘Dead man walking’ is just the eeriest real life thing I’ve ever seen. These photos and videos are absolutely amazing. But the destruction by the F5 tornado in Jarrell was horrifying. A very interesting and informative video. I love extreme weather events so I’ve subscribed. Thank you.
Seeing the Dead Man Walking tornados gives me the same feelings I had when watching the workers peer down into the open reactor core in the Chernobyl show. Something that realistically happened but yet also so Lovecraftian.
I think the last picture taken of TWISTEX ties with it. When you look at it, you might initially think think the funnel to the left is the main tornado and the little wisp between it and the road is the subvortex that killed Tim and Paul Samaras and Carl Young, but that's incorrect. The main tornado structure is the black void which takes up the right of the photo, the funnel to the left is a subvortex, and the wispy thing is a sub-subvortex at more than a 45-degree angle headed for the road at freeway speeds. El Reno was so large its subvortices had subvortices of their own.
@Woke Opossum ditto! Recently moving to OK I started being afraid of storms, it sucks. But..I've been trying not to worry about it, so I decided to start facing my fears and now I'm weirdly fascinated by tornados
As a survivor of the 1974 Xenia, Ohio tornado, I can assure you that it took on many shapes throughout its time on the ground! Since I was only 8 at that time, no photos to offer. I can remember coming out of our basement only to find out entire home was gone. It’s what led me into becoming a storm enthusiast and chaser!
I’m very new to tornadoes. I’ve always had a huge fear of them. The photos and videos of the dead man walking phenomenon looked lovecraftian. Like huge arms or tentacles reaching for a victim. No wonder there’s so many indigenous stories about these. They’re otherworldly.
Only two families in that neighborhood survived one had a shelter the other got in their car and left. The tornado was so powerful it ripped the skin off the cattle leaving them alive. My mom worked for the red cross at the time and described the scene as ultimate carnage
I lived in Belton, and your Mom is absolutely telling the truth about the cows. And not just cows. It was worse than any horror and gore movie than you can imagine. We didn't get the intensity, seemed like it was building up when it went over me. It was still very scary. I was in my 20's when that happened. I still remember that day.
My Grandfather was a responder to it. He mentioned seeing skinned cows, cows with 2x4's embedded in their ribs. I asked him about the people and he got very quiet. This man had served in Vietnam and Desert Storm and had no problems describing the wars. But this Tornado did stuff the human body that shook him. In my own research I had the misfortune of finding autopsy reports and there were several people who just got disintegrated into the swirling debris, liking becoming part of it as the wind ground them down even further. I believe it said something like 1/3 of the victims had to be ID' by dental records.
Definitely one of the most sinister tornadoes in the last few decades. The only reason it's not as famous as Joplin, El Reno and Moore because it didn't hit larger populated areas. Which is a good thing. There's another Jarrell docu video on here somewhere where witnesses and survivors give their accounts of the tornado. One guy was on his way home from work and heard the warnings on his radio. He knew his wife and kids were home. He rushed home, frantically got his family into the car and drove off as the storm hit their area. They barely escaped. He came back later only to find a slab of concrete.
I thought that was the TLC documentary but honestly I'm not sure - though I've watched the video you're referring to because I know that story. There was also the family who'd survived a tornado back in the 80s and decided that they were going to have a storm shelter no matter how hard it would be to build. They were underground while their house was slabbed and only survived due to that storm shelter.
I remember one family hand dug a shelter under their kitchen because they had a survived another tornado strike by going underground. They were able to get one neighbor family into the shelter, ran out of time, and everyone else was lost.
I used to be TERRIFIED of tornadoes. I took a weather class my sophomore year of college that worked like exposure therapy, so now I'm super interested in tornadoes and don't find them as scary anymore since I understand them better. All that to say: The first time I saw the Dead Man Walking photo was in that class. Relatively early in the semester, so I was still terrified of all things tornadoes. It was storming outside, and I walk into class (that class was in a slightly below ground room of the building with no windows, so it was SUPER dark when the lights were off, even in broad daylight), sit down and pull out my notebook. My professor was talking about tornadoes and all of a sudden he flips the lights off (thunder was booming outside), turns on our huge projector screen, and shows that photo. My soul LEFT MY BODY and I slept with a nighlight that night.
DUDE! I remember seeing this on TV when I was a kid and thought it maybe had been memory holed, but at the time I was terrified of tornadoes and remembered this EXTREMELY well, thank you for posting this
I was in Jerrell Texas in 1997. We watch that F5 monster tornado on the east side of 35 going through the town and the thing is the roar of it when it sounds like a freight train it actually sounds like a freight train coming right at you. They were people that lost their lives, and that tornado some of those were my friends. My family survived it, but when people say when a dead man is walking into your town well it did.
On your last comment. The only survivors (from what the documentary said) were a family who ran in their car, and a family and their neighbors who sheltered in a hand-dug underground shelter. The victims were all supposedly following procedure for sheltering above-ground. Thats part of why its so terrifying to me. Not even your safe room is safe in that situation.
@@KRDecade2009 yes thats true. I also just noticed i surprisingly omitted the two women (a mom and her teenage daughter) who survived miraculously by ending up in their peach tree. But they were extremely lucky. The other victims in their situation didnt survive.
@@elizabethdeal3928the damage and carnage that day is crazy. One documentary mentioned that cattle were found dead in fields with their fur and skin ripped off.
@@Serching4JerryGarcia some people debate the rating, but if you compare it to another similar storm from 40 years prior in Fargo, North Dakota, the level of damage is obvious. Fargo had identifiable victims and salvageable debris. Double Creek Estates did not. And the neighborhood that bore the brunt of the storm in Fargo wasnt any better built. Weatherbox has a video on the Fargo twister for more reference.
Jarrell gets overshadowed by a lot of other tornadoes like Moore, Joplin etc, but Jarrell has always stood out in my mind as the scariest. A twisting sledgehammer of death and oblivion. The Dead Man Walking just adds to this allure. Besides, isn’t 5 MPH just about walking speed? Thanks for an awesome video man!
Anytime a cyclonic type storm is moving that slow, mainly nothing good follows. Hurricane Dorian just sat on the Bahamas as a category 5 hurricane and made the island chain its bitch for nearly 24 hours. Not much was left standing in the heavily affected areas. Better a storm move fast through an area than take its sweeeeeet time
I say the "dead man walking" fits the description of a multi-vortex tornado very well. very often these subvortices dance around each other so from far away it looks like a walking man. Personally i like to call it an eldritch abomination of a tornado because some of these tornados look like tendrils coming from the sky. They are fascinating and horrifying to witness
One of the most frightening things about this tornado to me, is that it granulated and effectively sand blasted EVERYTHING in it's path. I've talked with a few people that responded to it, including someone who was an engineer who was contracted to find examples in debris to show how construction affected buildings withstanding tornadoes. I've heard the same story from all of them - finding granulated bits of stuff you never want to see laying on the ground. The immense power of these things are frightening, especially when the conditions are right for a violent tornado to take a lazy stroll down a neighborhood.
This is a really creepy thing. The Jarrell Tornado is like the great-grandfather of the El Reno tornado with those terrifying tentacle-like vortices that resemble living arms and legs. And they are just as deadly as they look!
I grew up just north of Jarrell. I was less than 2 when this tornado touched down, and my aunt states she could see parts of the storm from her house. This tornado is terrifying, tragic, and fascinating. The dead man walking is truly ominous. Thanks for the video!
I can confirm some of this situation as I lived in round rock Texas during this event. I visually saw this tornado forming and even went to help with clean up afterwards in cedar park where the f-3 hit. I was only in the third grade at the time but much of what I saw would “haunt” me for years to come. I was not only in Boy Scouts at the time which led to us “helping” residents who had their homes destroyed that day. I say it like that because I don’t remember doing much helping, but rather, my interactions with those in catatonic states trying to explain what they witnessed. In addition to that, and something I consider more significant to this day, it would turn out that my dad had leased some land to go dove hunting on nearby. The area we leased was located in none other than Jarrell,TX. Needless to say we never went hunting there again after this happened. I remember three things.. the catatonic ppl I spoke to at that young age word for word to this day, watching the funnel in the distance coming down right over the area where it grew and vaporized double cell estates, and lately but also probably the thing that affected me most.. was what my mother said had happened to those who did not survive at double creek estates.. keep in mind I grew up in that “perfect 90s family ideal” that shielded their children from many horrors in the world.. I’ll never forget her talking about what it did to those ppl and how they were ripped to unidentifiable pieces. I assume she knew this because both my parents worked as insurance adjusters.. my father at a management level within State Farm insurance. Every time I hear that phrase dead man walking.. I’m 9 yrs old again and remember the things I saw and how age has its way of trying to censor it from me. Needless to say.. I’m obsessed with tornadoes and enjoyed this video! I apologize if my experience in that time has led me to say anything in my comment considered insensitive but I was there and saw.. I can’t help but respect that power.
Lived in Jarrell when I was in Middle School. My teacher said she lived there for almost her entire life and was there during the tornado. She said she knew a teacher who lost some of her students to the tornado. She had pictures of the tornado and everyone there takes any tornadic activity vet seriously. Was a extremely sad and horrible thing for everyone involved.
You are so creative! I love that you don’t just do deep dives with meteorology and statistics, but ask questions and come up with ideas most of us aren’t even thinking of. I love this. Thanks for all you do.
Awesome yet spooky topic at the same time. I remember the Xenia tornado from April 3,1974. I was ten years old back then and I lived in the neighboring town of Beavercreek at the time. My dad still lives there. Anyway, it flew over our town and touched down in Xenia, almost totally wiping it out. My mom drove me through there a few weeks later and it still looked like a war zone. I believe Xenia got hit again sometime in the 1990’s. You may want to investigate that one as well.
All these tornados you described with the Dead Man Walking, were severely intense weather systems that heavily destroyed and cause severe loss of life. I hope and pray that I never see one near me in my lifetime. Thank you! I really enjoyed this video.
Lost media seems to be a constant in many of my hyper fixations and interests, whether it’s lost tornado footage, lost tracks from my favorite band, or even lost episodes of my favorite shows, it really is sad how easily things are lost and forgotten
Just think, we’ve only had digital history record for like 20-30 years tops, imagine all of the history that’s been lost before the internet existed. It’s utterly fascinating. Who knows what we may have recorded in the past only for it to be lost to history.
For the native American video you should look in to the axes that were supposedly buried by a native American chief in the 1940s to ward off any more tornados after a tornado ripped through pryor Oklahoma and destroyed half the town killing 40+ but since the pryor has never had another tornado since.
One thing I love about your videos, beside the measured and calm narration, is your dogged determination to go into great depth. Such as your use of the Google Earth resources to triangulate the locations in order to corroborate the points you are making. I do this too and I feel vindicated concerning my own habits of this type. Glad to know I'm not alone in that.
I actually work in a Texas pizzeria with a coworker that was in fact there. We were in the middle of a conversation when I brought up the walking tornado. He proceeded to explain that he actually lived in the town at the time of the tornado, in fact it’s the reason he moved. He even described the damage closely to how you in the video. Edit: I asked him in that conversation and he can confirm that it was indeed walking.
I live about 10 miles south of Jarrell. I went the next day to assist with recovery of the deceased. The tile in some cases was stripped off of the slabs, no vegetation was left in the path. One thing that is burned into my memory is a frame rail from a mobile home was wrapped around an oak tree trunk.
@@TBizzell68 I just happened across this video this morning, I was going thru the comments of people who say " yeah my cousins moms sisters friend was in the tornado, and also those saying yeah we lived in the apartments right across the street from Double Creek Estates (uh there ain't no Apartments there)... I despise those who insinuate they were there. How you been ?
I spent many vacations with family in Round Rock. We went to Jarrell like two weeks after the tornado, I can't convey how insane it was to see just concrete slabs and no debris at all. You could visibly see the path of the tornado because it dug up like a foot of earth. Craziest shit I ever saw.
This was truly a tragic situation, made worse by the fact that school had gotten out the week before, leaving many kids at home when the tornado struck. I live in Ohio, and go to Xenia often (Zeen-ia). I just read for the first time about four weeks ago, that as the tornado was moving through Xenia proper, that it had as many as six funnels, including the main funnel. Tornadoes seem to be getting worse every year
It seems to me the same... They're getting worse every year . But I another viewer put down that they are not getting worse that they were worse back a half a century earlier. I know the 50s was a huge time for multiple tornadoes that were in the f4f5 category. I think now that they have changed over from the fujita scale to the enhanced fujita scale that they are missing something here.
@@eveslady100 I agree with you, not to long ago I was in a storm that produced 9 tornados all around the area where I live. Luckily the highest rating was only an EF3 and no one died. It was the storm the produced the Andover tornado in 2022. The one that destroyed neighborhoods and Devastated the YMCA. This was a very unusual tornado, the form of it at sometimes was really interesting in my opinion. I remember the funnel going over my house. You can search up the Andover tornado 2022 on TH-cam and you can really see how powerful this storm was. It also hit the school but thankfully no one was there. Luckily no one died. But yes the number of tornados and how powerful they are are increasing every year, it’s scary and amazing at the same time. That’s the thing with tornados, they can be beautiful of a complete nightmare. Tomorrow is not promised to anybody, stay safe.
I remember the Xenia tornado in the news when I was a kid. That was the end of the weather girls and they started to get serious about reporting severe weather.
I completely disagree. As a matter of fact (I’d have to research this to be sure) but it seems to me we thankfully haven’t had a Jarrell, Moore or Joplin in around a decade. The reason we see so many more tornadoes is because there are cameras everywhere nowadays. Practically everyone for the last 15 years or so has a high definition camera in their pocket ready to go at a moment’s notice. Plus there are cameras on practically every business, school, intersection etc. And along with those cameras there are many more storm chasers and people trying to film severe weather than there were even a decade ago. And with all those cameras comes all of the sites on the internet that cater to amateur producers of those videos- TH-cam, Facebook, TikTok etc. I’m old enough to remember when video cameras became affordable and user friendly back around the mid eighties. It was at that point when storm chasing began to gain popularity and we began to see more tornado videos. But back then you had to wait for it to appear on the news or a tv show featuring home videos. Sometimes the Discovery Channel or another cable show would have a compilation of tornado videos and make a show dedicated to it. No man. Tornadoes aren’t getting worse or more frequent ( not saying we don’t have more or less some years) . But that’s the thing about weather, it’s always changing and it always will.
You've probably heard of it, but the 1955 Udall Tornado had a similar backwards motion. My grandfather lived in Udall at the time and he said that when the tornado touched down east of Udall, they thought they were safe. As a result, many people weren't in their shelters. But, the tornado came west, heading right for the town. Between 87 people were killed, 200 were injured. The south half of the town was complete destroyed, and in the end, the only surviving buildings were the bank, post office, and the Odd Fellows Home. 192 buildings and 170 houses were destoryed, and the rest were deamed unlivable. Due to how small Udall was, nearly half the families in the town lost one or more relatives, and 20% of the population died in the disaster. It reached an f5 I think and had max windspeeds of 260 miles an hour. You don't mess with backwards moving tornados, multi vortex or not.
I had a …something…🙄👀on my TV a few years ago where I could slow down the footage of tornadoes and play them frame by frame. There’s a lot of them that have the dead man walking in them, it’s just not been captured as this horrific Jarrell tornado. It’s always the big ones with multi- vortices. When the indigenous people said if you seen the dead man walking, your about to die!! If a frightening thing, and it’s always with the tornadoes that leave death and destruction behind them. Sometimes I honestly think there’s more to that than they are only vortices, but what I don’t want to think about!!
When i was a kid obsessed with tornados in the 2000s, i learned about the dead man walking from a different tornado. This one only had handmade drawings (or maybe a grainy old photograph) and eyewitness accounts of the terrible twin vortices walking across the landscape. He image of it was the most terrifying i had ever seen from a tornado, it was i human in the way it moved. I remember a set of 3 or so drawings of the vortices. It was being shown in a documentary. I have not been able to find that documentary again. But this makes me want to find it again haha. Great video.
@nileprime googlewontletmeleavethisblank i dont have any information other than it was two low precipitation funnels in close proximity, probably in the mid west and probably before the 90s. Maybe...
Hell yeah, always a great day when Swegle uploads! Jarrell is hands down the creepiest, most disturbing tornado in my opinion. I was 9 years old when it happened, HUGE tornado nerd since I could remember, and that was the one that made me start having nightmares about them. They went from being a simple curiosity for me to being something I have a deep respect and a little bit of fear for. Great videos man, keep doing what you do! And I'm really excited to see that indigenous tornado video!
This tornado haunts me too, and I did not even know much about it until I got hooked on Tornadoes a few years ago. It is simply so... horrible. Something about this one just stabs deep and twists around in my chest, whew. And I am also excited for the Indigenous Tornado Video too!
I'm in Alton, IL. Last Saturday there were 12 confirmed tornadoes around us and even one in Belleville, IL which isn't that far from me. I'm also not far from Edwardsville, IL where the tornado hit the Amazon plant. That night I got a 'Tornado Emergency' warning on my phone that said to take cover immediately. We're having so many scary events I now have to leave my basement door open. We're also supposed to be in 'tornado alley' now. 🥴😵💫
I really hope more people with footage of this tornado do convert and upload to TH-cam SOON. Also, if people have footage but do not want or do not ahv the ability to convert their VHS or whatever to Digital, Angel Escobales will happily convert for you and return your original tape/media with the conversion on thumb drive. This was a very important Weather Event, one that is still a bit mysterious, and deserves better study. As a rare Multi Vortex Cyclone, and displaying those vortices before it even had become a wedge; it was still rather thin when the Dead Man photo was snapped, well, it can be really helpful and give us more information for the future predictions and rating of tornadoes. I am eagerly hoping Angel gets a lot of footage and can present us with a timeline progression of the Dead Man Walking from start to finish, or at least when it left Double Creek's borders and promptly weakened. It only lived for about 15 minutes after all, and yet did so much damage. Joplin was longer, even the 2013 El Reno was alive much longer. Good Luck to our devoted Documentary Creators! May we one day have the entire event available to view, study and scare ourselves to death with. And a HUGE Thank you to Swegle Studios for making this video, I have been hoping for it for a long time! And no need to go over the tragedy and loss due to the tornado, this was a great take on the event! Very nicely done!
Jarrell. I saw a DPS video shot of the tornado and aftermath. I now wish I hadn't. The video started facing northwest from the northbound access road of 35. It was the tornado at peak strength. It then went to the subdivision were the ppl died. Unfortunately I saw the "morgue slab" were several bodies were collected. All but one were completely unrecognizable as ppl. I wont describe them . The one that was recognizable was a thin man I just erased the horrific description. The reason i started to describe was to explain the unbelievable power and destruction that tornado had. Its unbelievable. The houses were bare slabs that didnt have the chalk lines anymore even so they were sand blasted effectively. The asphalt was stripped off the roads. It showed ppl going through the rubble collecting little strips of flesh into seperate bags human and animal. Then they jumped in a helicopter and flew over the neighborhood. It must of been the next day, cause the cattle in the pasture next to the subdivision were bloated and being buried in mass graves with a bulldozer. It happened around 3 maybe it was late afternoon in the helicopter.Theres much more i could describe but I shouldnt for everyone including me. We tried to make a copy but his dad made us promise to not. I am glad we didnt i wish now i had never seen it. I was a young man 23. I had been completely fascinated with tornados. Not anymore. I live in Austin and lived in the Williamson county area at the time. My best friends Dad worked for Round Rock FD. I saw a copy of the video that way. I haven't seen any footage from it since. If I do I'll come back to post a link
You have a Pet Tornado! I had one as a kid (and have another one now) and really I think that's what sparked my interest in tornadoes. Awesome content as always, thanks for all your work!
@@kaygee2121 The first one I had I bought at a Scholastic book fair and I believe the design of that one had a more tornado-sky-green color to it. A few years ago I tried looking for it but couldn't find it, so I bought the one I have now!
The TLC documentary is almost complete time machine of the world in the late 90s, the commercials the TLC channel itself was actually educational! I’ve watched the Dead Man Walking documentary a few times and it’s by far my favourite tornado film! In fact I’m going to watch it again now in honour of watching this video now! I highly recommend it for anyone interested in tornadoes! This was an excellent piece by the way, the dead man walking image definitely has always scared me a little. It’s fascinating to know that it wasn’t a film but still images. Sounds like this was a fun rabbit hole to dive into, and I thank you!
I saw the original It was a video of the actual tornado. Narrator telling the dead man walking story. Scary and never forget. And hope never see one "live". Haven't been able to find the original program.
Just remember this tornado wiped out an entire subdivision and all the people who were killed by this tornado were in that subdivision. It left nothing but slates.
Thanks, that was an enjoyable deep dive into the Dead Man Walking footage! I was 15 in 1997 and remember the horrors of Jarrell on TV and in the newspapers, and it was terrifying and tragic to read about. The tornado damage in Jarrell is, for me, easily the worst I've ever seen photos of. The only other tornadoes I've seen close to it are the 2011 El Reno tornado (no, not the much more famous but much weaker 2013 one) and Bridge Creek, and then Smithville and Joplin behind those two.
This turnado always scared me, just how much damage it did completely shredding the entire neighborhood and that picture of the dead man walking is just haunting. Great video as always bro
I saw that documentary back in the day when I was a kid. I was oddly reminded of that exact line the other day. I didn't say anything out loud and decided against trying to search it up or anything. Then the algorithm pushed your video to me and now I am convinced my phone can read my mind 😅 Anyway, great vid and thanks for settling my memory on this.
4:30 I watched this documentary a few years ago and it's well worth the time. Very well made with lots of home video footage of the tornado, including the dead man walking clip. The narrator is excellent too, his delivery of that piece was chilling.
I was on I-35 as the Jarrell tornado was growing. Absolutely terrifying. Visited the area 5 days later with Congressman Ron Paul. As your video states.... there was nothing but slabs left. Even some of them had pieces missing. The asphalt had been completely scoured
This just showed up a ways down my TH-cam recs and I was certain it was gonna be clickbait. I have been pleasantly surprised, fantastic research and presentation, I think I'm gonna watch more of your channel!
I lived in Alabama for 10 years… the fact that you referenced James Spann right up front makes me immediately trust everything you have to say and I have no weather expertise at all 😂
To this day, this is the scariest tornado I've ever learned about. More people died in Joplin, Moore, El Reno etc, but the Jarrell tornado is especially horrific in the violent ways it killed people and animals. Internal organs found in fields, with recovery teams having to determine which species they belonged to. At least one person I know of decapitated. It was strong, but moved very slowly across the terrain, so when it hit a structure, it lingered. The Double Creek estate were built on slabs on the ground due to thick clay in the area. Multiple homes had nothing but those slabs left. Forget hiding under a mattress in the bathtub! No cellars to hide in. And it was a dead man walking, with multiple vortices. It was a giant slow-moving blender in the sky just sucking everything, and everyone, up and grinding everything into tiny pieces and throwing it for miles. Fricking terrifying!
You did a good job on your video. I used to be a spotter for the Sumner County Kansas EOC and the NWS, it was so interesting and fun. We were able to see so many different storm types and conditions, some of the craziest things you could imagine happen during these storms. We had a huge .75 mile tornado near Mayfield Ks in 2003, it was my very last storm chase before moving away and it had a Dead Man Walking with it that resulted from several satellites carousselling around the main vortex, it was beautiful and harmless! It was stationary for approximately 45 mins before moving off and dissipating. One more tidbit on this storm, some people were trying to get closer to the storm so they drove into a fallowed field and parked to get some pictures when a rogue vortex just 4 or 5 feet across touched own just yards from them! We were on a hillside above them, and saw the vortex coming down, we tried to warn them but to avail. It was scary but funny to recall them doing a chinese fire drill trying to get back in the their car to get away... Anyhow, enjoyed your video.
I’m glad to see this focus on the Jerrell storm. The Moore tornado two years later became the defacto worst storm event, but I always felt Jerrell was even more vicious in wind velocity and sheer terror.
I'm an historian and footage of you going down the rabbit hole, into old websites, facebook groups, forums, and comments sections alongside a can of caffinated (I'm assuming) beverage is pretty much what doing a PhD in history looks like... 4 years of that 😊
I fell into the same rabbit hole looking for more images of the dead man walking phenomenon. I was a little over 2 and a half hours into all these different videos , when I encountered one that actually scared me! It was the classic dead man with the torso and legs, when 2 ARM vortices seemed to reach down and twist something near the ground in front of it. I don't get freaked out very easily, but that image in the video got me! I replayed it two more times, and I got this feeling like I wasn't supposed to be seeing this. It was a feeling of evil, or like it was forbidden. Uncharacteristically, I immediately closed all on my phone and watched lame, Late-night TV till I fell asleep. All my brain wanted was to replay that image, and I fought it til I fell asleep! The next afternoon, I tried to find it again, but no luck. I found a lot of the same videos from that night, but not the one that freaked me out. Like I said, it was a deep dive. If you find it, you will know!! Post it, or Mark it so others can see it too. It is FREAKY!!
The dead man walking story is actually told across the south and Midwest by plains tribes. I am Kiowa and Comanche and MANY of my Elders say these exact words. If you see the dead man walking, you will die this day. I remember my grandfather once told me that if I ever saw the dead man walking, pray to the great spirit and ask him to spare your soul because you'll meet him soon. Never understood what he meant till I saw a documentary on the history Channel and I saw THAt exact picture. Yeah.. pucker factor for REAL. Oh and about the stories and fairytale creatures, those are ALL rooted in native American culture and legend as well, and as with EVERY legend, there is ALWAYS truth behind it. That's a fact of life. Be blessed and stay safe out there in this mad, mad world Y'all.
I think the one in Bangladesh was definitely one of the worst, Jarrel is to the most interesting tornado imo with all the factors with it with forming and it’s damage
@@hyacinthbucket3803 it’s very difficult to dig basements in the Austin area. We have about six inches of dirt and then it’s nothing but solid limestone.
You could literally make a horror movie about Jarrell. 4:37 Ugh! The part my VCR decided to eat the VHS tape. Side note to anyone that may watch the video I posted on Jarrell. My apologies in advance for the video's condition and not editing out the commercials. It was in my attic for years before I was able to transfer it and of the 5 VCRs I had that was the best copy I could get it.
Thanks for uploading it! At least we have the documentary at all. Scans of the photographs have been found so the tape being eaten isn't really an issue
Some of my family died in the tornado. Some time after we got a video tape that had some interviews with survivors and kind of told the series of events. The dead man walking picture was in there and creeped me out every time I watched it. Still does all these years later.
That documentary you were talking about is seared into my memory, because when I was younger (probably between 14 and 16) I watched it on TH-cam and that section about the Dead Man Walking legend genuinely terrified me. I'm one of those people who's simultaneously terrified of and fascinated by tornadoes, and the ominous framing of that segment in particular hit me in such a way that the "terrified" part outweighed the "fascinated", haha. It didn't freak me out quite as much seeing it in this video, but I can definitely see why younger me was so terrified by it.
I have a strong fascination with tornadoes and I’ve had this obsession since I was a little guy. This is an extremely interesting video and I love how u break it all down, awesome!
I was always TERRIFIED of tornadoes as a kid. I was also scared of thunderstorms when I was really young too, which caused me to be obsessed with watching the Weather Channel (love your outro visual with the WS4000 btw). I've since come to love thunderstorms. But there are very few things that I would say scare me today, but tornadoes are one of them. The thing that made me so scared of tornadoes was that they seemed alive to me. Seeing this footage is unsettling to me as a 26 year old. I'm glad I live in the northeast!
I actually live in Jarrell and I remember this day vividly (though at the time I was living southwest of Jarrell in the then small city of Cedar Park). Nowadays it's a decently sized small town that's expanding quite a bit as suburbs of Austin have blown up, but in 1997 I think there were like 500 people in town. And nobody in town talks about this storm, even though Double Creek has been rebuilt and the kids play sports and the adults vote on town or county measures at the building with the crescent shaped driveway (at 3:26 above the white line) that was once a lot that belonged to an entire family who died in the storm. Even on the 20th anniversary in 2017 nobody in town made a big deal about it, like maybe a couple private families left flowers at the memorial on the main drag in town over by the Mexican cafe, hair salon, and the tire shop but that was it. To be completely honest, you probably gave me more information on this storm than I've gleaned from living through that day and growing up in Williamson County my entire life.
Dude, this is a rabbit hole I've been pissed I couldn't find any more about. Amazing! Keep up the good work and I can't wait to see your videos about indigenous tornado lore.
My grandma did pass down one story of the dead man walking. I wish I'd paid attention more, but the way she told it gave me a very real fear of tornadoes.
I'm a trained storm spotter so finding this channel made me happy. But I have an interesting story to tell. When I was little and we were just supposed to get regular everyday storms and everytime we watched Twister a tornado happened. So now when an everyday storm happens we just leave the movie alone.
Great detective work! And really fascinating to know that the Dead Man Walking tale is Native American! I've always wanted to learn more about their perspective on tornados and how they survived them for so very long even though they populated the midwest quite densely. When I lived out there and was utterly terrified of tornados, it seemed to me like the only logical thing was to lead a nomadic life that you could quickly pick up and get out of the way of any potential storm, rather than hope to be warned fast enough to seek shelter.
Because this tornado was almost sitting on top of the subdivision for a minute or too it did this incredible damage. Other EF5s go over a neighborhood and destroy every structure as it passes by or goes over them but this tornado bassicly stayed over the things it destroyed for a time that gave it the time to basically tor anything into tiny shreds that flew miles away. One quote that summarized it really well (wich gives me goosebumps every time I hear it) came from a meteorologist that saw the tornado and it's aftermath. He said: you see normally when you look at a typical tornado aftermath it looks like a neighborhood has been blenderisted, but when we got to the neighborhood.......you couldn't even tell there was even a neighborhood. All he saw were clean concrete slaps with nothing on it and that's haunting.
I can't imagine the terrible feeling of showing up for search and rescue (to try to help people) but there is nothing to search, everything is just gone. At least with piles of rubble you can have hope of finding survivors.
I think tornadoes are particularly terrifying because unlike other storms,they're unpredictable. Like with Jarrel it can start tiny and become massive in moments.
I say “turnado” instead of “tornado” a lot in this video lol. My bad. If you have any footage of the Jarrell F5 tornado upload it to TH-cam plz. Thanks for watching!
Turnado tornado, it's the same when you say it lol
the C in scythe is also silent
ye
@@Avendesora i just came here to say that lol
Also you said cullman f5
The most terrifying thing about the Jarrell tornado was that due to it being slow-moving and having 260+ mph winds, it shredded the debris to the point of having a sandblasting effect. Basically anything in its path simply ceased to exist.
False
@@Mr_Originality no, to an certain extent he is absolutely right. Some materials did get vaporized in the tornado if they weren’t dense enough. Obviously metal did not, but plastic and wood were reported to be damaged to that degree.
@@Mr_Originality the town was a biohazard zone for weeks because everyone that died got turned into ground beef and strewn for miles around
@@thebigmanufacturer Sounds similar to a jet crashing at cruising speed. Once you get over a certain velocity, there’s nothing left but pieces…
@@Mr_Originality, not false by any means, the slower the F5 tornado was traveling with it's F5 intensity the more damage it'll do, it'd be like using a giant belt-sander with course sandpaper on anything in it's path, anybody with common sense can figure that out. It's obvious you've never used a sandblaster, know anything about barometric pressures, aerodynamics, or examined the aftermath of different strengths or speeds of tornado damage.
That El Reno one is the first I've seen a "dead man walking" in motion. That is truly terrifying.
That was captured by Dave Demko and Heidi Farrar of Weather Beat, besides the still image, it's one of, if not the best video's of "The Dead Man Walking" imo...
Did you see the Twistex team's car after that? My God.
I would call it Grim Reaper Walking, and yes, terrifying.
Didn't ask
@@kencapps586 Do you have video of it?
“The dead man has just walked into Jarrel.” CHILLS. So many chills, every time. I’m very interested in tornadoes so I know a lot about all the major ones, but the Jarrel tornado really does seem like a malevolent being of some kind rather than a mere funnel of wind.
Yes, it was one of the great TLC ( the learning channel ) documentaries back when reality TV was actual reality . It was during the VHS days so not many quality copies out there.
I'm guessing TLC owns the video.
That ENTIRE section gave me chills. I had to watch it multiple times. That is just SUCH good writing/storytelling.
Just imagine this; You've been in your basement for 2 days, you're running low on food and water. When over the radio, you hear "The dead man has walked into jarrel." "Lockdown lifted."
Are they really talking about a tornado? Or something different..?
@@ParasiticInfection Oh God, that'll be a great horror story.
I'd be really interested to see a video on how Native folks have interacted with tornadoes. They've been dealing with them for centuries, certainly the Plains tribes anyway. I've always wondered how those experiences shaped their beliefs and mythologies. Would be super interesting to see a deep dive on the subject.
Also - wow, remember when TLC actually made educational content! How times have changed!
Most of our monsters and demons are based on things that could and did kill us in the past, wild animals with glowing eyes, dragons/thunder birds that are really descriptions of earth quakes etc.
And I miss when Discovery , TLC and the learning channel had real shows on
Humans crossed over to America at least 14,000 years ago so it’s been a whole lot longer than that
@@noelvalenzarroyou get what they mean
They're the ones that came up with the term "dead man walking."
Yeah. and its clear natives also have it all figured out, hence the "dead man walking" thingy being completely true.
Both of my parents saw this horrifying event unfold, my dad had to spend the entire ordeal under a bridge because they weren't near any tornado shelters and they were practically in the middle of nowhere. I can't overstate how much the Jarrell tornado has impacted not only my family, but this part of Texas as a whole. My mother has such terrible trauma from witnessing this thing and having such little time to get to safety that to this day she still struggles every time a storm hits. Just recently a pretty bad storm was playing out similarly to the one that created the Jarrell tornado and she had a meltdown from the pure terror of "reliving the worst part of her childhood" as she put it. I obviously wasn't born yet so I can't say anything about how bad this was for every other person who witnessed this and survived, but the fact that both of my parents were so impacted by this that just storms by themselves scare them into preparing the tornado shelter I think says a lot about how truly devastating this was for Jarrell and people on the outskirts of it all who couldn't do anything but just and watch the devastation.
Goddamn
Damn.
@plasticrabbits I lived in Belton, not too far from Jarrell. I remember that day. I remember the storm building and passing over my house. We had one of those crocheted plant holders in one of our big oaks out front, when the storm hit, I looked out the window and it was horizontal in the wind. It was very scary, and I'm not surprised that your Mom is traumatized.
Hey heads ul, sheltering from a tornado under a bridge or in a tunnel is actually super dangerous because it makes the wind move faster passing through it
@@jackhazardous4008 bullcrap.that is a urban legend thas s lie. Its safer under a overpass than out in the open.
I have survived floods, hurricanes, blizzards and even a volcano in my 66 years. Yet, the most unnerving was a tornado encounter in Kansas, returning home from a funeral. The car I was driving was totaled as I cowered in a ditch. I moved to the Midwest in 1980 after losing everything to the lahars of Mount Saint Helens and I've had multiple encounters with tornadic storms striking close to my home. Actually, having a funnel cloud passing near my house on two occasions and still have the photograph of the last one.
Get what you can uploaded.
How horrifying. Glad you have made it out of all. 😨
Some nature god is clearly angry with you, holy crap
I don’t want to be your neighbour 😂
@@vernowen2083 I always wondered what happened to the owners, and I'm glad to hear you got out.
I’m definitely interested in the Native American History of Tornadoes video. It sounds fascinating.
Also, the Dead Man walking myth is interesting because (unlike many supposed omens of death) it actually has more than a grain of truth. If you see the dead man walking, you are looking at a multiple vortex tornado and those can absolutely kill you.
That, and if you are close enough to see one of those vividly, your fate is likely already sealed.
Its a shame I don't live in the us to see tornadoes I don't think it happens over here
Reminds me of the sweater curse, for the unaware the idea that if you knit a sweater for a girl/boyfriend you will break up. Theories include the time it takes to knit a sweater (almost a year I think) leading to the relationship dissolving naturally and tension from a gift requiring hard work not being received well , etc. Another folk omen with some possible logical explanation(s).
@old hunter undol it's neat to watch until it rips your house apart and kills somebody lol. Just watch on the internet 👍
@@chestnut4860reminds me of Weezer 😊
My aunt and her daughter (thankfully) survived the Jarrell, TX tornado in 1997. It came within a hair’s breadth of their apartment complex, which was situated across the road from Double Creek estates. They lost multiple friends and still carry residual trauma from the experience to this day.
There weren't any Apartments around Double Creek Estates.
Yes there were/are. Just down the road. @@josephproctor690
@@josephproctor690no proof?
Yes, I still live here.
@@josephproctor690 That doesn't really answer the person's question. This is as easy a matter to settle as a quick look at google maps.
I know it’s already a myth, but this phenomenon is a goldmine for analog horror. Imagine giant monsters hiding in natural disasters. Also, you have a new subscriber
The other videos he showed of multivortex turnados could easily be mistaken for angry wind gods
Typhon in the percy jackson series
Yup. The scary power of the mother nature.
There was a creepy pasta about this type of thing at some point, but I don’t remember what it was
Since I was young (now 23) I’ve always had nightmares about sentient tornadoes with creepy, evil eyes that sit outside your house and stare through your window.
I was actually talking with my dad about this tornado yesterday, apparently he knew a few of the individuals that perished from this tornado as we lived not too far from the area. While an incredible tornado it was a horrible event for the town and even worse when they got hit again later on.
I had wondered about this, that the area was struck again, but I can't find much about it. Do you know when that second 'nader came thru? Did this second one also move to the South-West?
@Baldevi It's ambiguous whether OP is talking about the same outbreak or not. Not aware of a second hit that day, but I could be wrong.
I do recall hearing that Jarrell had been struck several years earlier.
As for recent history, they got hit once in 2022, nearly twice. The second one was bad, and was just narrowly outside town. Lots of photos of that one.
If I remember correctly? The Jarrell F5 was the second to hit that area. So there was one a few years before the “dead man walking “ tornado. I saw a documentary or a segment of a show that told the story pretty well. It came out shortly after the 1997 Jarrell tornado. And I haven’t been able to find it since. It probably aired in 1998? But it was the most descriptive piece of media I’ve ever seen on this tornado. It featured/had the sheriff or first responder ( please bear with me as I try to recall) . It showed where the tornado had crossed a paved road and literally dug a trench to the asphalt before ripping the asphalt off the road and carrying on to the Double Tree estates. I can remember the sheriff saying something like “ the next thing I knew I was riding on a dirt road that should’ve been asphalt “ as he was heading toward Double Tree Estates and it gave him an indication of its power. They also went into a little detail about the condition of the victim’s bodies and the fact that ( with all due respect) they were basically sandblasted to death. The tornado was a roughly a mile wide and moving at 8 mph and Double Tree took a direct hit for about 7 and a half minutes of hell on earth. This documentary stated that this particular tornado was “unsurvivable above ground “. And this piece of media also showed what they said was the only people to survive at the Double Tree Estates. I remember it was a Hispanic family. I believe a mother and a couple of children, I don’t believe the father was home at the time of the tornado. But they were the only family at Double Tree to have an underground storm shelter. The underground shelter was built by the dad. And the reason he built it was because they had been hit by a tornado at Double Tree Estates earlier ( I believe late 80’s early 90’s) and lost everything except their lives, even though it was a weaker tornado and being a smart husband and father, he never wanted his family to have to potentially ride out another tornado in an interior room above ground again. And in this show they said they were the only one to survive at Double Tree Estates. And after surveying the damage they came to the conclusion that the Jarrell tornado was “ unsurvivable above ground “. I have since seen something saying there was one family or person to survive above ground, but personally I believe they confused those survivors with the family that sheltered below ground. I also believe there was a family that outran it in their car. And that information came with the caveat that normally trying to outrun a tornado isn’t advised BUT with this particular slow moving, unsurvivable above ground monster of a tornado their best was to try to outrun it since they didn’t have a below ground shelter. If anyone knows of the documentary or segment of informational programming I’m referring to please let me know. I believe I’ve seen portions taken from it since, but I’ve never seen the whole thing again. I don’t know if it got shelved because it was a little to graphic or raw ? Maybe out of respect for the families? IDK? I didn’t find it disrespectful but I didn’t lose a loved one there. It showed the family that survived, their shelter, them using their shelter, the slab of concrete where their house stood and the deep trench through the asphalt. I believe it was like 18” below the surface of the remaining asphalt. I had and have never since seen anything quite like it. It’s what , as a severe storm junkie I’ve measured every tornado by since. I didn’t mean to write this much but the unique destruction and power of this tornado can’t be summed up easily. So , I believe the secondary tornado happened prior to the Jarrell tornado everyone knows about and Mr. Swegle’s advice to seek shelter in an interior room would have and did unfortunately ( to the best of my knowledge) get everyone killed that attempted it at Double Tree Estates with this particular tornado
@@旭球 I should’ve tagged you with my comment below yours
I’m not sure if there’s a way to go back and do that so I just figured I’d let you know
robert parish?
I am Autistic and tornadoes are slowly becoming a special interest of mine, so your videos are an absolute goldmine. Thank you for this.
what does this have to do with autism lmao
edit: i have found out that autistic people hyperfixate on things which i guess explains it
@@MrGrowler20 hi!!! i am also on the spectrum, so i hope its ok if i answer for op. a lot of times those of us who deal w autism get hyperfixations or special interests Extremely easily and they become overwhelming/all consuming of our time and energy. its not always a bad thing!! here is the definition of hyperfixation from a quick google search: "Autistic brains are often really good at focusing deeply on one thing at a time; they may struggle to split attention between topics. 'Hyperfixation' is being completely immersed in something to the exclusion of everything else. It's more common in autistic people and can be a great asset."
weather is one of my hyperfixations and i always get so excited when i see another swegle vid, its great. :] hope this helps
@@MrGrowler20 They fixate. Tornados are their current fixation.
@dropp3d It's called hyperfixation. It's a very normal thing for people with Autism.
Congratulations on your autism. I am glad you let us all know. Thank you.
This tornado not only defined the intesity of an F5. But also a catalyst for the creation of the EF scale along with the Bridge Creek-Moore Tornado of 1999
Fujitsu scale was created in 1971
@@smudgey1kenobey yes but the updated Enhanced Fujita Scale was developed in the very early 2000s.
Yep. They realized after Double Creek that they did not really have good DI's listed for the worst tornadoes and that the DOD indicators for some (like wall anchoring) Needed a re-think.
Also the Lubbock tornado of 1970. It was the first recorded f5 hitting a city
what the difference between the scales
I am in England so we don’t get tornadoes like these. Only small funnel clouds now and again. But this ‘Dead man walking’ is just the eeriest real life thing I’ve ever seen. These photos and videos are absolutely amazing. But the destruction by the F5 tornado in Jarrell was horrifying.
A very interesting and informative video. I love extreme weather events so I’ve subscribed. Thank you.
Actually, England does get tornadoes that can go up to F5 but it's actually rare.
Inner-cities in the Midwest & East Coast usually don't get bad weather.
@Aaron McGee Dayton Ohio isn't rural, and it had an F5 tornado, and it's next door to Cincinnati.
@@Galidorquest Well, Pennsylvania had an F5 in the 1980s.
@@iceresistance I meant cities like Chicago and New York don't get bad tornadoes.
Seeing the Dead Man Walking tornados gives me the same feelings I had when watching the workers peer down into the open reactor core in the Chernobyl show. Something that realistically happened but yet also so Lovecraftian.
The Jarrel picture is no doubt the most disturbing picture of a tornado I’ve ever seen.
It’s not just wind it’s a living monster who cares only about spreading chaos and destruction
@@terrenceeaglefeather2465Its the mad wind spaghetti
I think the last picture taken of TWISTEX ties with it.
When you look at it, you might initially think think the funnel to the left is the main tornado and the little wisp between it and the road is the subvortex that killed Tim and Paul Samaras and Carl Young, but that's incorrect. The main tornado structure is the black void which takes up the right of the photo, the funnel to the left is a subvortex, and the wispy thing is a sub-subvortex at more than a 45-degree angle headed for the road at freeway speeds. El Reno was so large its subvortices had subvortices of their own.
This greenfield tornado looks exactly like this but more vortexes
Vorteces***
As a kid Tornadoes were one of my biggest fears but now as an adult I find them extremely interesting, your channel is fantastic man keep it up!
I have a terrible phobia of tornadoes so I started storm spotting to over come it. I have no fear now except for night storms. So scary...
@Woke Opossum ditto! Recently moving to OK I started being afraid of storms, it sucks. But..I've been trying not to worry about it, so I decided to start facing my fears and now I'm weirdly fascinated by tornados
@moonlightsonata2364 Don’t be too fascinated! Always go to an underground shelter when you hear it!
Tornadoes are fascinating and terrifying at the same time.
As a survivor of the 1974 Xenia, Ohio tornado, I can assure you that it took on many shapes throughout its time on the ground!
Since I was only 8 at that time, no photos to offer. I can remember coming out of our basement only to find out entire home was gone. It’s what led me into becoming a storm enthusiast and chaser!
I recently watched the Bruce Boyd footage of that tornado. It was incredible for sure.
Reminds me of Jo's origin story in Twister. 😊
@@fatcat5817 mine is very similar. The only positive in my experience was that nobody in my family died!
10 yo's trying to fight the urge to say only in ohio:
@@IHaveInsomnia333 I'm trying 🤬🤬
I watched a documentary about it in the 5th grade and spend YEARS trying to find videos of it but the videos like this hadn’t been made yet.
I’m very new to tornadoes. I’ve always had a huge fear of them. The photos and videos of the dead man walking phenomenon looked lovecraftian. Like huge arms or tentacles reaching for a victim. No wonder there’s so many indigenous stories about these. They’re otherworldly.
Only two families in that neighborhood survived one had a shelter the other got in their car and left. The tornado was so powerful it ripped the skin off the cattle leaving them alive. My mom worked for the red cross at the time and described the scene as ultimate carnage
Good lord that's brutal
Those poor cows 😢
I lived in Belton, and your Mom is absolutely telling the truth about the cows. And not just cows. It was worse than any horror and gore movie than you can imagine.
We didn't get the intensity, seemed like it was building up when it went over me. It was still very scary. I was in my 20's when that happened. I still remember that day.
My Grandfather was a responder to it. He mentioned seeing skinned cows, cows with 2x4's embedded in their ribs. I asked him about the people and he got very quiet. This man had served in Vietnam and Desert Storm and had no problems describing the wars. But this Tornado did stuff the human body that shook him. In my own research I had the misfortune of finding autopsy reports and there were several people who just got disintegrated into the swirling debris, liking becoming part of it as the wind ground them down even further. I believe it said something like 1/3 of the victims had to be ID' by dental records.
@@AngryCarMechanic Ok, these I have to see.
Definitely one of the most sinister tornadoes in the last few decades. The only reason it's not as famous as Joplin, El Reno and Moore because it didn't hit larger populated areas. Which is a good thing.
There's another Jarrell docu video on here somewhere where witnesses and survivors give their accounts of the tornado.
One guy was on his way home from work and heard the warnings on his radio. He knew his wife and kids were home.
He rushed home, frantically got his family into the car and drove off as the storm hit their area. They barely escaped.
He came back later only to find a slab of concrete.
I thought that was the TLC documentary but honestly I'm not sure - though I've watched the video you're referring to because I know that story.
There was also the family who'd survived a tornado back in the 80s and decided that they were going to have a storm shelter no matter how hard it would be to build. They were underground while their house was slabbed and only survived due to that storm shelter.
I remember one family hand dug a shelter under their kitchen because they had a survived another tornado strike by going underground. They were able to get one neighbor family into the shelter, ran out of time, and everyone else was lost.
There's tons of stuff online about Jarrell and several videos too; it's far from being obscure in any way.
This tornado was only several miles north of my family when my mom was pregnant with me. Crazy shit
I used to be TERRIFIED of tornadoes. I took a weather class my sophomore year of college that worked like exposure therapy, so now I'm super interested in tornadoes and don't find them as scary anymore since I understand them better. All that to say:
The first time I saw the Dead Man Walking photo was in that class. Relatively early in the semester, so I was still terrified of all things tornadoes. It was storming outside, and I walk into class (that class was in a slightly below ground room of the building with no windows, so it was SUPER dark when the lights were off, even in broad daylight), sit down and pull out my notebook. My professor was talking about tornadoes and all of a sudden he flips the lights off (thunder was booming outside), turns on our huge projector screen, and shows that photo.
My soul LEFT MY BODY and I slept with a nighlight that night.
DUDE! I remember seeing this on TV when I was a kid and thought it maybe had been memory holed, but at the time I was terrified of tornadoes and remembered this EXTREMELY well, thank you for posting this
I was in Jerrell Texas in 1997. We watch that F5 monster tornado on the east side of 35 going through the town and the thing is the roar of it when it sounds like a freight train it actually sounds like a freight train coming right at you. They were people that lost their lives, and that tornado some of those were my friends. My family survived it, but when people say when a dead man is walking into your town well it did.
On your last comment. The only survivors (from what the documentary said) were a family who ran in their car, and a family and their neighbors who sheltered in a hand-dug underground shelter. The victims were all supposedly following procedure for sheltering above-ground. Thats part of why its so terrifying to me. Not even your safe room is safe in that situation.
Isn’t EF4-5 like the strongest a tornado can get? I don’t think there’s much anyone can build that can survive that
@@KRDecade2009 yes thats true. I also just noticed i surprisingly omitted the two women (a mom and her teenage daughter) who survived miraculously by ending up in their peach tree. But they were extremely lucky. The other victims in their situation didnt survive.
@@elizabethdeal3928the damage and carnage that day is crazy. One documentary mentioned that cattle were found dead in fields with their fur and skin ripped off.
@@Serching4JerryGarcia some people debate the rating, but if you compare it to another similar storm from 40 years prior in Fargo, North Dakota, the level of damage is obvious. Fargo had identifiable victims and salvageable debris. Double Creek Estates did not. And the neighborhood that bore the brunt of the storm in Fargo wasnt any better built. Weatherbox has a video on the Fargo twister for more reference.
Shit.
Jarrell gets overshadowed by a lot of other tornadoes like Moore, Joplin etc, but Jarrell has always stood out in my mind as the scariest. A twisting sledgehammer of death and oblivion. The Dead Man Walking just adds to this allure. Besides, isn’t 5 MPH just about walking speed? Thanks for an awesome video man!
Just about. Maybe a bit faster. Just taking a stroll.... Of destruction
Yeah, it's a fast walk.
Anytime a cyclonic type storm is moving that slow, mainly nothing good follows. Hurricane Dorian just sat on the Bahamas as a category 5 hurricane and made the island chain its bitch for nearly 24 hours. Not much was left standing in the heavily affected areas.
Better a storm move fast through an area than take its sweeeeeet time
5 mph is a run to me. 😄
8 MPH is the actual walking speed of people so we could outrun or outpace the Jarrell tornado on foot but definitely not reccomended
I say the "dead man walking" fits the description of a multi-vortex tornado very well. very often these subvortices dance around each other so from far away it looks like a walking man.
Personally i like to call it an eldritch abomination of a tornado because some of these tornados look like tendrils coming from the sky. They are fascinating and horrifying to witness
Yeah they are cute 😊
Have you ever watched the National Geographic documentary on El Reno, Inside the Mega Twister? It talks about the tendrils of subvortices.
@@aewtx Cthulhu is actually a sky god
I'm so glad you covered this. The Jarrell tornado has fascinated me for years.
Glad to have helped. I was the one that made the comment about the Time magazine article. Great detective work and photos/videos.
One of the most frightening things about this tornado to me, is that it granulated and effectively sand blasted EVERYTHING in it's path. I've talked with a few people that responded to it, including someone who was an engineer who was contracted to find examples in debris to show how construction affected buildings withstanding tornadoes. I've heard the same story from all of them - finding granulated bits of stuff you never want to see laying on the ground. The immense power of these things are frightening, especially when the conditions are right for a violent tornado to take a lazy stroll down a neighborhood.
This is a really creepy thing. The Jarrell Tornado is like the great-grandfather of the El Reno tornado with those terrifying tentacle-like vortices that resemble living arms and legs. And they are just as deadly as they look!
Cullman, AL had that too, you can see the video that shows it.
I grew up just north of Jarrell. I was less than 2 when this tornado touched down, and my aunt states she could see parts of the storm from her house. This tornado is terrifying, tragic, and fascinating. The dead man walking is truly ominous. Thanks for the video!
I can confirm some of this situation as I lived in round rock Texas during this event. I visually saw this tornado forming and even went to help with clean up afterwards in cedar park where the f-3 hit. I was only in the third grade at the time but much of what I saw would “haunt” me for years to come. I was not only in Boy Scouts at the time which led to us “helping” residents who had their homes destroyed that day. I say it like that because I don’t remember doing much helping, but rather, my interactions with those in catatonic states trying to explain what they witnessed. In addition to that, and something I consider more significant to this day, it would turn out that my dad had leased some land to go dove hunting on nearby. The area we leased was located in none other than Jarrell,TX. Needless to say we never went hunting there again after this happened. I remember three things.. the catatonic ppl I spoke to at that young age word for word to this day, watching the funnel in the distance coming down right over the area where it grew and vaporized double cell estates, and lately but also probably the thing that affected me most.. was what my mother said had happened to those who did not survive at double creek estates.. keep in mind I grew up in that “perfect 90s family ideal” that shielded their children from many horrors in the world.. I’ll never forget her talking about what it did to those ppl and how they were ripped to unidentifiable pieces. I assume she knew this because both my parents worked as insurance adjusters.. my father at a management level within State Farm insurance. Every time I hear that phrase dead man walking.. I’m 9 yrs old again and remember the things I saw and how age has its way of trying to censor it from me. Needless to say.. I’m obsessed with tornadoes and enjoyed this video! I apologize if my experience in that time has led me to say anything in my comment considered insensitive but I was there and saw.. I can’t help but respect that power.
I know I watch lost media vids but I have no idea how this ended up in my feed. However I ain't complaining this is interesting.
Lived in Jarrell when I was in Middle School. My teacher said she lived there for almost her entire life and was there during the tornado. She said she knew a teacher who lost some of her students to the tornado. She had pictures of the tornado and everyone there takes any tornadic activity vet seriously. Was a extremely sad and horrible thing for everyone involved.
You are so creative! I love that you don’t just do deep dives with meteorology and statistics, but ask questions and come up with ideas most of us aren’t even thinking of. I love this. Thanks for all you do.
I love seeing all the OSINT he does on tornado paths and damage tracks etc, and stuff like this where he investigates the lore to get to the truth!
He even found the fence post. 😮
Awesome yet spooky topic at the same time. I remember the Xenia tornado from April 3,1974. I was ten years old back then and I lived in the neighboring town of Beavercreek at the time. My dad still lives there. Anyway, it flew over our town and touched down in Xenia, almost totally wiping it out. My mom drove me through there a few weeks later and it still looked like a war zone. I believe Xenia got hit again sometime in the 1990’s. You may want to investigate that one as well.
Was that Xenia Kansas?
I'm sorry, I just read it was Ohio.
@@wokeopossum4965 ohio
@@wokeopossum4965 no worries. 😁
There’s a bizarre movie called ‘Gummo’ about what happened to Xenia in the years since the F5. Spoiler alert: Nothing good.
All these tornados you described with the Dead Man Walking, were severely intense weather systems that heavily destroyed and cause severe loss of life. I hope and pray that I never see one near me in my lifetime. Thank you! I really enjoyed this video.
I can see ancient people seeing these kinda of tornados as angry wind gods or smth
The story of the 97 tornado is both incredible and devastating for those lost, but we commemorate them every year here in Jarrell.
Lost media seems to be a constant in many of my hyper fixations and interests, whether it’s lost tornado footage, lost tracks from my favorite band, or even lost episodes of my favorite shows, it really is sad how easily things are lost and forgotten
Just think, we’ve only had digital history record for like 20-30 years tops, imagine all of the history that’s been lost before the internet existed. It’s utterly fascinating. Who knows what we may have recorded in the past only for it to be lost to history.
For the native American video you should look in to the axes that were supposedly buried by a native American chief in the 1940s to ward off any more tornados after a tornado ripped through pryor Oklahoma and destroyed half the town killing 40+ but since the pryor has never had another tornado since.
Your information is very innacurate.
There is a spiritual connection between winds picking up and becoming dark and not..
What he buried is a supercharged energy object that puts a protective barrier..put it of the ground and stuff returns.
Wow
@@dannylo5875 that is complete horseshit.
One thing I love about your videos, beside the measured and calm narration, is your dogged determination to go into great depth. Such as your use of the Google Earth resources to triangulate the locations in order to corroborate the points you are making. I do this too and I feel vindicated concerning my own habits of this type. Glad to know I'm not alone in that.
It’s called having integrity! Less and less people have it.
I actually work in a Texas pizzeria with a coworker that was in fact there. We were in the middle of a conversation when I brought up the walking tornado. He proceeded to explain that he actually lived in the town at the time of the tornado, in fact it’s the reason he moved. He even described the damage closely to how you in the video.
Edit: I asked him in that conversation and he can confirm that it was indeed walking.
I live about 10 miles south of Jarrell. I went the next day to assist with recovery of the deceased. The tile in some cases was stripped off of the slabs, no vegetation was left in the path. One thing that is burned into my memory is a frame rail from a mobile home was wrapped around an oak tree trunk.
Tommy ?
@@josephproctor690 it’s me
@@TBizzell68 I just happened across this video this morning, I was going thru the comments of people who say " yeah my cousins moms sisters friend was in the tornado, and also those saying yeah we lived in the apartments right across the street from Double Creek Estates (uh there ain't no Apartments there)... I despise those who insinuate they were there. How you been ?
I spent many vacations with family in Round Rock. We went to Jarrell like two weeks after the tornado, I can't convey how insane it was to see just concrete slabs and no debris at all. You could visibly see the path of the tornado because it dug up like a foot of earth. Craziest shit I ever saw.
I traveled often on IH35 past this location, and I can confirm what you said. The trail was like a giant plow had gone through.
This was truly a tragic situation, made worse by the fact that school had gotten out the week before, leaving many kids at home when the tornado struck. I live in Ohio, and go to Xenia often (Zeen-ia). I just read for the first time about four weeks ago, that as the tornado was moving through Xenia proper, that it had as many as six funnels, including the main funnel. Tornadoes seem to be getting worse every year
It seems to me the same... They're getting worse every year . But I another viewer put down that they are not getting worse that they were worse back a half a century earlier. I know the 50s was a huge time for multiple tornadoes that were in the f4f5 category. I think now that they have changed over from the fujita scale to the enhanced fujita scale that they are missing something here.
@@eveslady100 I agree with you, not to long ago I was in a storm that produced 9 tornados all around the area where I live. Luckily the highest rating was only an EF3 and no one died. It was the storm the produced the Andover tornado in 2022. The one that destroyed neighborhoods and Devastated the YMCA. This was a very unusual tornado, the form of it at sometimes was really interesting in my opinion. I remember the funnel going over my house. You can search up the Andover tornado 2022 on TH-cam and you can really see how powerful this storm was. It also hit the school but thankfully no one was there. Luckily no one died. But yes the number of tornados and how powerful they are are increasing every year, it’s scary and amazing at the same time. That’s the thing with tornados, they can be beautiful of a complete nightmare.
Tomorrow is not promised to anybody, stay safe.
All of those children were looking forward to their summer
😔😢
I remember the Xenia tornado in the news when I was a kid. That was the end of the weather girls and they started to get serious about reporting severe weather.
I completely disagree. As a matter of fact (I’d have to research this to be sure) but it seems to me we thankfully haven’t had a Jarrell, Moore or Joplin in around a decade. The reason we see so many more tornadoes is because there are cameras everywhere nowadays. Practically everyone for the last 15 years or so has a high definition camera in their pocket ready to go at a moment’s notice. Plus there are cameras on practically every business, school, intersection etc. And along with those cameras there are many more storm chasers and people trying to film severe weather than there were even a decade ago. And with all those cameras comes all of the sites on the internet that cater to amateur producers of those videos- TH-cam, Facebook, TikTok etc. I’m old enough to remember when video cameras became affordable and user friendly back around the mid eighties. It was at that point when storm chasing began to gain popularity and we began to see more tornado videos. But back then you had to wait for it to appear on the news or a tv show featuring home videos. Sometimes the Discovery Channel or another cable show would have a compilation of tornado videos and make a show dedicated to it. No man. Tornadoes aren’t getting worse or more frequent ( not saying we don’t have more or less some years) . But that’s the thing about weather, it’s always changing and it always will.
You've probably heard of it, but the 1955 Udall Tornado had a similar backwards motion. My grandfather lived in Udall at the time and he said that when the tornado touched down east of Udall, they thought they were safe. As a result, many people weren't in their shelters. But, the tornado came west, heading right for the town. Between 87 people were killed, 200 were injured. The south half of the town was complete destroyed, and in the end, the only surviving buildings were the bank, post office, and the Odd Fellows Home. 192 buildings and 170 houses were destoryed, and the rest were deamed unlivable. Due to how small Udall was, nearly half the families in the town lost one or more relatives, and 20% of the population died in the disaster. It reached an f5 I think and had max windspeeds of 260 miles an hour. You don't mess with backwards moving tornados, multi vortex or not.
Not even sure why TH-cam recommended this channel but I'm happy it did.
I had a …something…🙄👀on my TV a few years ago where I could slow down the footage of tornadoes and play them frame by frame. There’s a lot of them that have the dead man walking in them, it’s just not been captured as this horrific Jarrell tornado. It’s always the big ones with multi- vortices. When the indigenous people said if you seen the dead man walking, your about to die!! If a frightening thing, and it’s always with the tornadoes that leave death and destruction behind them. Sometimes I honestly think there’s more to that than they are only vortices, but what I don’t want to think about!!
IT IS!!!!!!!
When i was a kid obsessed with tornados in the 2000s, i learned about the dead man walking from a different tornado. This one only had handmade drawings (or maybe a grainy old photograph) and eyewitness accounts of the terrible twin vortices walking across the landscape.
He image of it was the most terrifying i had ever seen from a tornado, it was i human in the way it moved. I remember a set of 3 or so drawings of the vortices. It was being shown in a documentary.
I have not been able to find that documentary again. But this makes me want to find it again haha.
Great video.
Do you have any idea which tornado it was?
@nileprime googlewontletmeleavethisblank i dont have any information other than it was two low precipitation funnels in close proximity, probably in the mid west and probably before the 90s. Maybe...
Hell yeah, always a great day when Swegle uploads! Jarrell is hands down the creepiest, most disturbing tornado in my opinion. I was 9 years old when it happened, HUGE tornado nerd since I could remember, and that was the one that made me start having nightmares about them. They went from being a simple curiosity for me to being something I have a deep respect and a little bit of fear for. Great videos man, keep doing what you do! And I'm really excited to see that indigenous tornado video!
This tornado haunts me too, and I did not even know much about it until I got hooked on Tornadoes a few years ago. It is simply so... horrible. Something about this one just stabs deep and twists around in my chest, whew.
And I am also excited for the Indigenous Tornado Video too!
I'm in Alton, IL. Last Saturday there were 12 confirmed tornadoes around us and even one in Belleville, IL which isn't that far from me. I'm also not far from Edwardsville, IL where the tornado hit the Amazon plant. That night I got a 'Tornado Emergency' warning on my phone that said to take cover immediately. We're having so many scary events I now have to leave my basement door open. We're also supposed to be in 'tornado alley' now. 🥴😵💫
@@digby_dooright I'm in Texas and we've already had our fair share of tornado activity and it's not even May.
I really hope more people with footage of this tornado do convert and upload to TH-cam SOON.
Also, if people have footage but do not want or do not ahv the ability to convert their VHS or whatever to Digital, Angel Escobales will happily convert for you and return your original tape/media with the conversion on thumb drive.
This was a very important Weather Event, one that is still a bit mysterious, and deserves better study. As a rare Multi Vortex Cyclone, and displaying those vortices before it even had become a wedge; it was still rather thin when the Dead Man photo was snapped, well, it can be really helpful and give us more information for the future predictions and rating of tornadoes.
I am eagerly hoping Angel gets a lot of footage and can present us with a timeline progression of the Dead Man Walking from start to finish, or at least when it left Double Creek's borders and promptly weakened. It only lived for about 15 minutes after all, and yet did so much damage. Joplin was longer, even the 2013 El Reno was alive much longer.
Good Luck to our devoted Documentary Creators! May we one day have the entire event available to view, study and scare ourselves to death with.
And a HUGE Thank you to Swegle Studios for making this video, I have been hoping for it for a long time! And no need to go over the tragedy and loss due to the tornado, this was a great take on the event! Very nicely done!
SO glad you did this! I tried looking for footage too. Super hard to find. Gave up much faster than you did.
Jarrell. I saw a DPS video shot of the tornado and aftermath. I now wish I hadn't. The video started facing northwest from the northbound access road of 35. It was the tornado at peak strength. It then went to the subdivision were the ppl died. Unfortunately I saw the "morgue slab" were several bodies were collected. All but one were completely unrecognizable as ppl. I wont describe them . The one that was recognizable was a thin man I just erased the horrific description. The reason i started to describe was to explain the unbelievable power and destruction that tornado had. Its unbelievable. The houses were bare slabs that didnt have the chalk lines anymore even so they were sand blasted effectively. The asphalt was stripped off the roads. It showed ppl going through the rubble collecting little strips of flesh into seperate bags human and animal. Then they jumped in a helicopter and flew over the neighborhood. It must of been the next day, cause the cattle in the pasture next to the subdivision were bloated and being buried in mass graves with a bulldozer. It happened around 3 maybe it was late afternoon in the helicopter.Theres much more i could describe but I shouldnt for everyone including me. We tried to make a copy but his dad made us promise to not. I am glad we didnt i wish now i had never seen it. I was a young man 23. I had been completely fascinated with tornados. Not anymore. I live in Austin and lived in the Williamson county area at the time. My best friends Dad worked for Round Rock FD. I saw a copy of the video that way. I haven't seen any footage from it since. If I do I'll come back to post a link
You have a Pet Tornado! I had one as a kid (and have another one now) and really I think that's what sparked my interest in tornadoes. Awesome content as always, thanks for all your work!
What's your other one?
@@kaygee2121 The first one I had I bought at a Scholastic book fair and I believe the design of that one had a more tornado-sky-green color to it. A few years ago I tried looking for it but couldn't find it, so I bought the one I have now!
The TLC documentary is almost complete time machine of the world in the late 90s, the commercials the TLC channel itself was actually educational! I’ve watched the Dead Man Walking documentary a few times and it’s by far my favourite tornado film! In fact I’m going to watch it again now in honour of watching this video now! I highly recommend it for anyone interested in tornadoes! This was an excellent piece by the way, the dead man walking image definitely has always scared me a little. It’s fascinating to know that it wasn’t a film but still images. Sounds like this was a fun rabbit hole to dive into, and I thank you!
I saw the original
It was a video of the actual tornado.
Narrator telling the dead man walking story. Scary and never forget. And hope never see one "live". Haven't been able to find the original program.
You did an excellent job of researching and pulling this video together. Thanks for sharing it with the internet!
Love to see some of your videos blowing up!! Your content is really unique in the chasing community. Definitely deserve it!
Just remember this tornado wiped out an entire subdivision and all the people who were killed by this tornado were in that subdivision. It left nothing but slates.
Thanks, that was an enjoyable deep dive into the Dead Man Walking footage! I was 15 in 1997 and remember the horrors of Jarrell on TV and in the newspapers, and it was terrifying and tragic to read about. The tornado damage in Jarrell is, for me, easily the worst I've ever seen photos of. The only other tornadoes I've seen close to it are the 2011 El Reno tornado (no, not the much more famous but much weaker 2013 one) and Bridge Creek, and then Smithville and Joplin behind those two.
This turnado always scared me, just how much damage it did completely shredding the entire neighborhood and that picture of the dead man walking is just haunting. Great video as always bro
That picture still gives me the chills regardless of how many times I’ve seen it
I saw that documentary back in the day when I was a kid. I was oddly reminded of that exact line the other day. I didn't say anything out loud and decided against trying to search it up or anything. Then the algorithm pushed your video to me and now I am convinced my phone can read my mind 😅
Anyway, great vid and thanks for settling my memory on this.
That Jarrell tornado footage gives me so much anxiety. There was no hope for people above ground.
4:30 I watched this documentary a few years ago and it's well worth the time. Very well made with lots of home video footage of the tornado, including the dead man walking clip. The narrator is excellent too, his delivery of that piece was chilling.
The line "The effect of such force on a human body is best left to the imagination" still sticks with me even years later
It's always nice when Swegle uploads I love embracing my inner tornado nerd
I was on I-35 as the Jarrell tornado was growing. Absolutely terrifying.
Visited the area 5 days later with Congressman Ron Paul. As your video states.... there was nothing but slabs left. Even some of them had pieces missing. The asphalt had been completely scoured
This just showed up a ways down my TH-cam recs and I was certain it was gonna be clickbait. I have been pleasantly surprised, fantastic research and presentation, I think I'm gonna watch more of your channel!
I lived in Alabama for 10 years… the fact that you referenced James Spann right up front makes me immediately trust everything you have to say and I have no weather expertise at all 😂
To this day, this is the scariest tornado I've ever learned about. More people died in Joplin, Moore, El Reno etc, but the Jarrell tornado is especially horrific in the violent ways it killed people and animals. Internal organs found in fields, with recovery teams having to determine which species they belonged to. At least one person I know of decapitated. It was strong, but moved very slowly across the terrain, so when it hit a structure, it lingered. The Double Creek estate were built on slabs on the ground due to thick clay in the area. Multiple homes had nothing but those slabs left. Forget hiding under a mattress in the bathtub! No cellars to hide in. And it was a dead man walking, with multiple vortices. It was a giant slow-moving blender in the sky just sucking everything, and everyone, up and grinding everything into tiny pieces and throwing it for miles. Fricking terrifying!
You did a good job on your video. I used to be a spotter for the Sumner County Kansas EOC and the NWS, it was so interesting and fun. We were able to see so many different storm types and conditions, some of the craziest things you could imagine happen during these storms. We had a huge .75 mile tornado near Mayfield Ks in 2003, it was my very last storm chase before moving away and it had a Dead Man Walking with it that resulted from several satellites carousselling around the main vortex, it was beautiful and harmless! It was stationary for approximately 45 mins before moving off and dissipating. One more tidbit on this storm, some people were trying to get closer to the storm so they drove into a fallowed field and parked to get some pictures when a rogue vortex just 4 or 5 feet across touched own just yards from them! We were on a hillside above them, and saw the vortex coming down, we tried to warn them but to avail. It was scary but funny to recall them doing a chinese fire drill trying to get back in the their car to get away... Anyhow, enjoyed your video.
I’m glad to see this focus on the Jerrell storm. The Moore tornado two years later became the defacto worst storm event, but I always felt Jerrell was even more vicious in wind velocity and sheer terror.
Thank you sir for the EXCELLENT research! Do more! 😎👍🏼
I'm an historian and footage of you going down the rabbit hole, into old websites, facebook groups, forums, and comments sections alongside a can of caffinated (I'm assuming) beverage is pretty much what doing a PhD in history looks like... 4 years of that 😊
I fell into the same rabbit hole looking for more images of the dead man walking phenomenon. I was a little over 2 and a half hours into all these different videos , when I encountered one that actually scared me! It was the classic dead man with the torso and legs, when 2 ARM vortices seemed to reach down and twist something near the ground in front of it. I don't get freaked out very easily, but that image in the video got me! I replayed it two more times, and I got this feeling like I wasn't supposed to be seeing this. It was a feeling of evil, or like it was forbidden. Uncharacteristically, I immediately closed all on my phone and watched lame, Late-night TV till I fell asleep. All my brain wanted was to replay that image, and I fought it til I fell asleep! The next afternoon, I tried to find it again, but no luck. I found a lot of the same videos from that night, but not the one that freaked me out. Like I said, it was a deep dive. If you find it, you will know!! Post it, or Mark it so others can see it too. It is FREAKY!!
Me too.
Did you ever find it again bro? Sound really interesting
@@bizantiumx3991 Pretty sure they're referring to the Ahab tornado.
@@keyabrade1861do you mean Arab?
There's one listed in Arab Alabama I think.
One of the best tornado channels on TH-cam. Congrats on the success you’ve been having! The more videos the better!
This is one of my favorite tornado pictures! Excellent work!!
The dead man walking story is actually told across the south and Midwest by plains tribes. I am Kiowa and Comanche and MANY of my Elders say these exact words. If you see the dead man walking, you will die this day. I remember my grandfather once told me that if I ever saw the dead man walking, pray to the great spirit and ask him to spare your soul because you'll meet him soon. Never understood what he meant till I saw a documentary on the history Channel and I saw THAt exact picture. Yeah.. pucker factor for REAL. Oh and about the stories and fairytale creatures, those are ALL rooted in native American culture and legend as well, and as with EVERY legend, there is ALWAYS truth behind it. That's a fact of life. Be blessed and stay safe out there in this mad, mad world Y'all.
Thank you for this great video. God Bless you & your family.
The most horrible tornado in history, at least in my opinion. Poor people in Double Creek Estates😢
I think the one in Bangladesh was definitely one of the worst, Jarrel is to the most interesting tornado imo with all the factors with it with forming and it’s damage
In an area that is populated, and is prone to tornadoes, why build houses just on concrete slabs, shouldn’t they have a basement for shelter?
@@hyacinthbucket3803 it’s very difficult to dig basements in the Austin area. We have about six inches of dirt and then it’s nothing but solid limestone.
@@MScotty90 Well that explains why, I didn’t know about the limestone.
You could literally make a horror movie about Jarrell.
4:37 Ugh! The part my VCR decided to eat the VHS tape.
Side note to anyone that may watch the video I posted on Jarrell. My apologies in advance for the video's condition and not editing out the commercials. It was in my attic for years before I was able to transfer it and of the 5 VCRs I had that was the best copy I could get it.
Thanks for uploading it! At least we have the documentary at all.
Scans of the photographs have been found so the tape being eaten isn't really an issue
Some of my family died in the tornado. Some time after we got a video tape that had some interviews with survivors and kind of told the series of events. The dead man walking picture was in there and creeped me out every time I watched it. Still does all these years later.
Incredible in-depth sleuthing! Massive respect. 🙏🙏
That documentary you were talking about is seared into my memory, because when I was younger (probably between 14 and 16) I watched it on TH-cam and that section about the Dead Man Walking legend genuinely terrified me. I'm one of those people who's simultaneously terrified of and fascinated by tornadoes, and the ominous framing of that segment in particular hit me in such a way that the "terrified" part outweighed the "fascinated", haha. It didn't freak me out quite as much seeing it in this video, but I can definitely see why younger me was so terrified by it.
Your tornado lore videos are amazing! Phenominal job researching and piecing together clues within these unique little mysteries.
wow an entire video based on my favorite tornado photo! awesome work!!
I have a strong fascination with tornadoes and I’ve had this obsession since I was a little guy. This is an extremely interesting video and I love how u break it all down, awesome!
I was always TERRIFIED of tornadoes as a kid. I was also scared of thunderstorms when I was really young too, which caused me to be obsessed with watching the Weather Channel (love your outro visual with the WS4000 btw). I've since come to love thunderstorms. But there are very few things that I would say scare me today, but tornadoes are one of them. The thing that made me so scared of tornadoes was that they seemed alive to me. Seeing this footage is unsettling to me as a 26 year old. I'm glad I live in the northeast!
I was in Austin for this. It lost strength before reaching south Austin, but Georgetown, Round Rock, and N. Austin got a piece of that as well.
I actually live in Jarrell and I remember this day vividly (though at the time I was living southwest of Jarrell in the then small city of Cedar Park). Nowadays it's a decently sized small town that's expanding quite a bit as suburbs of Austin have blown up, but in 1997 I think there were like 500 people in town. And nobody in town talks about this storm, even though Double Creek has been rebuilt and the kids play sports and the adults vote on town or county measures at the building with the crescent shaped driveway (at 3:26 above the white line) that was once a lot that belonged to an entire family who died in the storm. Even on the 20th anniversary in 2017 nobody in town made a big deal about it, like maybe a couple private families left flowers at the memorial on the main drag in town over by the Mexican cafe, hair salon, and the tire shop but that was it. To be completely honest, you probably gave me more information on this storm than I've gleaned from living through that day and growing up in Williamson County my entire life.
Love the editing man keep up the work!
Dude, this is a rabbit hole I've been pissed I couldn't find any more about. Amazing! Keep up the good work and I can't wait to see your videos about indigenous tornado lore.
My grandma did pass down one story of the dead man walking. I wish I'd paid attention more, but the way she told it gave me a very real fear of tornadoes.
I'm a trained storm spotter so finding this channel made me happy. But I have an interesting story to tell. When I was little and we were just supposed to get regular everyday storms and everytime we watched Twister a tornado happened. So now when an everyday storm happens we just leave the movie alone.
Great detective work! And really fascinating to know that the Dead Man Walking tale is Native American! I've always wanted to learn more about their perspective on tornados and how they survived them for so very long even though they populated the midwest quite densely. When I lived out there and was utterly terrified of tornados, it seemed to me like the only logical thing was to lead a nomadic life that you could quickly pick up and get out of the way of any potential storm, rather than hope to be warned fast enough to seek shelter.
One of the best tornado videos I've seen! Have always wondered about this picture, SO cool to have the mystery solved!
Because this tornado was almost sitting on top of the subdivision for a minute or too it did this incredible damage. Other EF5s go over a neighborhood and destroy every structure as it passes by or goes over them but this tornado bassicly stayed over the things it destroyed for a time that gave it the time to basically tor anything into tiny shreds that flew miles away. One quote that summarized it really well (wich gives me goosebumps every time I hear it) came from a meteorologist that saw the tornado and it's aftermath. He said: you see normally when you look at a typical tornado aftermath it looks like a neighborhood has been blenderisted, but when we got to the neighborhood.......you couldn't even tell there was even a neighborhood.
All he saw were clean concrete slaps with nothing on it and that's haunting.
I can't imagine the terrible feeling of showing up for search and rescue (to try to help people) but there is nothing to search, everything is just gone. At least with piles of rubble you can have hope of finding survivors.
9 months still waiting for that native American video. Can't wait to see everything you find though!
I think tornadoes are particularly terrifying because unlike other storms,they're unpredictable. Like with Jarrel it can start tiny and become massive in moments.