What's the worst tornado you've been through?!
Question: I have personally never been through one, but I love hearing stories about experiences. Best story gets best answer!
Answers: I have personally never been through one, but I love hearing stories about experiences. Best story gets best answer!
Along with the story I wrote earlier, I found this fascinating site with small film clips of the disaster recovery. Keep in mind this was 1936, so the scenes are really interesting! Here's the link:
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/tornado/clips...
O.K. I haven't either, but my Dad was in the tornado of April 6th, 1936 in Gainesville, GA, which killed at least 200 people, and devasted that little town's square. It is said to be one of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history.
The high school brick building was about 100 or so yards northwest of the square, and my Dad was walking from that corner of the square to school. And he looked up in the sky and saw how the tornado was coming and was swirling around whole, huge trees. He saw a house lifted way up in the air and then it just exploded!
Well, he was trying to run to the school house but he knew he wouldn't get there in time, so he ran north, away from the tornado, but only for about 50 feet or so. Then he dived down in a shallow ditch next to a brick house. The tornado then struck the square and in doing so, a brick from that house hit him in the head.
After the tornado passed, which didn't take long at all of course, he got up and walked towards his Dad's office, which was on the east side of the square. Dad says that he was covered from head to toe in black suet or debris. He was going to see if his father was O.K.
Well, his father had crouched down next to the safe in a back part of the office and as parts of the building came down, it hit the safe and then the floor sort of landing diagonally, with my grandfather in the triangle that it formed. So, he was not hurt, which is amazing if you go to a website that shows pictures of the tornado. His office building is on the east side and is the second to last one on the left, and is shorter than the two next to it. It's also rather narrow. Built in 1902, I think.
My grandfather noticed or was told that Dad had gotten hit on the head, and it needed stitches. So Dad was given a shot of whiskey for the pain, I guess! Well, Dad had never drank anything before. So, the shot of whiskey and the trauma of the tornado caused him to pass out!
My Mom lived northeast of town, but her parents wouldn't let her go to school that day due to the strange sky!
Dad also told me that he had a friend who had been on the square with him before school, but Dad had walked on ahead of him a bit. And Dad says no one ever saw that boy again! It is assumed that the tornado took him away and dropped his body or body parts somewhere in the woods to the northeast. It is told that things from Gainesville were found as far away as Anderson, SC. , which is around 100 miles away maybe.
Dad also told me that at the high school a teacher was trying to get the front doors closed, but the wind suction was pulling her outside. Some of the students were holding her legs to keep her from being pulled by the tornado. Other students were yelling, "Let her go!" She was the Latin teacher! lol.
The only other story about this is that a good friend of Dad's brother was in a car next to a building and the building fell on him and killed him, but it missed the driver's side of the car, so that guy lived.
From a website:
On 6 April 1936, just before 8:30 AM, a tornado ripped through Gainesville, Georgia. About 200 people were killed and about 1600 injured. This tornado was one of the 25 deadliest in United States history. W. M. Brice compiled information about the twister in a book, A City Laid Waste. The following information from the book was provided by Marya James.
A website with a few photos:
http://www.cviog.uga.edu/Projects/gainfo...
If you go to this site you can watch a film about the cleanup and the visit by FDR to Gainesville.
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/tornado/
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i havent been through one:)
Tornado ? sorry I thought you said Tomato . I still have the stains on my shirt .
never been in one and hopefuly never will =)
--? There`s no tornardos in California.
none, thanks god
the one in my mind.
never experienced one
the tornado of 74' it tore my house down to the ground
I live in California, we have earthquakes not tornados.
the worst one that came to my city was in april 1998, we had to get in the hallways and kneel down
when the hurricanes came
tornado was a "4" on the Fujita Scale. Winds in the "4" rating are up to 260 miles per hour. I was at my school during a assembely and we thought the principle over the
loud speaker was kidding.
then we saw it and i cried. :( i thought i was going to die
my first torando ever. and yeahhhh school was different after that
i live in europe so luckly we dont get them here
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never was. one i heard is the worst is katrina
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I live in NYC but i was in Texas and one hit but i was inside a building (no fun) and missed out . I had to go through 9-11 and that was worse then anything even going to Iraq.
Well once there was a tornado in a town a few miles away from ours! Anyway, there was a terrible storm and we all (including our pets) went into the basement and watched the news. Luckily, the tornado, which only lasted 10 minutes, "wore out" in the city next to ours. But the storm caused a giant trampoline to blow into someone's house and broke three windows, trees, fences, and yard stuff were damaged, also.
never been thru 1....
I lived through a tornado in my dreams...does that count??
F 3 in Kansas City Missouri . The house looked like a porcupine with the tree Branch's sticking out of the roof and sofit .
The one on your birthday where you have to hide in the bathroom with a matress over you. Good times.
When is was in high school a tornado hit the Channelview and North Shore area in Texas (towns/suburbs of Houston). I remember it because it wasn't stormy or anything and some friends and I had went to the Mall (about 20 mins away) when we came back into our area (first of all the sky was SOOO BEAUTIFUL - oranges and pinks and purples - you'd never know a storm like this has just occurred) we got off the freeway and into our area and all the lights were off, no store lights, no street lights, nothing - this had to have been in January of whatever year that was because Bill Clinton had just taken office and I remember my best friend was republican and she said, "see this is what happens when you finally let a democrat into office"....right after she said that we passed into the "storm zone". We must have missed it by 2 - 3 mins. stuff was everywhere...house demolished, there was an almost intact entire home in the street. There was a car sticking out of the second story of a home. OMG it was so scary, we rushed to her house, then mine...took forever to hunt down all our family members and make sure everyone was ok...they were - of course there was more story afterward, but that is what happened. It was pretty darn scary and we didn't actually see the storm itself, just the right after-wards aftermath!
I have never been in a tornado but very close. I lived in Kansas and we always had tornado warnings. Instead of taking cover like we were told to do, people would be out looking for the tornado.
There was one time that I was at a restaurant and we were told that there was a tornado coming. Everyone went outside to see it. There were actually three tornadoes. All in different directions that we could see. They told us that we should get into the freezer because that was the safest place to be. I have claustrophobia and could not get in the freezer, so I went into the bathroom. I even called my mom in FL and told her that I might die in the tornadoes. Amazingly enough, not one of the tornadoes actually touched down where we were. It was an amazing sight and something that I will never forget.