Best tornado photos I've seen

TonyHiggins · Post by **TonyHiggins** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 4:27 pm

This guy is a photographer who chases tornados to capture the beauty and awe. Must see. http://www.extremeinstability.com/04-6-13.htm
Tony

scottielvr · Post by **scottielvr** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 4:59 pm

Thank you, Tony. Those images are astonishing. No comment on where Mr Hollingshead falls on the continuum between bravery and lunacy, but his photos are gorgeous... and terrifying. I find many of his studies of supercells more interesting than the tornadoes.... reading through the site is a sort of mini-course in plains meteorology. Speaking of which, anyone know what the heck a "landspout" is? (As opposed, I'm assuming, to a waterspout...but apparently some specific type of tornado?)

missy · Post by **missy** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 5:28 pm

sorry, Tony, I can't look at the site. After watching an F5 until it was three houses away, and seeing the aftermath of my entire neighborhood destroyed, I can't look at pictures, didn't see "Twister", etc.
Nature is truly an awesome power.

TonyHiggins · Post by **TonyHiggins** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 5:42 pm

I can totally appreciate what you are saying, missy. I've never been near a tornado. Had some adrenalin rushes during earth quakes, but only because you never know how big they're going to get. Photos of really big ocean waves make me shiver. I've even had scary dreams about them, though I've never been in or on one. (not in this life, anyway) I do like a reminder of how insignificant we are when it comes to nature. We live with a false sense of security. And we might as well.

I can imagine how these things were viewed by the Native Americans. Science has ruined it for us.
Tony

Post by **Nanohedron** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 5:45 pm

Not ruined for all of us, Tony.

That sure looked like the Finger of God to me.

Jane · Post by **Jane** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 5:52 pm

Amazing photos! I get the shivers every time the sky gets yellow but I never hit the basement till the last second. There's a lot of "degrees" of tornadoes, all of them pretty bad. At least they all seem bad by the time they dance through here. I've been lucky enough to never lose my whole house at once, but let me tell you, you can lose half a bedroom and still have your glass of water on the night-stand.

Redwolf · Post by **Redwolf** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 6:00 pm

Those are fabulous shots! Tornados both fascinate me and terrify me. I've had nightmares about them since I was a kid, but I can't resist seeing photos or even film of them.

Redwolf

scottielvr · Post by **scottielvr** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 6:08 pm

Always eager to push back the frontiers of ignorance (and avoid doing what I'm supposed to be doing, namely, work), I looked up landspouts:

"The landspout, or non supercell tornado, is a different breed of tornado. The formation of a nonsupercell tornado is similar to that of a waterspout. They form as winds swirl at the surface, similar to a dust devil. As an updraft builds, this swirling air can be pulled up into the updraft. As this occurs, the swirling air is stretched and tightened, which causes the rotating winds to increase in speed, similar to the way a figure skater pulls her arms in close to her body as she spins and the spin becomes faster. Often, landspouts will be visible on the ground first in the form of a debris cloud. Then as the tornado matures, the debris is pulled skyward into the cloud base making it visible from the cloud base to the ground. They often last in excess of 15 minutes and have caused F3 damage."

More, with pix, here at--where else? "The Landspout Page":: http://www.stormchase.net/landspouts.htm

I had recurrent nightmares about tornadoes for most of my childhood and adolescence; though I've never seen one in what I jokingly call "real life." Just how common is that phenomenon? Already there have been several mentions of it on this thread. Hmmmm....cue the dream analysts....

Redwolf · Post by **Redwolf** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 7:53 pm

I've always pinned my tornado nightmares on annual family screenings of "The Wizard of Oz."

I grew up in Eastern Washington, where tornadoes occasionally threaten, but, fortunately, rarely materialize (we did have one take out a church in Connell when I was in high school, though). I've seen plenty of dust devils though, and they can be pretty darned impressive, and even a little scary, even if they don't do damage. Perhaps those fueled my nightmares too.

Redwolf

dlovrien · Post by **dlovrien** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 8:36 pm

Another fascinating waterspout photo courtesy of Hurricane Charley:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... 081308ajpg

markv · Post by **markv** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:37 am

I live in Lincoln which is a few miles west of where this was taken. It was a very wierd storm. It built up over Lincoln but was still a fairly sunny nice day. I was taking my daughter to a birthday party and as we popped up over a hill on the interstate we saw this monster bearing down on Waverly I think. We slowed way down and so did every one else to watch the thing start rotating. Very cool when watching from the backside of it.

Landspouts can be real pain in the youknowwhat in western Nebraska. I used to do field research in the sandhills and on days with high winds you would get really big dust devils and in a couple cases landspouts. I got ambushed once by 10' diameter dust devil on a day with 40+ MPH winds near a blowout (area or sand with no grass cover, Like God took an icecream scoop to the prairie) and got a good sandblasting.

Mark V.

IDAwHOa · Post by **IDAwHOa** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 9:25 am

We were at my mom's house taking care of things while they are away so we got a chance to watch some things on TV for the evening. On one of the nature channels there was a special about tornados,

OH MY GOSH!!!!

There was one tornado that was a mile across that was picking up, cars, roofs and an 18 WHEEL TRUCK. It was throwing them around like toys.

I think I will stick with the once every 20 year earthquake myself, or even better move to where they don't even have eartquakes!

They are cool to watch though. I just don't want to live where they occur.

BrassBlower · Post by **BrassBlower** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:18 pm

Wow, great pics!

In case some of you didn't know already, I am a trained storm spotter. I don't "chase" storms, but instead observe them from a "safe" distance.

The last time I was ever actually in a vehicle during such a storm, I was on my way up to Bartlesville, and ended up being the "chased" instead of the "chaser"!

NancyF, you remember that, don't you?