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How The Eye of a Tornado Works · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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  Speaker 1: from how stuff works dot Com? Hi, and welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, as staff writer here at
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  Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. With me is uh fellow
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  Speaker 1: staff writer's goatee, Charles Bryant. How are you, Chuck? I'm
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  Speaker 1: great and my goatee is long and strong. It's looking good, Chuck.
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  Speaker 1: You're taking excellent care of it. I'd like to keep
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  Speaker 1: it clean. So, Chuck, you may not know this, but
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  Speaker 1: I actually grew up in Toledo, Ohio. You ever been?
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  Speaker 1: I have not. My wife is from Ohio, but never
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  Speaker 1: been to Toledo. It's actually a surprisingly cool town. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: The problem is it's at the end of tornado Alley.
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  Speaker 1: So I've seen plenty of tornadoes in my life, and
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  Speaker 1: each one scarier than the last. Spent many nights at
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  Speaker 1: like two in the morning in the basement listening to
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  Speaker 1: the radio. Right, I had nothing to do with the
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  Speaker 1: tornadoes though, So I totally didn't. That was more dear
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  Speaker 1: old Dad than anything. Um. So, I have seen some tornadoes,
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  Speaker 1: and actually I thought I had kind of left him
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  Speaker 1: behind when we got down here to Atlanta. Yeah, not
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  Speaker 1: the case. No, you remember recently there are some tornadoes
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  Speaker 1: that ripped through downtown. It was the first time ever.
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  Speaker 1: So they go just tear the roof off of the
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  Speaker 1: suckers and it's it's just ugly. It looks post apocalyptic
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  Speaker 1: downtown still several weeks later and before even the thing
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  Speaker 1: is though I've seen I've seen some tornadoes here there.
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  Speaker 1: I've never been in the eye of a tornado. Well
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  Speaker 1: now you know why, because only two people have that
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  Speaker 1: we know of, and you're not one of them. No,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not, and if I had, I probably
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't tell anybody anyway. So yeah, that's it actually has
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  Speaker 1: happened a couple of times on record, and um, it's
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  Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Um, well, why don't you tell everybody first? What?
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  Speaker 1: What how it tornado forms? Well, yeah, I guess that
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  Speaker 1: would help. A tornado is uh, you know, the thunder
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  Speaker 1: the thunderstorm comes in and uh in the lower atmosphere, Uh,
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  Speaker 1: the wind picks up and creates a horizontal, uh spinning
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  Speaker 1: tube on the ground and then once um the storm
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  Speaker 1: comes through, the rising air tilts it up and then
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  Speaker 1: you get what you normally think of as the tornado,
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  Speaker 1: which is the vertical kind of like a guy who's
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  Speaker 1: on his back is pushed up by his shoulders and
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  Speaker 1: now he's standing and spinning and spinning and hundreds of
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  Speaker 1: miles and how he can have it exactly up to
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  Speaker 1: three hundred miles as fast as they get. Yeah, it's crazy.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it's extremely destructive, as everyone knows. Now. I
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  Speaker 1: know you mentioned that actually tornadoes are generally invisible since
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  Speaker 1: wind is invisible. Um, but that it's it's I've read
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  Speaker 1: that it's actually the debris and the dust that's kicked
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  Speaker 1: up that it gives tornadoes their shape, which is funny
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  Speaker 1: because tornadoes are called funnel clouds. But it's it's not
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  Speaker 1: really a cloud. It's it's dirt and debris and cows
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  Speaker 1: and pick up trucks right from the movie Twister, cows
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  Speaker 1: flying across your screen. Yeah, that's one of the myths.
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  Speaker 1: Another one is that you should open your windows of
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  Speaker 1: your house to let a tornado pass through. That's not
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  Speaker 1: true at all either. So no, well, the yeah, a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people think that the low pressure found in
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  Speaker 1: a tornado makes your house explode. No, it's it's actually
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  Speaker 1: flying debris. You say, yeah, exactly, and and I read
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  Speaker 1: Noah suggested that's that's not anyone we know name. Noah's
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  Speaker 1: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or agency, one of
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  Speaker 1: the two. Uh, they suggest not touching your windows, leaving
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  Speaker 1: him closed and get to the basement exactly, which is
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  Speaker 1: just good advice anyway, it is. Yeah. So, um, let's
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  Speaker 1: get back to these guys. You found two and it
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  Speaker 1: was just two and this is this is Chuck's article
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  Speaker 1: by the way, everyone, it's a great one to um.
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  Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Yeah, these two guys, one was and
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  Speaker 1: one was in nineteen forty three, so it hasn't happened
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  Speaker 1: in a long time, which is kind of strange. And uh,
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  Speaker 1: they were both farmers. Go figure um out in the
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  Speaker 1: you know, the middle of I think one was in
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  Speaker 1: Kansas and his name was Keller. Farmer Keller, Yeah, farmer
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  Speaker 1: will Killer. Yeah, farmer Keller. And uh, you know, he
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  Speaker 1: saw tornado coming and he's seen a bunch of these things,
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  Speaker 1: this is his account, and so he wasn't really scared.
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  Speaker 1: He got his family down the storm celler, but um,
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  Speaker 1: before he climbed in, he for some reason to say.
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  Speaker 1: I guess he's kind of transfixed. He decided to kind
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  Speaker 1: of stay there and watch this thing as it approached,
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  Speaker 1: and it actually, uh, you know, tornadoes can hop up
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  Speaker 1: and leap, and I think it kind of hopped up
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  Speaker 1: on top of him. And the inside of a tornado, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's like the eye of a hurricane's supposed to be
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  Speaker 1: really calm. So that explains why he didn't get sucked
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  Speaker 1: up in the funnel cloud. And um, much like the
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  Speaker 1: movie Twister, they must have researched these uh, these guys.
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  Speaker 1: They it was really smooth on the inside, and there
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  Speaker 1: was constant lightning which lit it up from the inside
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  Speaker 1: and kind of a bluish green tent and these little
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  Speaker 1: tiny twisters would break away from the walls and make
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  Speaker 1: a hissing sound and zip over to the other side
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  Speaker 1: of the wall. And it was just really insane. And uh.
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  Speaker 1: The other guy was another farmer in Texas and he
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  Speaker 1: had pretty Hall, right, yeah, Roy Hall. He had basically
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  Speaker 1: the same account, which so everyone pretty much feels like
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  Speaker 1: this is what it's like. The thing is with Keller,
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  Speaker 1: I was I couldn't understand why he would just stand
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  Speaker 1: there at the very least Mr Hall, who I think
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  Speaker 1: it happened, tune, It's a few years later. Um he uh.
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  Speaker 1: He actually went in the house, the tornado tore his
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  Speaker 1: roof off, and all of a sudden he found himself
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  Speaker 1: in the in the eye of the storm. But a
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  Speaker 1: similar experience, right, exactly the same thing, you know, lightning
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  Speaker 1: inside and really smooth walls, and they both felt a
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  Speaker 1: sense of calm and oddly well being being in the
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  Speaker 1: center of this thing. And the storm in Texas actually
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  Speaker 1: killed a hundred people in the town. But he doesn't
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  Speaker 1: like the farmer royal alone. Yeah, thankfully. Well, if you
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  Speaker 1: want to learn more about what it's like in the
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  Speaker 1: eye of a tornado, read What's it like in the
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  Speaker 1: Eye of a Tornado on how stuff works dot com
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