We don't get many tornadoes, but...

[Tarrbot]

This is what I grew up seeing... where I was born.


Multiple vortices that converged into one that was an estimated 1.5 miles wide with 200+mph winds.

It's amazing to me that only 45 people died in this monstrous tornado.

When I lived in San Francisco, I experienced only a small earthquake. It woke me during the night and was across the bay. I barely registered what happened and went back to sleep.

[cjj]

Ooh, I actually remember hearing about that one. I was in college in Indiana at the time. We had a few of those come through during the time I was there, not as big though. No, I do not like tornadoes...

[ajish4]

I'll see your thunderstorm Joey and raise you a HURRICANE, or in my case...THREE!

Yeah, the T-boomers get pretty intense here too!

[rickenbrother]

Yeah, the T-boomers get pretty intense here too!

We get them here very infrequently. I'd lived through countless extremely severe thunderstorms in NYC. After the thunderstorm was over, everything went back to normal. In SoCal, the thunderstorm we get once in a great while, always leaves some kind of destruction in one or more areas by the time it's over.

[Tarrbot]

Ooh, I actually remember hearing about that one. I was in college in Indiana at the time. We had a few of those come through during the time I was there, not as big though. No, I do not like tornadoes...

My only issue with tornadoes is the lack of warning. Even today, we still have only a few minutes warning of tornadoes on the ground. And even then, without visual authentication, we don't know for certain that it's a tornado or just "tornadic activity".

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we've made advances like we have with things such as Doppler RADAR, but even Doppler didn't get much use until people died in a plane crash due to microburst weather (Delta Flight 191). It wasn't until then that an urgency was seen on this technology and a push was made to get it in place.

But it's still not enough.