Tornado! from Tornado! by Jules Archer

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Tornadoes blasting over barnyards have stripped chickens of their feathers. Some have snatched blankets and mattresses off beds, leaving sleepers terrified but unharmed. One 1912 tornado plucked a telephone pole out of the ground. Then, as it traveled, it bounced the pole up and down like a pogo stick. In St. Louis in 1896 a tornado drove a two-by-four plank through an iron sheet.

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One tornado picked up a locomotive from its track. Then it set the engine down facing the other way on the opposite track. In 1974 a tornado in Xenia, Ohio, sucked up hundreds of trees from an orchard. In West Virginia a 1944 tornado passing over the West Fork River sucked the whole river dry. One woman sought to hide from a tornado in a closet under her back stairway. When she opened the door after the storm, she found that the closet and stairway were all that were left of her house!

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These terrifying windstorms can also perform amazing feats of gentleness. One tornado transported a crate of eggs 500 yards without cracking a single shell. Mirrors have been carried for miles and set down unbroken. One jar of pickles traveled 25 miles with a tornado. Then it was lowered unbroken into a ditch.

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These exceptions to a tornado’s ferocity1 can be explained. Such objects were lowered through the storm’s outer fringes. There, a rising air current let them descend to earth gently. 

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These stories of tornado freakishness might seem unbelievable. But the National Weather Service has confirmed that they’re true.

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The name “tornado” originally derived from the Latin word tonare, to thunder. This developed into the Spanish word tornear, to turn or twist. A tornado begins with the formation of a narrow line of thunderstorm clouds. A loud, thunderous roar is produced by the storm. Because a tornado is formed by rotating, or twisting, air, some people call it a twister or cyclone.

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A tornado is a powerful column of winds spiraling violently around a center of atmospheric low pressure. In shape it looks like a huge black funnel hanging from a storm cloud. The narrow end sways over the earth. It is like a gigantic anteater sniffing along the ground for ants.

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A tornado’s winds spiral upward and inward with tremendous speed and power. This creates a vacuum in the funnel that exerts a mighty suction effect on anything the tornado passes over. When the funnel strikes any structure, an explosive effect causes it to fly apart.

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The winds inside a tornado may whirl around the center of the storm at speeds up to 400 and 500 miles an hour. The normal speed, however, is usually about 300 miles an hour. That makes these twisters the most dangerous storms known to mankind. In the Northern Hemisphere, most move eastward, rotating counterclockwise. In the Southern Hemisphere, they rotate clockwise. Tornadoes are often heralded2 by a rain of hailstones. Some hailstones are the size of tennis balls. The largest on record fell on Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1970. It weighed two pounds.

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Not every funnel cloud becomes a dangerous tornado. Some never touch down to earth. No one knows why. Those that do may last from a few seconds to a few hours. Some disappear, only to re-form minutes later. The average twister measures 200 to 300 yards across. Some grow large enough to spin off smaller tornadoes, like storm children.

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These satellite tornadoes can be fierce. Measuring from 50 yards across, they swirl violently around the main funnel. They can do terrible damage. Satellite tornadoes also often branch away. They may take separate paths through a countryside.