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

Episode Date: June 5, 2008

In recorded history, only two people have entered the eye of a tornado and returned to tell the tale. Learn more about the inside of tornadoes in this HowStuffWorks podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. With me is fellow staff writer Goatee Charles Bryant. How are you, Chuck? I'm great and my Goatee is long and strong. It's looking good, Chuck. You're taking excellent care

of it. I like to keep it clean. So, Chuck, you may not know this, but I actually grew up in Toledo, Ohio. Have you ever been? I have not. My wife is from Ohio, but never been to Toledo. It's actually a surprisingly cool town. The problem is it's at the end of Tornado Alley, so I've seen plenty of tornadoes in my life. And each one scarier than the last spent many nights at like two in the morning in the basement listening to the radio. Right. That had nothing to do with the tornadoes, though. No, it totally didn't. That was more dear old dad than anything. So, I have seen some tornadoes and actually I thought I kind of left them behind when we got down here to Atlanta. Yeah, not the case. No. You remember recently there were some tornadoes that ripped through

downtown. It was the first time ever. Yeah, that was crazy. So, they go through and just tear the roof off of the suckers and it's just ugly. It looks post-apocalyptic downtown still several weeks later. Yeah, and before even. The thing is though, I've seen some tornadoes here and there. I've never been in the eye of a tornado. Well, no. You know why? Because only two people have that we know of and you're not one of them. No, I'm not. And if I had, I probably wouldn't tell anybody anyway. Yeah, it actually has happened a couple of times though on record and it's pretty amazing. Well, why don't you tell everybody first, how would tornado forms? Well, yeah, I guess that would help. A tornado is, you know, the thunderstorm comes in and in the lower atmosphere

the wind picks up and creates a horizontal spinning tube on the ground and then once the storm comes through, the rising air tilts it up and then you get what you normally think of as the tornado, which is the vertical twisting. So it's kind of like a guy who's on his back is pushed up by his shoulders and now he's standing. And spinning. And spinning and hundreds of miles an hour. Freaking havoc, exactly. Up to 300 miles an hour winds. Is that as fast as they get? Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's extremely destructive as everyone knows. Now, I know you mentioned that actually tornadoes are generally invisible since wind is invisible, but that it's, I read that it's actually the debris and the dust that's kicked up that gives tornadoes their shape,

which is funny because tornadoes are called funnel clouds. Right. But it's not really a cloud. It's dirt and debris and cows and, you know, pick up trucks. Right. From the movie Twister, cows flying across your screen. Yeah, that's one of the myths. Another one is that you should open your windows of your house to let a tornado pass through. That's not true at all either. So no, well, yeah, a lot of people think that the low pressure found in a tornado makes your house explode. No, it's actually flying debris, you say, right? Flying cows. Yeah, exactly. And I read Noah suggested that's that's not anyone we know named Noah. It's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or agency one of the two. They suggest not touching your windows, leaving them

closed and get to the basement. Exactly, which is just good advice anyway. It is. Yeah. So let's get back to these guys. You found two and it was just two. And this is this is Chuck's article, by the way, everyone. It's a great one, too. I appreciate that. Yeah, these two guys, one was in 1928 and one was in 1943. So it hasn't happened in a long time, which is kind of strange. And they were both farmers go figure out in the middle of I think one was in Kansas. And his name was Keller, farmer Keller. Yeah, farmer Will Keller. Yeah, farmer Keller. And, you know, he saw a tornado come in and he's seen a bunch of these things. This is his account. And so he wasn't really scared. He got his family down the storm cellar. But before he climbed in, he for some

reason decided, I guess he's kind of transfixed. He decided to kind of stay there and watch the thing as it approached. And it actually, you know, tornadoes can hop up and leap. And I think it kind of hopped up on top of them. And the inside of the tornado. Yeah, it's like the eye of a hurricane. It's supposed to be really calm. So that explains why he didn't get sucked up in the funnel cloud. And much like the movie Twister, they must have researched these guys. They uh, it was really smooth on the inside. And there was a constant lightning, which lit it up from the inside and kind of a bluish green tint. And these little tiny twisters would break away from the walls and make a hissing sound and zip over to the other side of the wall. And it was just

really insane. I imagine. And the other guy was another farmer in Texas. And he had Roy Hall, right? Yeah, Roy Hall. He had basically the same account, which so everyone pretty much feels like this is what it's like. The thing is with Keller, I couldn't understand why he would just stand there. At the very least, Mr. Hall, who I think it happened to a few years later, he actually went in the house. The tornado tore his roof off and all of a sudden he found himself in the eye of the storm. But a similar experience, right? Yeah, exactly the same thing, you know, lightning inside and really smooth walls. And they both felt a sense of calm and oddly well being, being in the center of the thing. And the storm in Texas actually killed a hundred people

in the town. But it's left to farmer Roy alone. Yeah, thankfully. Well, if you want to learn more about what it's like in the eye of a tornado, read what's it like in the eye of a tornado on howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American Ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Ballinger. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you. Only I can see you. What you're doing is

larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like he was a God. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.