Absolutly no problem Jo, and I will comment on the Supercell thread in the meterology forum

Everybody talks about the "freight train" but I think it's more like the sound of a waterfall...a really big one. Niagara Falls was mentioned, and that's exactly what the tornado that nearly hit me south of Lake Draper sounded like. I can understand the "freight train" thing simply because most people haven't experienced the roar of a large waterfall.

From videos of 'rural' tornadoes, there's clearly a similarity in sound to water rushing over a fall.

My thoughts are, the 'freight train effect' comes in when an 'urban' tornado is loaded to the max with debris; all the grinding of countless housing studs, sections of walls, roofs, masonry, cars, semis, farm machinery, etc.

Hopefully, I'll never have to personally find out if this is the case.

Every tornado I ever heard sounded like a large waterfall to me. I never heard a single one that reminded be of a train. It's definitely a sound once you have heard you never forget.

i also think the train soun may come when you are inside a building because of the wind whistleing past your windows and doors and other things in the area kinda like blowing accrost the top of a beer bottle.

Summer of 1974 living in Tulia, TX. We were comming back from shopping in Amarillo when we encountered a small funnel near Happy, TX. The funnel looped back around inside itself and formed a knot. Bill Zortman was a newscaster for KVII TV Channel 7 in Amarillo was right in front of us and caught the whole thing on film. Bill got the AP story of the year award and I got hooked.

I had 2 more encounters that season but it was the Happy Tornado that got me hooked!

I can tell you what the inside of an EF5 sounds like....stick you head out the window driving about 200mph and have someone shoot a shotgun out of the back window. Thats what 2x4's sound like when they slam into a solid brick wall at 200 plus mph. Don't waist your time with brick veneer, if it's not a solic contrete wall or layered brick(old school style) it's not holding up to an EF5 I can attest to that. May 4th 2007...... Greensburg, KS

Well, I'll take your word for it, GB; that description works for me.

And, I totally agree on the brick veneer. I've seen enough massive tornado damage involving brick buildings and I can honestly say all they end up being in a tornado is debris factories.

Thanks for sharing with us - glad you're around to do so.

~Jo~

KF5CZC wrote:
...Also, that storm provided me with the movie Twister which somebody had apparently been watching when the tornado struck because it was in the VCR that went through our roof...

Irony at it's best.

I Lol'd

My Storms to Remember are the Buffalo Blizzard of i think it was 2001. We got 85 inches of packed snow in 4 days! that's not counting the drift. i was 10 years old and will never forget that storm. we were trapped in our house for over a week!

Then we moved to Miami, Fl. And what happens there? Hurricanes. The one that i will always remember will be Hurricane Wilma of 2005. When i saw it as a Cat 5 bearing down on Mexico and saw the projected path, i knew this would be a big one. They projected it to weaken to a weak Cat 2. but it had it's own plans. It was a cat to when it made landfall on the west coast south of Naples but as it pased over the Everglades it strengthened to just Cat 3 status again. It ripped over my house with sustained winds of 135 m.p.h. and Gusts near 160! The front door was bowed out 3" i though it was going to be sucked out. at 7:50 everything was still ok, but at &:55 a tornado spawned down about 1 mile from us and tore over our house and destroyed everything that was outside. Thankfully our house was rated for 140 mph winds and survived. From that day foward i've loved Extreme weather and the power it can unleash and respect it even more. Warrior