Videos: What Not To Do In Tornadoes, And Some Remarkable Tornado Footage

 It really has been a season of tornadoes this spring.

Screen grab from dash cam video showing a tornado
destroying a large building in Lincoln, Nebraska
back in late April 

We just got through the worst outbreak of the year, with something like 21 deaths at last count. That brings the total number of tornado deaths this year to 36.  

That's terrible, of course, but still in a sense good given the huge number of tornadoes we had this year - more than 1,000 in the United States already in 2024. 

The last time a tornado season was busier than this was in 2011, when 543 Americans died in tornadoes through the end of May. 

This year's  activity is starting to die down, starting today, but tornado threats aren't going to entirely go away this week.  And you never know whether new swarms of big twisters will hit in June. 

Since everything is on camera these days, the tornadoes and storms have yielded some pretty wild, and some pretty head shaking videos.

The videos display the extreme power of the tornadoes, and in some cases, the poor thinking among some people in the face of these storms. Some examples are in this post. 

I'm not going to put the videos directly in the post. I'll put links that you'll click on. That way, the people who created the videos will get the views and the credit. These videos certainly are worth the clicks. 

Moore, Oklahoma

No fewer than 17 tornadoes have hit the city of Moore, Oklahoma since 1893. Some of them, like ones in 1893, 1973, 1999, 2003, 2010 and 2013.

So you'd think the fine citizens of Moore would be well-versed on what to do when a tornado warning sounds. Most people there are indeed smart about tornadoes. But there's always a few.

On May 6, Moore and surrounding areas were put under a tornado warning, and a twister did touch down close to Oklahoma City's Will Rogers Airport a few miles to the north. 

After the tornado, Live Storms Media posted an infuriating video showing cars taking shelter beneath a highway overpass in Moore.  First of all, underpasses are dangerous because they funnel already strong tornadic winds, easily blowing everyone away.  (Click on this link to view).

In this case, it didn't happen, but the cars parked beneath the overpass were blocking other cars from moving. That's important if anyone was trying to get away from an impending tornado by racing up the highway. Never mind any emergency vehicles that were trying to get through. 

Occupants of those cars parked there were the ultimate in selfishness.

Lincoln, Nebraska

On April 26, an intense tornado passed through the Lincoln, Nebraska area, obviously doing a lot of damage. The video in this section  (click on this link) shows the tornado crossing a road and hitting a train. 

Screen grab from video showing people being pelted
by debris from a tornado beneath a Lincoln, Nebraska
overpass. We don't know why these people got out of their
vehicle, and the video shows that they could have 
turned around on a wide street and driven away
from the tornado, 

As you can early in the video, there's cars wisely driving away from the tornado. As the storm chaser continues filming the tornado, you see three people near the pillar of another highway overpass.

Eventually they get pelted by debris, as they're not even really smart enough to get on the protected side of the pillar. 

The storm chaser at least got in his car for some protection. These other bozos had plenty of opportunity before this happened to get in their car, make a U-turn and drive away from the tornado like other motorists. I have no idea why they stayed out there like that.

Certainly, potential Darwin Award winners there. 

Did you notice the train in the video I linked to above? A couple of people were in the train when the tornado scored a direct hit on it. Click on this link to see what it looked like to them. 

Lincoln, Nebraska (again)

Click on this link to watch dash cam video of how fast the April 26 tornado wiped out an industrial building. Several dozen people were in the structure at the time, but they had fled to a tornado safe room ahead of the storm and escaped injury 

Temple, Texas

Teslas are equipped with a bunch of cameras, of course. So what happens when it records a May 22  tornado scoring a direct hit on it? Find out by clicking on this link.   The video shows different angles, including behind and in front of the car.

The occupants of the Tesla had fled into a nearby restaurant and were not injured. The dude who you'll see pull in with his truck during the worst of it must have had quite a scare. 

Valley View, Texas

Up to 80 people crowded into a busy gas station and truck stop along Interstate 35 as a tornado approached this past Saturday. Click on this link to watch a video taken inside the gas station and  convenience store as the tornado ripped it apart. Nobody inside the store was killed and none of them suffered life-threatening injuries. 

The May 25 tornado did, however kill seven people in an near Valley View.

Portage, Michigan

Somebody in Portage, Michigan used to have a lovely yard with fantastic old trees. That is until a tornado swept through on May 7. Click on this link to watch every tree in the yard sadly crash to the ground. 

Reportedly, the falling trees missed the house, and the home itself sustained only minor damage. 

More Andover Tornado Footage, This Time From School And City Hall

Snapshot from surveillance video at Prairie Creek 
Elementary School in Andover, Kansas shows
a tornado sweeping a car out of a parking 
lot on April 29 ,2022

 This is a mean thing to say, but last week's tornado in Andover, Kansas was one of the most photogenic twisters I've seen.  

It would have been better, of course, had it not caused such widespread damage.  Last week, I noted Reed Timmer's remarkable drone view of the tornado pulling apart neighborhoods and lofting roofs high into the air before raining debris over otherwise untouched parts of Andover. 

Now the surveillance video is coming out. The City of Andover has released footage of the tornado hitting a school, and skirting along the edges of City Hall property. Every tornado is unique and dramatic in its own way. This tall, skinny tornado seemed like a destructive oddball, but I guess every twister has their quirks.  It's just that this one was so visible to so many. That made it incredibly well documented.

With the videos, we'll start with the Prairie Creek Elementary School footage, since that's the most dramatic. Spoil: The school suffered severe damage, but no kids were in the school at the time as the tornado came through at about 8 p.m. Friday, April 29.

Here's that video, with some explanation below it.  If you can't see this video on you device, click on this hyperlink

The video:

This is some of the clearest surveillance video of a tornado I can remember.  It also illustrates why the wide open property around schools, and the larger rooms within schools, are not the place to be in tornadoes. 

It also shows why it's important to take shelter well before the tornado gets to near where you are. During the first 25 seconds of the video, we're waiting for the tornado to get there, but already, dangerous flying, fast moving debris is raining down.  Then the tornado hits, and quickly moves on to trash a YMCA building across a field. 

A second view, which looks like the front entrance to the school, starts just over one minute into the video. Although this footage turns pink for some reason, you can clearly see the lone car in the parking lot in the upper left of this segment take flight and exit stage left.  

A screen grab from surveillance video of a tornado 
trashing an elementary school lunch room in 
Andover, Kansas last Friday. 

There's another view of what I believe to be a different  viewed from a different angle at about 1:40 in to the video just disappearing as it's blown off to the right. There's an even clearer view of this car getting blown away.

The lesson here is, don't be like those storm chasers that sometimes try to drive into tornadoes. The car you're in can just turn into another airborne missile in a tornado, and you don't survive that. Nobody was in these two particular cars in Andover, fortunately. 

The last part of the video shows a neat and tidy lunch room getting trashed as a glass wall in the back caves in. 

The second video taken from Andover City Hall is a little longer and you can skip ahead during it if you are in a hurry. It shows a benign looking funnel in the distance. But it gets more and more menacing as it draws closer. 

The video is an illustration on how you should not be "confident" a tornado is going to miss you because of its initial direction.  As you can see it sort of goes right to left on the screen in this somewhat speeded up video.  At about three minutes into the video it looks like the tornado will miss City Hall by a wide margin.

But them its path curves back toward the building. It ultimately just misses the structure, but you can also again see how dangerous it is just to be near a tornado. The air fills with debris. Trees in the parking lot snap off and get sucked into the tornado'a maw. 

Click on this link to watch this video, or view below: