Andy Wehrle
EF5
The Tornado Project's "Tornado Video Classics" series ended after three volumes of footage dating from the early days of storm chasing into the first home video explosion of the early-mid '90s. Now, with hordes of chasers, HD camcorders, and everyone and their uncle armed with a decent video camera in their cell phone hoping for their 15 minutes of YouTube fame, there is more tornado video than ever. How do you sort out the best?
My criteria are:
Decent camera (can't be vertical or look like it was "shot with a potato," as YouTube critics like to say)
Relatively steady - tripoded is best, some shakiness is okay and understandable if handheld, but it has to be relatively steady on the tornado for at least 10 seconds at a time.
Relative minimum of shouting/screaming/swearing. Again, some is understandable given the circumstances especially in amateur footage, but this disqualifies almost everything shot by/in the vicinity of Reed Timmer.
Some examples that would be on my list:
Pecos Hank's Pilger day video. Might be the best tornado footage of the millennium to date. Tripoded, calm, cool commentary, Pilger twins and then graceful rope-out of Pilger II whips around the maturing Stanton tornado.
Stephen Locke's video of the Langley-Salina, KS EF4 of April 14, 2012, especially the part after about 3:40 when the camera gets its focus back and it's just spinning in a field right next to him, suction vorticies whipping around the edge.
Holy Tornado's video at Chickasha, OK 5/24/2011. This tornado touches down as a graceful elephant's trunk, crosses the road right in front of them, then rapidly intensifies into a violent EF4 spewing out a massive amount of debris.
April 27th and Joplin day that year also produced some amazing (although tragic) footage, as did Henryville '12 and Moore and El Reno 2013. Rozel and Bennington in '13 also resulted in some spectacular video as well, I'm sure.
Although the camera quality is less than ideal, I'd say ABC 33/40's skycam footage of the Cullman tornado on 4/27/11 also qualifies for the unique vantage point and watershed moment in tornado history (first violent tornado and first city impacted by a violent tornado of the second Super Outbreak, broadcast live as it happened).
My criteria are:
Decent camera (can't be vertical or look like it was "shot with a potato," as YouTube critics like to say)
Relatively steady - tripoded is best, some shakiness is okay and understandable if handheld, but it has to be relatively steady on the tornado for at least 10 seconds at a time.
Relative minimum of shouting/screaming/swearing. Again, some is understandable given the circumstances especially in amateur footage, but this disqualifies almost everything shot by/in the vicinity of Reed Timmer.
Some examples that would be on my list:
Pecos Hank's Pilger day video. Might be the best tornado footage of the millennium to date. Tripoded, calm, cool commentary, Pilger twins and then graceful rope-out of Pilger II whips around the maturing Stanton tornado.
Stephen Locke's video of the Langley-Salina, KS EF4 of April 14, 2012, especially the part after about 3:40 when the camera gets its focus back and it's just spinning in a field right next to him, suction vorticies whipping around the edge.
Holy Tornado's video at Chickasha, OK 5/24/2011. This tornado touches down as a graceful elephant's trunk, crosses the road right in front of them, then rapidly intensifies into a violent EF4 spewing out a massive amount of debris.
April 27th and Joplin day that year also produced some amazing (although tragic) footage, as did Henryville '12 and Moore and El Reno 2013. Rozel and Bennington in '13 also resulted in some spectacular video as well, I'm sure.
Although the camera quality is less than ideal, I'd say ABC 33/40's skycam footage of the Cullman tornado on 4/27/11 also qualifies for the unique vantage point and watershed moment in tornado history (first violent tornado and first city impacted by a violent tornado of the second Super Outbreak, broadcast live as it happened).