If you've wondered what the inside of an EF-5 tornado sounds like...

Will Tinder

EF0
Joined
Jan 15, 2008
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...watch this video. This video was posted only a few days ago on Youtube, and is spooky and frightening to listen to. A woman videotaping her daughter's graduation party gets a brief shot of the Parkersburg tornado heading into town, then hides in a cooler with other restaurant patrons. Apparently she didn't realize the camera was on the whole time, and it captures the noise and chaos of the building being ripped apart (starts about 1:52). Apparently the only thing left standing at this location was the cooler where she and others were hiding - fortunately they all made it through the ordeal with no injuries.
 
WOW, that audio is pretty cool stuff!
You can only see anything in the first 3-8 seconds; but what you see is the tornado ~1/4 mile away.
But you can clearly hear the circulation moving directly overhead. Must have been pretty frightning for those who were in that basement /bunker - that's for sure!!
 
I remember when Chris Collura first pointed out the hail roar to me. That's pretty crazy sound too...totally different.

The video also points out how fast these things are, and when you look at how much destruction occurs, it is no wonder people say it is like an explosion.

I suspect a lot of the wind/noise heard is from a variety of sources including debris, dynamics around the cooler and other items around them, and wind that worked it's way into the cracks of the doorway into the cooler.

Hurricane chasing sometimes is interesting with the sounds you hear from the wind. I always like when I can get to a spot where there is little to no interference from structures or debris and listen to just the wind. I know during Hurricane Gustav, while driving around Houma, LA I heard the wind unlike I had ever before...perhaps because it wasn't as strong as other hurricanes, and the "howl" was more predominate.
 
That is seriously nuts. They are fortunate to have survived that and lived to tell and literally show the tale. I wonder where exactly they were in relation to the tornado...from the cloud movement it looks like they were on the south to southeast side.

*EDIT* Looking at Google Earth the tornado went right over them. They are right across from the Kwik Star which was probably the Pizza Ranch...and from the Des Moines damage survey that looked to have been right in the path.
 
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According to the poster, they were at Matt's Bar and Grill. Looking at the Des Moines Register site, they were basically half a block east of the Pizza Ranch, on what looks to be the south side/center of the damage path. The story linked to Matt's Bar and Grill on the DMR site is wild too.
 
It Seems To Me . .

Although they may have been in the direct path, Just by listening to their statements one could be led to believe that not everyone made it into the cooler, some of the screams sounded further away than the obvious nearby voices, I worked in the food service industry for nearly 7 years, and I know those coolers couldn't hold more than 10 people if extremely packed in, in most cases that is.

Does anyone know if there were any injuries among that group of individuals?


Timothy M Carroll, KE5PPL
 
I think the creepiest thing about that is that it was not how I envisioned it to sound at all. I have only seen one video of an F5 from up close/inside found HERE . It's chilling for it (besides the screams) to sound so "calm" where you don't hear the ROAR of 1,000 jets at least IMO. Insane.
 
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