re: Anyone ever seen a tornado in person?

Three. Two in Tuscaloosa, one which passed through my back yard in daylight, the other while driving between Tuscaloosa and Moundville at night. The third crossed behind me on I-12 near Covington.

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We were in a 15 year old doublewide surround by pine trees.

Nothing we could have really done.

The storm went from Thunderstorm watch to tornado warning to tornado on the ground in about 15 minutes.

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Scary. Can you jump in car and haul arse?

Dozens of small ones and a couple mediums. The mediums are scary enough.

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I think OP means the weather tornado, not the gas station food

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This one was crazy. The tornado went from a few hundred yards wide to a mile wide in a matter of minutes. Caught some seasoned chasers by surprise and killed a few of them.

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I think it also turned which trapped them on a road in the open with nowhere to run due to the size and intensity of the storm.

Seen two. One in Taylorsville, GA when I was a kid. We lived in a trailer with no underpinning that wasn't tied down in the middle of a cotton field. Tornado came across that field and directly hit a trailer about 100 feet from us...flipped it over and the 2 old lesbians that lived in it came out the back door like they had springs in their asses. Knocked ours and several others off the blocks but only damaged the one the lesbians lived in. Consensus was that it was because they were lesbians...I didn't buy it then, don't buy it now.

The other time I was in a room on the top floor of The Point Mallard Motel. I think it is a doubletree now but back then it was not...it was a dive motel but cheap lodgings for working at Browns Ferry. AT any rate I was sound asleep when the tornado sirens went off and looked out the window and it looked like the damn thing was about 3 feet away but clearly defined...it was actually a couple of miles away but in the haze of sleep I thought I was dead for certain. Through on a pair of hair hangdowns and ran down to the lobby and the lady at the desk laughed her arse off...said the sirens went off every Tuesday when they tested them. I told her I saw the tornado and she did not believe me but changed the channle on the lobby TV and lo and behold she believed me then.

Late 80s saw a small one south of port allen on the river, there was a tornado warning and we were sheltering in tiger stadium. Had a lab there. I have seen many many waterspouts, had one go over the platform we were working on, winds were a pita for 30 seconds, than it was over.

I've seen a few. I've been in a few. It's the scariest thing you'll ever experience as it's on you because in your bones you know that there's now nothing you can do. If you live or die it's not going to be up to you.

Craziest one was in Greenwood. We were under a warning and it was close. We were catching softball sized hail and when the wind got up it was flying horizontal. It was bad enough it blew holes in my neighors roof. Knocked out the other's skylights. But that's not the crazy part.

The crazy part was once I got nailed with one of those because I wouldn't get out of the door looking for the tornado, I then went to hide in the bathroom with the old lady. It had a window that overlooked a big field behind the house and I was looking that direction because that's where the tornado was supposed to be coming from when I saw three deer run out of the woods into the field in this hailstorm. And when they got about fifty yards away from where they left the woods, I saw a tree get stripped of all it's leaves as the thing came down. Within two hundred yards it had crossed the field, hit the woodline, and I watched it take a hundred year old oak and pull it out of the ground and kinda throw it into the trees.

That one went on to kill people in Bossier.

Have lived in various places on the southern end of “tornado alley” for most of my life and have never seen one in the wild. Have also never had hail damage to a car or roof.

(Knocking on wood for 2024)

There’s a strip just west of Waskom that seems to be a tornado magnet, at least 4 or 5 have crossed I-20 just west of Waskom near 5 Star Buliders within the past 7 years.