In the past few days the National Geographic Channel has had several programs about tornadoes. As much as I fear them, I find them fascinating and I love watching films about them. I have seen only one tornado in my life here in Michigan. It was about 15 years ago. My son and I were standing in my driveway when a very large dark cloud appeared in the southwest. The sky was clear at the time except for this large black cloud that seem to come out of nowhere. A tail dropped down and after a few seconds the tail went back up into the cloud. There was no wind, thunder, rain or lightning. It was weird . It just traveled east and it touched down in Grand Blanc, Mi about 20 minutes later and tore the roof off a Big Boy restauant. There was no warning or anything! But we saw it! It was really weird!

I can't say I have, not here in upstate NY.

There were 2 or 3 instances where I was close to a tornado when I lived in Indiana, but I never saw one, 'cause most of the time it was at night. I wish I had saw one, I would have taken pictures.

Seen one? How about BEING IN ONE?

Well not really, but my mom was eight months pregnant with me in March 1990 when one ripped through our part of town. According to her, cars were on roofs, babies were missing, windows were everywhere...

Nope, I was awful close to in 1997 though. Close but no cigar. :(

I know I shouldnt WISH it had been close enough to see it, because in such an urban area like this it would be very hard to see at even a far distance...If it was close enough to see we'd probably be taking a direct hit.

Whatever...It was an F2 on July 2nd that year, hit Northwest Detroit and Highland Park.

No, I have not. Occasiouly we get them around here though, not much, they're very rare around here.

Nah...I have yet to see one. :( But one year we did have a tornado warning in our little town, which I guess can mean there was some funnleage going on in the sky, but didn't necessarily touch ground. That was kind of exciting.

We've got the warnings in big storms but nothing ever happened.

i saw the movie

I lived in the town of Newton Falls when it was destroyed by a tornado on May 31, 1985. I wasn't actually in town when it hit so I never saw one, but alot of my family did.
Here's some pics of what it did to our old school.

Here's a couple more

No, but as crazy as it sounds I would kind of like to be.

I have never been in a tornado. I hope that I never see one, at least not a tornado that is really major like an F-5. In my city the last major tornado that I know of happened in 1912. In the last tornado twenty-eight people died and 2500 were left homeless. From what I've read about it, the tornado was the worst in Canadian history. The repair costs put the city into debt for over forty years afterwards. The city paid off the storm debt over ten years, but the province stayed in debt until the year 1958.

Nope. fortunately. Even though I've never been in one or seen one I've always had a fear of them. Whenever there's warning on TV I totally freak out!

I didn't see it, but supposedly a tornado passed over the town I lived in at the time, back in 2000. It was the worst windstorm in a looooooooooooong time in North Dakotan history, I believe. We got a SUPER-NASTY windstorm that started late at night on August 11th and continued into the wee hours on August 12th. It downpoured ALL night (the streets got flooded quickly), thundered for hours and was ultra pitch-black. You know how on clear nights, the sky turns orange from all the streetlights? Not on that day. I mean...You couldn't see a thing, because the storm knocked out the streetlights too. :eek: THEN the winds reached up to 111MPH and tore off the roofs of a LOT of places in town (including a hotel that had had its roof blown off not even a few months earlier. :eek: ), destroyed at least 1/2 the mobile homes in town...etc. Nobody died, thank god. :eek: A man did, however, get trapped for like 1/2 a day. The storm knocked out power in my corner of town for 1/2 the day, but there were other areas in town that were w/o power the whole day or longer.

It was nasty...I took pictures of the damages the tornado-like storm did to the town, but I can't find them at the moment. That was my close encounter with a tornado. :eek: They were STILL cleaning up when my b-day rolled around a few days later. :( The governor at the time had to declare my town a state of emergency. I believe it cost the state more than $1 million to help repair my town. I moved away from there in 2003, thankfully!

I live in Tornado Alley!When I first came for a visit; a tornado had just passed and downtown was in shambles. We get tornado warnings during summer time but thankfully they have missed us. They go north and hit Ft Worth and Dallas

i saw a dust storm in georgia, does that count?

Yeah, I saw two of them when I was in New Mexico.

Seen one? How about BEING IN ONE?

Well not really, but my mom was eight months pregnant with me in March 1990 when one ripped through our part of town. According to her, cars were on roofs, babies were missing, windows were everywhere...
life as a fetus was so easy. i lived in north dakota until i was -3 months old.

life as a fetus was so easy. i lived in north dakota until i was -3 months old.

:rofl:

I've never seen one, but I live around the Dallas/Ft.Worth area and we get hit a lot with them. There was one a few years ago that happened during rush hour, and it hit Ft. Worth. There was quite a bit of damage. It was the same one that my mom barely made it home in time. She was on her way home from work in Dallas. I have heard one though. We were in the closet and you could feel the pressure change and everything. It was scary. We have at least one tornado warning a year, if we are lucky.

I have not... had some close calls though(relatively speaking, a tornado is a localized event).

In 1994, an F4 tornado destroyed a church during the Palm Sunday Morning worship service. It killed 20 people, mostly due to the lack of a warning getting to them. The closest radar at the time was over 100 miles to the south. That happened only 25 miles north of me.

In 1998, an F5 tornado leveled parts of Birmingham around 7pm on an April evening. 34 were killed. The tornado later moved into the adjoining county and touched down again as a weaker F2 killing 2 more. The rotation passed over us a short time ago and then it touched down again on the North side of Atlanta.

There have been other close calls too, but those were the worst.

My brother-in-law is a policeman and part of his duty is to watch for funnel clouds. Although most of them stay up in the air, he says that he has seen several funnels over the years.

Nope, I've never seen one. I would like to at least once though. We get warnings once or twice a year in our town, but that's about it. Mechanicville, NY had a big one in May of '98 but they're farther north.

Look at this one in Canada!

http://web.archive.org/web/20071021033055/http://www.videotiger.com/vids/hugetornadoincanada.wmv
LOCAL MEDIA PLAYER NEEDED TO WATCH

I wouldnt ever get that close!!

Yes, I opened the front door one morning when I was a teen back in the late 90s, and one was right over our town right in front of me, just a tall white/grayish cloud moving along, thankfully it didn't touch down.