How The Eye of a Tornado Works

In recorded history, only two people have entered the eye of a tornado and returned to tell the tale. Learn more about the inside of tornadoes in this HowStuffWorks podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from how stuff works dot Com? Hi, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, as staff writer here at
how stuff works dot Com. With me is uh fellow
staff writer's goatee, Charles Bryant. How are you, Chuck? I'm

(00:21):
great and my goatee is long and strong. It's looking good, Chuck.
You're taking excellent care of it. I'd like to keep
it clean. So, Chuck, you may not know this, but
I actually grew up in Toledo, Ohio. You ever been?
I have not. My wife is from Ohio, but never
been to Toledo. It's actually a surprisingly cool town. Uh.
The problem is it's at the end of tornado Alley.

(00:41):
So I've seen plenty of tornadoes in my life, and
each one scarier than the last. Spent many nights at
like two in the morning in the basement listening to
the radio. Right, I had nothing to do with the
tornadoes though, So I totally didn't. That was more dear
old Dad than anything. Um. So, I have seen some tornadoes,
and actually I thought I had kind of left him
behind when we got down here to Atlanta. Yeah, not

(01:05):
the case. No, you remember recently there are some tornadoes
that ripped through downtown. It was the first time ever.
So they go just tear the roof off of the
suckers and it's it's just ugly. It looks post apocalyptic
downtown still several weeks later and before even the thing
is though I've seen I've seen some tornadoes here there.
I've never been in the eye of a tornado. Well

(01:26):
now you know why, because only two people have that
we know of, and you're not one of them. No,
I'm not. I'm not, and if I had, I probably
wouldn't tell anybody anyway. So yeah, that's it actually has
happened a couple of times on record, and um, it's
pretty amazing. Um, well, why don't you tell everybody first? What?
What how it tornado forms? Well, yeah, I guess that
would help. A tornado is uh, you know, the thunder

(01:49):
the thunderstorm comes in and uh in the lower atmosphere, Uh,
the wind picks up and creates a horizontal, uh spinning
tube on the ground and then once um the storm
comes through, the rising air tilts it up and then
you get what you normally think of as the tornado,
which is the vertical kind of like a guy who's
on his back is pushed up by his shoulders and

(02:09):
now he's standing and spinning and spinning and hundreds of
miles and how he can have it exactly up to
three hundred miles as fast as they get. Yeah, it's crazy.
I mean, it's extremely destructive, as everyone knows. Now. I
know you mentioned that actually tornadoes are generally invisible since
wind is invisible. Um, but that it's it's I've read
that it's actually the debris and the dust that's kicked

(02:31):
up that it gives tornadoes their shape, which is funny
because tornadoes are called funnel clouds. But it's it's not
really a cloud. It's it's dirt and debris and cows
and pick up trucks right from the movie Twister, cows
flying across your screen. Yeah, that's one of the myths.
Another one is that you should open your windows of
your house to let a tornado pass through. That's not
true at all either. So no, well, the yeah, a

(02:53):
lot of people think that the low pressure found in
a tornado makes your house explode. No, it's it's actually
flying debris. You say, yeah, exactly, and and I read
Noah suggested that's that's not anyone we know name. Noah's
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or agency, one of
the two. Uh, they suggest not touching your windows, leaving

(03:14):
him closed and get to the basement exactly, which is
just good advice anyway, it is. Yeah. So, um, let's
get back to these guys. You found two and it
was just two and this is this is Chuck's article
by the way, everyone, it's a great one to um.
I appreciate that. Yeah, these two guys, one was and
one was in nineteen forty three, so it hasn't happened
in a long time, which is kind of strange. And uh,

(03:36):
they were both farmers. Go figure um out in the
you know, the middle of I think one was in
Kansas and his name was Keller. Farmer Keller, Yeah, farmer
will Killer. Yeah, farmer Keller. And uh, you know, he
saw tornado coming and he's seen a bunch of these things,
this is his account, and so he wasn't really scared.
He got his family down the storm celler, but um,

(03:57):
before he climbed in, he for some reason to say.
I guess he's kind of transfixed. He decided to kind
of stay there and watch this thing as it approached,
and it actually, uh, you know, tornadoes can hop up
and leap, and I think it kind of hopped up
on top of him. And the inside of a tornado, Yeah,
it's like the eye of a hurricane's supposed to be
really calm. So that explains why he didn't get sucked

(04:17):
up in the funnel cloud. And um, much like the
movie Twister, they must have researched these uh, these guys.
They it was really smooth on the inside, and there
was constant lightning which lit it up from the inside
and kind of a bluish green tent and these little
tiny twisters would break away from the walls and make
a hissing sound and zip over to the other side

(04:38):
of the wall. And it was just really insane. And uh.
The other guy was another farmer in Texas and he
had pretty Hall, right, yeah, Roy Hall. He had basically
the same account, which so everyone pretty much feels like
this is what it's like. The thing is with Keller,
I was I couldn't understand why he would just stand
there at the very least Mr Hall, who I think

(04:59):
it happened, tune, It's a few years later. Um he uh.
He actually went in the house, the tornado tore his
roof off, and all of a sudden he found himself
in the in the eye of the storm. But a
similar experience, right, exactly the same thing, you know, lightning
inside and really smooth walls, and they both felt a
sense of calm and oddly well being being in the

(05:23):
center of this thing. And the storm in Texas actually
killed a hundred people in the town. But he doesn't
like the farmer royal alone. Yeah, thankfully. Well, if you
want to learn more about what it's like in the
eye of a tornado, read What's it like in the
Eye of a Tornado on how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
it how stuff works dot com? Let us know what

(05:45):
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