Random Useless Fact Of The Day

[Bingo]

Highest Wind Speed Ever


On May 3, 1999 as tornadoes ravaged Oklahoma scientist measured the highest recorded wind speed at about 7:00 p.m. near Moore, Oklahoma. A wind speed of 318 mph was recorded where a tornado killed four people and destroyed 250 homes.

The fastest wind measured prior was 286 mph on April 26, 1991 in a tornado near Red Rock, Oklahoma.

The 318 mph speed placed the tornado 1 mph below an F6 on the 0 to 6 Fujita scale. No tornado has ever been classified as an F6.

This was crazy too. Check out this page from NOAA about all this. Note where it says there were over 70 tornadoes counted in the area that day!!!

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/19990503/

Bingo

[FUS1ON]

I'm not too far from it, but i'm glad I do not live in Tornado Alley.

[Sirc]

Waves from Tornado Alley. :wave:

In 1974 I lived in Centerville Ohio, and on April 3rd we came under a tornado warning right after I got home from school. The dense clouds above our house were a wierd greenish color, and were moving very quickly. It wasn't raining, and the winds were light. But we could actually feel that something wasn't right. The birds stopped chirping and singing, my dog skittered into the house with her tail between her legs, and there was absolute dead silence outside. It sent a chill up my spine. Then the hail started. Baseball-size hail. In seconds we went from dead silence to an incredible deafening roar as the hail thundered against our roof. It was coming down so fast that you couldn't see it - you could only see the frozen ice balls bouncing off the yard after they hit which made it seem as if they were popping up right out of the ground. This lasted about 2-3 minutes, and then it stopped as suddenly as it started. The sky began to clear, and we (my younger brother and I) ran out to collect the huge hail stones to put in the freezer before they melted.

Our roof was shredded. Surprisingly the windshield of our car wasn't broken, although the hood and trunk had dents all over. The streets were covered with crushed ice 2 inches thick. It was the scariest and coolest thing I've ever experienced to this day.

Ten minutes later the tornado that passed directly over us touched down about 12 miles away in Xenia, Ohio. It was an F5, and one of the deadliest tornadoes in US history. It was happening at the very moment my little brother and I were running around gleefully gathering hail stones, completely oblivious of how close we had come to death.

http://www.ohiohistory.org/etcetera/exhibits/swio/pages/content/1974_tornado.htm

[NastyDawg]

Never been in or seen a real live Tornado, and don't want to (dawg knocks on wood) I have been through my share of Hurricanes, (Andrew blew the roof off my place of employment) I would rather go through that than a Tornado.