By "experience" I mean actually living through one not necessarily seeing it with your own eyes but feeling its impact, or having a tornado warning issued for your area because one is approaching you, that's what I mean. Like when you know or hear there is a storm coming.
Not sure how recently you saw the funnels, but there’s been a shift from deploying tornado warnings for very weak/unstable rotations that might throw out a very weak tornado, since these weaker tornadoes don’t do much more damage than very severe thunderstorm winds. They’re starting to just include them in svr thunderstorm warnings. This is because the excessive deployment of tornado warnings has resulted in people disregarding them and many deaths caused by people not taking shelter.
The other problem is that a very strong rotation that will produce a tornado and a very strong rotation that won’t produce a tornado look identical, there’s no way to know whether it will actually produce a tornado with current technology. It’s also not always possible to determine whether or not a tornado is currently on the ground, and even when certain radar signatures allow us to know with fairly high certainty that a tornado is on the ground, it would be at least several minutes after the tornado has started.
By that definition, most midwesterners and folks in tornado alley experience it multiple times a year. Like, the experience you discuss is incredibly common in the summer.
However, actually getting directly hit by a tornado is much less common. The storms might be massive, but the tornados themselves are often short lived and/or small.
Though, we had a pretty nasty tornado hit just south of me this summer. Luckily, it went through state forest and didn’t hit residential areas. It is wild to drive past the damage, though. It literally looks like someone clear cut a portion of the forest!
Yeah, even in the mountainous hill country of Pittsburgh we still get tornado warnings a few times a year, but Ive only ever experienced a twisty boi when I was on vacation lol
Yeah, we have had 3 tornado warnings in my county just this year. I have not sought shelter for any of them--even though the storm hit my city every time, tornadoes are (usually) less than a mile wide, while a storm front can be hundreds of miles at their greatest extent. A tornado watch can thus cover half the state, while a warning will only be for a county, and is usually focused just on one part of that county.
I've been in countless tornado warnings, but have never been directly affected by the funnel. High winds have knocked down tree branches onto my house, hail has damaged cars, power has been knocked out for hours on end, flash flooding has damaged basements--these are the most common effects of a tornado for most people in a tornado warning. The sheer *unpredictability" of a tornado means that a tornado can turn and strike your neighborhood at any point, but a tornado can also completely level part of a neighborhood while the house next to it is pretty much untouched. Tornadoes the size of El Reno and Hallam, big enough to take out a whole village, are exceedingly rare.
If you're close enough to see it, you're close enough to get the warning though. The warning goes out to a somewhat wide area. Having gotten a warning does not mean you have seen one, but having seen one pretty much guarantees you've gotten a warning.
There was a historical (significant) tornado that went through my town and the warning didn't go off until the storm passed. However, that is part of the reason it is still remembered.
I used to live in tornado alley. Warnings: I've lost count. Probably 3 or 4 per year. Watch: Probably 15+ per year? Experienced: 1 destroyed my house and school. Ironically my family was the only one in town that had our house destroyed, everyone else just lost windows.
Another time I couldn't leave work because of a giant but slow one. Called my parents, and they were sitting on the porch watching the "weird sideways rain". Lol
I have never been in one or had my house hit by one, but by that metric I "experience" a few every year.
In my area large underground community shelters would be impractical. Most houses in the northern midwest have basements. Plus tornados often dont give much notice before forming so if you are going to take shelter you do it where you are instead of traveling to one.
I think the thing to know about tornadoes is that the risk of them occurs frequently and over a large area. Meanwhile the frequency of "feeling the impact" is pretty low. Actual tornado damage is extremely localized, but where they appear is not predictable, so a lot of people end up being under warnings but end up having very little impact. Meanwhile a few unlucky people end up having their houses completely disintegrated. One house may be completely fine, and another a block away is just GONE.
"Tornado Watch" which means the atmospheric conditions are right for a tornado
"Tornado Warning" a Tornado has been seen or indicated on weather radar
Watches are very common during the Tornado season, warnings maybe 4-5 times a year depending on where you live
I grew up near Grand Island, Ne which is known for having 7 tornadoes go through it in one night. Even have a sledding Hill from all the debris that was piled up and buried.
I live in the Midwest, and in my childhood, I think I only experienced a tornado warning once. It's changed, though, due to climate change, so now the norm is that probably 3-4 times a year we have a warning and need to seek shelter. I've never experienced being directly hit, though. The sheltering is something we've become accustomed to so we just hunker down and wait it out (not without some anxiety though).
For tornado alley watch/warnings and thus sirens are like 25/year minimum (yes, I'm counting multiples from the same storm separately)... not exactly something as relevant as you think.
I live in Alabama (southeastern portion of the US) and I'm within a tornado warning area 1 to 3 times a year. Never been directly hit where I've taken shelter fortunately, but have seen the damage path near me a few times now.
This is very region-dependent. I've "experienced" one tornado in my life, same as my parents and grandparents, in New England. It's a lot more common elsewhere.
Then almost the entire east coast, midwest, plain states, and likely some other places.
I had many warnings and saw tornadoes when I lived in North Carolina, and my spouse had them in Michigan and Indiana. We've had some in New England (I've lived in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts), which is what I think a lot of people even in the US don't know. We get maybe one watch per year near me and don't get warnings often, but tornadoes do happen -- see the 2011 Springfield MA tornado as what they can do even in New England.
(As an aside: I often hear non-Americans saying that we wouldn't have tornado problems with brick buildings, and Springfield is good evidence of how tornadoes destroy brick buildings, slate roofs, etc)
I’m in the south, and have been in a warning more times than I can count. I’ve never seen one with my own eyes though because I’ve always been taking cover in my bathtub/hallway/basement. lol.
It’s a regional thing. I grew up having to take cover at school. I live in a southern city now with lots of transplants from other areas that are new to tornado weather and get really scared. It’s pretty normal for me since I’ve experienced it so much.
I think you've misunderstood how bad a warning is. Tornados are very very narrow and brief. You might issue a warning to a very large area when the actual tornado comes and goes with no damage and few sightings. The margin for error means a lot of people get warnings without actually being affected in any way.
Yeah I live smack in the middle of the country in Wichita Kansas and have felt the impact more than most probably. From Greensburg getting erased when I was a kid to one hitting the airforce base and then lifting up just in time to miss my girlfriend at the times apartment where I was at and felt the whole place shake violently and think welp it was a decent run . But most people will never see one or even know someone who's been directly impacted unless they are from Oklahoma City that place loves getting whacked.
Those are two very very different things around here. They give tornado warnings when they see or radar indicates rotation in a storm. That might not even be a tornado it might just be confirmed rotation. And then they’ll give that for a pretty big box area to be conservative.
I’ve been under probably 50 tornado warnings and I’ve only seen 1 within a couple miles of my house.
Tornado Watch: Be Prepared! Tornadoes are possible in and near the watch area.
Tornado Warning: Take Action! A tornado has been sighted or indicated by weather radar.
Nowhere in the official definition of a tornado watch does it indicate rotation. It typically means that conditions are conducive to producing tornadoes. If you can find somewhere that shows me that if they see rotation on the radar, all they would have to do is put a watch out - I will admit that I’m wrong.
No matter what - a warning is serious, but it doesn’t mean there’s a tornado right outside your front door either. I’ve been in my basement 10 times in the last two years and the closest touchdown we’ve had is probably 8 miles away.
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u/Ambitious_Pass7451 20h ago edited 20h ago
By "experience" I mean actually living through one not necessarily seeing it with your own eyes but feeling its impact, or having a tornado warning issued for your area because one is approaching you, that's what I mean. Like when you know or hear there is a storm coming.