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to stuff you should know from

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how stuff works dot Com?

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Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

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Clark, as staff writer here at how stuff works

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dot Com. With me is uh

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fellow staff writer's goatee, Charles

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Bryant. How are you, Chuck? I'm great and

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my goatee is long and

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strong. It's looking good, Chuck. You're taking

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excellent care of it. I'd like to keep it clean. So,

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Chuck, you may not know this, but I actually

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grew up in Toledo, Ohio. You ever been?

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I have not. My wife is from Ohio, but never been to

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Toledo. It's actually a surprisingly cool

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town. Uh. The problem is it's at the

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end of tornado Alley. So I've seen

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plenty of tornadoes in my life, and

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each one scarier than the last. Spent

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many nights at like two in the morning

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in the basement listening to the radio. Right,

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I had nothing to do with the tornadoes though, So I

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totally didn't. That was more dear old Dad

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than anything. Um. So, I

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have seen some tornadoes, and actually I thought

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I had kind of left him behind when we got

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down here to Atlanta. Yeah, not the case.

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No, you remember recently there are some tornadoes

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that ripped through downtown. It was the first time ever.

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So they go just tear the roof

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off of the suckers and it's it's just

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ugly. It looks post apocalyptic

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downtown still several weeks later and

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before even the thing is though I've

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seen I've seen some tornadoes here there.

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I've never been in the eye of a tornado. Well

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now you know why, because only two

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people have that we know of, and

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you're not one of them. No, I'm not. I'm not, and

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if I had, I probably wouldn't tell anybody anyway.

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So yeah, that's it actually has happened a couple

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of times on record, and um,

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it's pretty amazing. Um, well, why don't

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you tell everybody first? What? What how it tornado

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forms? Well, yeah, I guess that would help. A tornado

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is uh, you know, the thunder

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the thunderstorm comes in and uh

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in the lower atmosphere, Uh, the wind

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picks up and creates a horizontal, uh

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spinning tube on the ground and then once

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um the storm comes through, the rising air

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tilts it up and then you get what you normally think

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of as the tornado, which is the vertical

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kind of like a guy who's on his back

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is pushed up by his shoulders and now he's standing

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and spinning and spinning and hundreds

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of miles and how he can have it exactly up

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to three hundred miles as fast as

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they get. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, it's

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extremely destructive, as everyone knows. Now.

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I know you mentioned that actually tornadoes

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are generally invisible since wind is invisible.

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Um, but that it's it's I've read that it's

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actually the debris and the dust

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that's kicked up that it gives tornadoes

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their shape, which is funny because tornadoes are called

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funnel clouds. But it's it's not

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really a cloud. It's it's dirt and debris

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and cows and pick up trucks

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right from the movie Twister, cows flying

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across your screen. Yeah, that's one of the myths. Another

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one is that you should open your windows of

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your house to let a tornado pass through. That's not true at

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all either. So no, well, the yeah,

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a lot of people think that the low pressure found

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in a tornado makes your house explode.

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No, it's it's actually flying debris. You say,

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yeah, exactly, and and I read Noah

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suggested that's that's not anyone we know

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name. Noah's the National Oceanic

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and Atmospheric Administration

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or agency, one of the two. Uh, they suggest

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not touching your windows, leaving him closed

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and get to the basement exactly, which is

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just good advice anyway, it is. Yeah.

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So, um, let's get back to these guys.

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You found two and it was just two and

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this is this is Chuck's article by the way, everyone,

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it's a great one to um. I appreciate

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that. Yeah, these two guys, one was and

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one was in nineteen forty three,

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so it hasn't happened in a long time, which is kind of strange.

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And uh, they were both farmers. Go figure

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um out in the you know, the middle of I

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think one was in Kansas and his

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name was Keller. Farmer

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Keller, Yeah, farmer will Killer. Yeah,

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farmer Keller. And uh, you know, he saw

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tornado coming and he's seen a bunch of these things, this is

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his account, and so he wasn't really scared.

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He got his family down the storm celler, but um,

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before he climbed in, he for some reason

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to say. I guess he's kind of transfixed. He

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decided to kind of stay there and watch this thing

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as it approached, and it actually,

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uh, you know, tornadoes can hop up and

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leap, and I think it kind of hopped up on top of him.

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And the inside of a tornado, Yeah,

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it's like the eye of a hurricane's supposed to be really calm. So

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that explains why he didn't get sucked up in the funnel

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cloud. And um, much

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like the movie Twister, they must have researched these

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uh, these guys. They it

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was really smooth on the inside, and there was

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constant lightning which lit it up from the inside

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and kind of a bluish green tent and

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these little tiny twisters would break away from

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the walls and make a hissing sound and zip

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over to the other side of the wall. And it was just really

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insane. And uh. The

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other guy was another farmer in Texas

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and he had pretty Hall, right, yeah, Roy

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Hall. He had basically the same account,

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which so everyone pretty much feels

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like this is what it's like. The thing is with Keller,

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I was I couldn't understand why

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he would just stand there at the very least Mr

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Hall, who I think it happened, tune,

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It's a few years later. Um

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he uh. He actually went in the

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house, the tornado tore his roof

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off, and all of a sudden he found himself

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in the in the eye of the storm. But a

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similar experience, right, exactly

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the same thing, you know, lightning inside and really

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smooth walls, and they both felt a sense

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of calm and oddly

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well being being in the center of this thing.

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And the storm in Texas actually

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killed a hundred people in the town. But he

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doesn't like the farmer royal alone. Yeah,

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thankfully. Well, if you want to learn more about what

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it's like in the eye of a tornado, read What's

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it like in the Eye of a Tornado on how

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stuff works dot com

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