Tornadoes Continue To Amaze In Incredible Ways

It's been almost two weeks since a big outbreak of tornadoes smashed the nation's Midwest, and I'm still fascinated by the weird power of tornadoes, both in that outbreak and in general.

Curtrains trapped between the top of a wall and
the roof after November tornadoes in the Midwest.  

In the photo in this post, click on it to make it bigger and look closely.  The Washington, Illinois tornado smashed out a window, making curtains fly outside the house.

The the tornadic winds lifted the roof somewhat, allowing the curtains to fly up over the top of the wall. Then the roof slammed down, trapping the curtains between the top of the wall and the roof. Amazing.

And a video surfaced last week that documents one family's   experience with the tornado. The video strips away the entertainment value, if you will, of watching tornadoes and reveals what the trauma is like when people actually experience one.

In it, you see the tornado approaching and you hear Marc Wells, who is filming,   increasingly alarmed. The daughter, Josie, is already in the basement and Marc  joins her. (The notes on the video say the rest of the family was thankfully out of town)

The screen goes black and you hear them wondering if whatever they're using to protect themselves will save their lives.

Then you hear the tornado ripping apart the house as Josie screams. The tornado only takes a few seconds to do its awful work. Then you see them emerge, and the Josie is obviously completed traumatized as she sees her house is gone.

You get a glimpse of the living room. It had been a home, full of furnishings, decorations and such. Now you see walls missing, and all the contents of the room gone except for a battered ceiling fan and debris,

The man, still filming, is obviously shocked, and can't say anything to comfort Josie.  I mean, what can you say? He urges her to get out of what's left of the house, because it might collapse, and he pans to the rest of the neighborhood, also destroyed.

He's got to see if the neighbors survived. It's a heartrending video. And it shows, more than any tornado video I've seen, how these storms can be so emotionally as well as physically destructive.

 Here it is: