This legend is still responding to comments of skepticism 7 years later. This level of dedication is truly something to appreciate out of any individual.
You and Pecos Hank are by far the BEST storm chasers in my opinion. You both describe the storms so any person can understand how it works and I think that by far goes a long way in saving lives. Giving survival tips is also a great addition you both share with your viewers. Ive talked to do many through my years and know how often people have a differing understanding of safety and how they understand tornadoes and such which leads to many sharing unfounded and dangerous advice. Any that watch your videos are going to be who informed in both safety and understanding these storms. I can't count the people that have the thought that once a tornado passes one is safe and no worry is needed but your footage shows this isn't truth. Keep up the fantastic job, I'm subbed to your channel for life. Pray you stay safe out there.
Totally agree. Not only is Hank a great chaser, he doesn' t hesitate stopping and checking on people that he comes across. He stops and checks houses for victims. It's also fun to watch him with whatever critter crosses his path, always getting them out of the danger of the road.
I love Hank and totally agree that his videos are educational and well as entertaining (love his personality-and he’s funny!). Thank you for this helpful comment-I’ll be sure to check out more of Skip’s videos! Stay safe, everyone! 🌪❤️
Watching Tim's route plotted with the storm...it's chilling. I can't imagine what was going through their minds at the moment of realization that this thing was not going to let them go. Terrible, terrible day.
Tim and his team decided to veer east for _one last shot_ to place those probes before getting out. If they had just cut their losses, they might still be here today. He was a scientist to the end, but you HAVE to know when to fold 'em. You can live to chase another day. Don't gamble with your life.
Do you think that he thought he was in imminent danger and that he was making a risky move, or he thought he would be OK right there? I like to imagine he just misjudged it and until the last second he thought it was going to be OK. Tim was damn good - perhaps the best. It's a real shame, but it shouldn't of done what it did when it did it. Just goes to show you how small the margin for error really is. He deserved better than to die on the side of a shitty muddy road in Oklahoma.
@@GravyHucker The probe laying game is the most dangerous form of tornado science imaginable. It's why Howie Bluestein gave up on the famous TOTO back in back in 1983. Just too many damn close calls, including one in 1982 (unspecified which month, but I'd love to hear about it) when they zigged as the tornado zagged and basically had a Dan Robinson moment (except 31 years earlier!). Dr. Bluestein concluded it was simply too effin dangerous, and all the money got put into DoW. Tim was the only guy still doing that kind of work. Regardless of anything else, the tornado still has a minimum range of safety, but he believed that by cutting deployment time down, he could work with smaller safety margins. At Manchester he was right, and recorded a world record; at El Reno he was wrong, and paid with his life. I'm reminded of Dr. David Johnston who died observing Mount Saint Helens. There is a certain fatalism associated with the sciences of the extreme.
What's so unbelievable about the wind speeds of this tornado was that when they found the Samaras vehicle, the two seats where the occupants were sucked out of still had the seatbelts buckled. The forces required to do that is unfathomable to even think about.
@@lovontae8316 not true. Carl young's seatbelt was still buckled when they recovered their destroyed vehicle. His body was recovered half a mile from the sedan. This indicates that he was buckled in when the tornado hit the car, but the force of the suction on the vehicle sucked his body up and out of the seatbelt. The seatbelt stayed buckled because the body was pulled out in a way that did not break the buckled belt. It can be theorized that Paul also had his belt on, but it was broken while his body was ripped out of the car and thrown half a mile into a creek. Also, Tim, the only one found in the car, was not wearing a shirt or shoes when he was recovered. I think this gives an idea of the force that acted upon their bodies when the funnel hit them. His shirt and shoes were literally sucked off of his body while the car was carried, thrown, and smashed hundreds of yards by the tornado.
Jesus…this sounds like one of my clients that survived a direct hit during the horrific tornado that struck Tuscaloosa Alabama on April 27, 2011. She was at home alone when the tornado came through Concord Alabama which is a suburb just west of Birmingham. The only square foot of her house that survived was one tiny closet that she took cover in. The rest of the house was completely obliterated. She said that the suction forces when the tornado struck felt like her skin was being ripped off. She and her husband showed me a picture of what the damage looked like and the tiny void that she was in. It is almost impossible for your mind to wrap itself around how she could have survived it.
Excellent video. It really shows that there are some problems with the enhanced fujita scale when one of the most intense tornadoes ever recorded is down graded to a EF3, They really need to start taking recorded wind speeds into account. If memory serves me this tornado had winds recorded very close to the ground by mobile radar at around 300 miles an hour. By all accounts aside for the lack of structures for it to damage in its path, this was one of the most powerful tornadoes to have been documented to date. Rating it an EF3 seems really silly when we have access to such solid wind speed data indicating it was so much stronger than that. It really illustrates the problem with using a scale that only can take into account damage.
I have to disagree. The Enhanced Fujita Scale is meant to measure the actual ground-level impact of a tornado, and nothing more. It was never meant to measure size or wind speed because those are just numbers after the storm is over, and frankly just numbers used by lay meteorologists to dick-wave in arguments about the "biggest" tornado. The damage on the ground is the sole thing with lasting consequences, which makes it, in my opinion, the most important thing to measure.
@@jeremiahmiller6431 That may be the case, but the damage indicators used in the EF scale were a way of quantifying the strength of a given tornado by translating the observed damage into projected/estimated wind speeds, and in fact Dr Josh Wurman even once admitted that one of the biggest shortcomings of the EF scale is that it can only way it can be applied is if the tornado actually impacts something and leaves damage. We now have reliable methods of obtaining wind speeds at nearly ground level, and since the Fujita Scale was originally created to determine the strength of a given tornado (using damage indicators as reliable radar data back then was hard to come by), if we have reliable radar and wind speed data of a given tornado then those readings should be taken into account even if the tornado does nothing but churn across an open field.
Melting Sky You are absolutely right. Wind speed had everything to do with why there were fatalities and injuries. It’s not enough to just look at the damage to static structures. The scale needs to take wind speed into account because of the proximity of dynamic objects like cars and trucks. How close is too close? A scale adjusted to account for wind speed might help define a quantifiable safe distance for both chasers and motorists.
@@gmlaster Don't we measure the "potential" destructiveness of nuclear weapons anyway? It's not like we blow up a city block every time we test them. If the Fujitsu scale directly translates to tornadoes then why don't we also have a potential damage scale as well, since this would have easily been the most devastating tornado in recent history were it to have traveled further north.
@@jeremiahmiller6431 Actually, you are incorrect. The enhanced fujita scale's entire purpose is to estimate the strength of the winds in a given tornado. It has nothing to do with how much actual damage a tornado did and everything to do with the quality of that damage. For instance a long track EF2 tornado over a populated area can easily cause far more overall damage than an EF5 that hits a single well built concrete and steel reinforced shack in an open field. The EF5 in this case gets it's rating for the quality of the damage it did which is that it flattened a single well built concrete structure indicating a higher estimated wind speed. The far more destructive EF2 that smashed hundreds of mobile homes and killed people similarly gets its rating also due to the quality of the damage rather than the quantity which is completely irrelevant on this scale. The EF scale doesn't take into account how much damage a tornado does but rather the type of damage it does. The entire point of the enhanced fujita scale is to quantify tornado strength aka estimate their wind speeds which is why it is incredibly outdated and short sighted to discount actual wind speed measurements from a scale whose entire purpose is to estimate said wind speed. The EF rating of a tornado is most useful in statistical analysis of severe weather which is why it should include any data that would help make these estimates more accurate. The scale is outdated and reflects an age when things like radar estimates of ground winds in a tornado were not possible.
Mike Morgan should have been fired for telling people to flee like that. Every other channel I turned to started talking about how evacuation could cause traffic and lead to more problems. A mom and her daughter died on the way home from gymnastics and the traffic caused them to be killed. The Oklahoma media then blamed the fraction of tornado chasers for this. I'm glad you brought this up, almost no other video talks about it.
Morgan is indeed a problem, because he's a Hollywood ham and an idiot, but the real problem is that emergency policy hasn't caught up with the public's access to information. In the old days of county-sized warnings you could get away with the "everybody except trailers and cars, stay where you're at!" policy. Because honestly, back then, you couldn't guarantee the existence of the tornado, much less it's path, so people had a strong likelihood of wasting their time in a panic, or, worse, driving from a safe area into a danger path. People weren't likely to independently act on the tiny information they had, so the biggest problem remained getting them out of their cars and trailers, where most of the fatalities happen from even low-end tornadoes. Nowadays, anybody who understands radar and Enhanced Fujita can tell when a likely EF4/5 is bearing down on them. Not that this happens frequently, but when it does happen, especially in the OKC area, people are savvy to it right away: how are you supposed to tell somebody who KNOWS their house won't survive an EF3 that they're a horrible fool if they take 5 minutes of their 30 minutes of lead time and simply drive north or south and wait it out? You're condemning a certain portion of people to inevitable death and injury to prevent the chaos of everybody trying to do it. A single person making a quick, informed, calm decision to evacuate is (potentially) being smart. Chasers, after all, make those kinds of judgment calls multiple times while tracking an active tornado. But an entire city full of people stampeding blindly this way and that is a nightmare with potentially greater casualties than the tornado itself, and certainly greater vulnerability. THAT is the problem we need an answer to, the divorce between the "best advice for the herd" and "best advice for the weather-wise and ready". Because that gap is RAPIDLY shrinking and until we figure something out, there's going to be lives lost and angry people either way.
Easily the best and most important tornado video on UA-cam. As a frequent driver on interstates throughout the country, I've had to make decisions myself on which way to go, to avoid storms. I don't know how many times I've had to refer to my radar on my phone, and even maps of an area, to determine if I should zoom past an approaching storm, or stop where i am and let the storm pass. This video will not only save the lives of your fellow storm chasers, it will save the lives of ordinary citizens like myself and others. Excellent job man.
This is the best analysis of El Reno that I’ve ever seen. Thank you for being very humble and not grandstanding like some others have done in the past. My deepest condolences go out to all those affected in the pursuit of science and the love of nature.
Hello Skip, i'm a viewer from the South American "Tornado Alley" . 7 years ago, there was an EF3 tornado in the small town of Xanxerê, which is my neighbor. Thousands of people were left homeless in Xanxerê, Ponte Serrada and Passos Maia (three cities close to mine). I feel very lucky that I wasn't hit by a tornado and so is my mother, she teaches at a school that was hit by the tornado. Even today, cases of extreme storms, cyclones and tornadoes are common here. Fantastic video, congratulations!
At around 1:16:38 in the video, this is where the tornado reaches its maximum intensity and peak width (6:27pm). Notice how the shape of it doesn’t even look like a tornado, it looks like the entire mesocyclone is on the ground. You guys kept a safe distance from this monster considering you were far south of the circulation. Great video!
This is the best explanation I’ve seen about the unusual nature of the El Reno tornado. Tim Samaris was my storm chasing hero. I was DEVASTATED when he passed. Thank you for this.
I've watched this presentation before and I still think it is one of the absolute BEST, most informative video's to date. Upon hearing of Tim, Paul, and Carl's deaths, I wondered how them, of any chaser, got themselves in a situation like that. Especially because of their careful style of chasing, but this explains it much more clearly. I was crushed to hear about their demise, being a weather enthusiast, I looked up to Tim. But I think it is especially important to show others with less experience what is possible, even with the most training and experience possible. I get some pretty incredible comments when I'm overly urgent on a day like this, where strong storms are possible, and I'm calling everyone in my phone book to be sure they are aware, and even more so when an warning is issued. Most of my friends and family don't have enough knowledge to even know the difference between a watch and a warning so I make it my job to be the one to provide the urgency. They tend to laugh at my obsession with tornadoes, but I always say, when this town is flattened, I don't want to be the only one still living. Excellent, excellent presentation!
What happened, is that they're Chevy Colbalt was hit by sub vortecies. They TRIED to get out of its way, but the Tornado suddenly changed direction and descended right on top of them. I don't think Tim did anything wrong. They were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. R.I.P Twistex team.
Very well done. But basically it seems boil down to this. "Have a valid, reasonable escape route and use it rather than lose it." When in doubt, get the F out!
Sir, this is one of thee most comprehensive tornado videos I have *ever* seen. You deserve a medal for real. I actually watched this twice all the way through. We need more people out there like you. Thank you for giving such a detailed view of this record-breaker. RIP to Tim Samaras and his son and collegue. They didn't die in vain.
I was about two miles away from this thing. A chunk of hail came through our ceiling and caused a leak, we could see the wall cloud as well. Was honestly terrifying.
crazy its been 7 years, this is still my favorite tornado video. It's equally amazing that you're still answering trolls and critics in the comments after all this time; a true educator.
This is one on the finest film evaluations on tornadoes I have ever seen. Your attention to detail on every aspect of a lifespan of the El Reno tornado is not only amazing but terrifying at the same time. I have survived a tornado impact in 1980 and have always wanted to understand the how and why these forces of nature occur. This is Fine, detailed work that separates fact from fiction and is unmatched & will save lives in future storm chasing endeavors. Kudos to you and your team on the film. Thank you for sharing. Efren Villa, McKinney TX.
Absolutely the best video on chaser safety I have ever seen. I think that every chaser should watch this video if they are serious about it. Glad I subscribed. Keep em coming and thanks!
Well done, Skip Talbot. I’m not a storm chaser. I want to understand tornadoes better after seasoned professionals lost their lives. This is the most educational video on tornadoes & safety that I have seen. Thank you for compiling the information available to you in this way. I hope I never get surprised by a tornado while in my car, but I will be able to make safer decisions thanks to your work to relay this information so clearly & in layman’s terms. Keep being safe out there & thanks for keeping people informed about severe weather.
On May 31st, my dad heard the weather alert and panicked. He forced me into his truck and drove out toward Union City. His truck does not have a functioning radio and he didn’t grab anything. We could saw the mesocyclone about the same time it reached maximum width. As it disappeared the rain followed us as we drove East. Without a radio, and with poor visibility, I was absolutely terrified the tornado was still on the ground and could appear at any second. My neighbor begged me to get into her storm shelter, but I was only twelve and elected to stay with my dad. It was stupid, he was stupid and he could’ve misjudged the situation further and drove into the tornado. I hate myself for going with him to this day. What makes it worse? My mom and brother were in the hospital in downtown OKC and we couldn’t reach each other. I still have bad anxiety attacks when tornado watches or warnings come anywhere close to my area. I feel so lucky the tornado roped-out before reaching my house and my entire family was fine.
COMPLETE that is a very lucky thing but it’s good you realize it and everyone who watched this (hopefully) learned that avoiding the path of this storm while using your escape route is a must you never know the risks I hope you and your family are ok
Forgive me for asking but why were your mom and your brother hospitalized in downtown Oklahoma City? Were they by any chance injured in the tornado that hit Shawnee, Oklahoma on May 19 or the one that hit Moore, Oklahoma on May 20?
An interesting thing I noted from the numbers: The Weather Network crew actually came *closer* to the center of the tornado itself than Samaras did. They came within 0.11 or so whereas the Samaras vehicle was about 0.14. This just goes to show that Skip is 100% correct in saying that it doesn't matter where you are within the "Bear's Cage", the winds are too unpredictable to unequivocally state that any area is more or less safe than any other area.
I assumed it was Mike Bettes who made the decision to get closer because before the weather channel he worked at our local news station as the lead meteorologist and he nearly died on live television when he was swept away in a flash flood after he decided to anchor himself and step into the river to show how fast the current was. I think he gets so excited about extreme weather events and has no concept on danger.
@George-ue9qc Yes, the "Internal/Interior sub vortex. A sub vortex that rotates near or inside the main condensation funnel. This sub vortex moved at speeds of 80 meters per second, or 180 miles per hour. As the Weather Channel Crew/Tornado Hunt Crew raced south on 81, they came extremely close to the center, and Mike Bettes' GMC Yukon was directly hit by the sub vortex and his Yukon took off like an aircraft described by the driver of their lead vehicle, Kevin Parrish. At the same time, Dan Robinson and Twistex crossed 81 as the tornado was taking a left turn. The interior sub vortex was also moving north. As Twistex and Dan were engulfed by the Bears cage, the sub vortex took a large loop just west of Alfadale road. It headed east as it exited its loop. The sub vortex took a 90 degree turn to the north directly towards Tim, Paul, and Carl. The vortex took a small loop over their Chevy Cobalt. It tumbles over 5 times.
This is the best weather analysis video I have ever seen. Thank you so much. Both of the OKC tornadoes were tragedies, and it is important to understand why they occurred.
Thank you so much for this analysis. I am visual n I finally can see and understand exactly what happened that day. Everyone's position in relation to where the storm was. It's taken 5 yrs of study n trying to fill in the blanks from posted video n news reports. Bravo sir, n once again, thank you!!!
This is such a needed breakdown, there were so many unknowns right after this event you did an ECSTATICALLY AMAZING JOB the breakdown of the other chasers locations and the way you presented this is a GEM IN CONTENT POSTED A DECADE AGO ESPECIALLY!I feel strongly that everyone lost that day would be very proud of the factual details , the huge effort put into editing something this well especially back then especially team TWISTEX. RIP gents, was yesterday 11 years ago now rest easy.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to produce this excellent documentary/analysis. I believe that every high school student in the Alley needs to see the first part pertaining to the mass evacuation and the wisdom of instead sheltering in place.
Your dedication to clear thought, analysis, and well-crafted presentations is both admirable and a gift to all who view your videos. You are a significant asset of the chaser community.
still watching this in 2016, and I have to say, the colors are so powerful to me. I have never seen a sky that dark from a storm before. This was so big and powerful that it takes my breath away. It had to have been hard to read looking at it because way too many professionals got caught in it. This entire storm just looks nasty. Every part of it.
I live in Missouri and we have storms that will make 2 in the afternoon look like it was midnight outside. Most common throughout Mid spring to late summer. The thing that probably surprised me most is the fact the storm didn't make the sky look darker.
Watch Pecos Hank's video "The Darkest Day" about the 2011 El Reno tornado (almost exactly two years before this one, and arguably a more powerful tornado). That is one dark daytime sky.
An outstanding forensic analysis and presentation that we will share with our with family of spotters and chasers. From one Skip to another; Mr. Talbot continues his cutting edge skill of sharing tornado science and chaser safey. His ongoing efforts deserve recogition and appreciation. Skip Voros- Milwaukee Area Skywarn Assoc.
MilwaukeeSkywarn,this was a great video,and all the 1's ive seen about this monster,and surprised it didnt hit OKC,El Reno or what was left of Moore after the may 20th monster,but being im from wisconsin,in west bend norht of where you are,what reminds me is until i found this video,no chasers,no news or the weather channel accept skip noone said this monster was anticyclonic,i did hear it was or another 1 touchdown near it that was,and this also reminds me if you know more about it or if skip wants to find out more about this 1 cuz theres no vidoes about it except a fire fighter that responded afterwards,so if you remember the 1981 west bend EF-4 that was anticyclonic that was after midnight that nearly took the city by surprise because it wasnt seen on radar,noone even seen it until it hit or after it hit,no watches or warnings,except for severe thunderstorms no sirens were turned on until after it hit,they said it was spawned by a downdraft from the storms that were getting weak,it had an odd damage path because it took out the northern part of the city,it caused over 20 million in damage,killed a few injured a few,had over 200MPH winds,but was only rated EF-4 and it was moving so fast that it was on the ground not even 5 minutes if that but caused EF-4 damage,and was anticyclonic so just wondering if skip or someone can look into this 1 and find out what actually happened that night you have to google it to find out about it
@@chriscrane5327 Holy crap, this is incredible word soup. How are you able to communicate with people at all if that is how you write/talk? I think you are suggesting the El Reno tornado was anticyclonic which makes me think that in addition to extremely poor communication skills, you are also a terrible listener (probably not a coincidence). Skip does NOT say this tornado was anticyclonic, although there was an EF-2 anticyclonic satellite that formed on the other side of the RFD flow
I wish I had watched this video sooner. Twice I’ve been in situations where I was driving in the middle of nowhere and encountered what I suspected but now know was a developing tornado. Not knowing what it was or what to do, I hauled ass and plowed straight through it, which was probably the worst thing I could’ve done. But with visibility being almost zero, I felt the worst thing I could’ve done was pull over. And not knowing where I was, I didn’t want to get off the highway. This video was incredibly helpful. I never thought to put a weather radar app on my phone, or to look out for satellite funnels. Or even to ask Siri for an alternate route or to locate a nearby shelter. I would never have thought to pay attention to the direction the rain is blowing on my windshield to gauge where the wind is coming from in zero visibility conditions. I didn’t know there was a name for situational awareness, but I definitely knew when I’d lost it. It would be awesome if someone like you put out a video for non-chasers to advise travelers what to do in the event they run into a tornado or emergent weather conditions like this on the road. Because clearly barreling right through it to get away from it isn’t smart.
Skip did mention some things in the beginning portion. I've watched this and others for as much info I can get, if only as a reminder of what to do or not.
I had the privilege of meeting Tim's team when they were up here in South Dakota a bit before this tragedy. Tim was a great guy and he is missed a lot, I loved their TV shows. Still watch them as I have recorded them and have them on a sever in my house..
Nobody was prepared for the direction it took. Just about every tornado I've chased, with the exception of the Plainfield, IL then F5 tornado, typically traveled to the East/Northeast. The Plainfield tornado caught people off guard too. I don't think anyone expected the El Reno tornado to expand to 2.6 miles either. The vortices alone were extremely violent, and always very unpredictable in any multi vortex tornado.
@@Bluenose352 I remember Plainfield vividly to this day though I was a good 30 40 miles away. Was working for an HVAC company at the time and was sent to scrap out some homes under construction that we had finished in a subdivision in Mundelein. Since the work truck had no radio I used my layman's knowledge of weather to keep an eye on some thunderheads off to the west southwest but as I pulled up on the first house to scrap out those threatening thunderstorms had dissipated leaving only a low cloud bank directly to my south. About halfway through scraping out the second house I brought out the first load to go on the truck and in the 10 minutes tops I'd been inside that low cloud bank had exploded into a monster anvil top and I just remember thinking to myself who ever is under that was catching hell right now. It wasn't until I'd got back to the shop and was in my car heading home that I found out how horribly right I was.
Bluenose352 what’s wild about this storm is that the entire mesocyclone basically just dropped down in a matter of about one minute. I don’t think there’s ever been a tornado that grew in strength as quickly as this one did. One second it was a wall cloud, and the next it was wedge funnel. Just fucking unreal. My only hope is that the science that was gathered from this event will help save lives in the future, because one day, one of these is gonna hit a metropolitan area in the Great Plains and it’s going to be exponentially more catastrophic than Joplin or Moore.
@@jackieparmz I am surprised OKC has not gotten hit yet. There has been many to enough close calls. I wish that it never gets hit although tornados form near it a lot. And if some tornados did not die off and kept moving, it could of potentially hit OKC. Which is scary to think about.
@@Tc-rn8lh Small correction here: the southernmost parts of OKC were hit in the 1999 EF5, and people were killed there. There is no reason why a violent tornado wouldn't hit 10 or 20 miles further north of Moore, or east of El Reno. Far too many people seem to mistake "it hasn't happened here" (in their memory) for "it won't happen here". The chances of outracing a tornado will be rather slim in what would be a huge traffic jam in more densely populated area of OKC. So having safe shelter is even more important than in the outskirts...
This video has proven to be a video I occasionally revisit due to the Fantastic detail as well as the lessons we learned that day. Thanks Skip. Your work has been greatly appreciated.
I was in Fire Fighter-1 class when this went down. I'm in West Central Kansas. I remember even the dew point and humidity here was ridiculous, and lots of wind. It was frightening to watch as it unfolded on the news. This is a great video, and Skip you really broke it down to where a person can actually grasp and comprehend the points you made.
Watching this for the millionth time. Still excellent. I'll be visiting Team Twistex's Memorial site this Sunday to pay respect to them and the others affected by this storm on that day.
Wow, thanks for this very real lesson. How you point out where the chasers were at the time of impact kind of brings in the realism to this Super Cell. Knowing and seeing the time of impact and Samaras's position is so saddening. I've followed Tim, Paul, and Carl since they first came onto the scene in Storm Chasers on Discovery Channel. From Reed Timmer and his crew, Sean Casey and his guys to Tim Samaras, his son Paul and Carl Young, much respect for them, they go where most dare not venture. This EF-4 was the monster of all monsters, very unpredictable. First of its kind to be recorded. Rest In Peace to all who risked it that day and found them selves caught by the beast.
The level of work and dedication you've sunk into this video is simply amazing. Bravo Skip. This video should be taught In school to every last man, woman and child on this continent.
I'm from the UK this is a really well done video and very interesting - thank you. It also reminds me of when documentaries used to be less patronising towards the audience! Great job x
What an incredible video. I'm not a storm chaser, never will be - the one time my dad drove under a forming funnel was plenty enough for me. It was amazing, humbling, beautiful, and terrifying. I can easily see why storm chaser's get their kicks from them, it's breathtaking. But this was such a fascinating watch and it good to know for non-storm chaser's too. Fantastic work
A tornado formed less than a mile from my house in May, it was only an EF-2, but my house was either in the RFD or Ghost Train, because the winds were strong enough to shake my house. They were definitely straight-line, but they moved with the tornado. Initially, the winds were coming from the northwest, then as the tornado moved off to the northeast, the wind switched to a westerly direction, almost as if it was feeding the tornado. It scared the crap out of me, as I'm not a chaser and I've only seen stuff like that in chaser videos and on TV. The rain that was happening sounded a lot like the rain in the above video around 25:30 looked...it was coming down in sheets, it would rain super hard for a second or two, then the rain would stop for a second, then more rain, then stop. Thankfully, nobody was harmed in the local tornado, but I wouldn't have wanted to be caught outside in those kinds of winds. If I had to guess, the winds had to be close to 100mph, it blew shingles off of my brother's house, which is next to mine. It destroyed the local sawmill. I had a trash bag full of aluminum cans that were set to go to the recycling bin, it actually blew the bag up under my porch with such force that I had to empty the cans out to get the bag unstuck...there was no amount of force that I could have used to push them up under there like that. Wind is a strange thing and I hope I never experience anything like that again. It makes me appreciate what chasers do all that much more, putting their lives on the line so that folks can know where these tornadoes are located.
RFD stands rear flank downdraft. RFD is outflow wind found near where a tornado would be if there is one. The "ghost train" is a nickname for the tornado's rear inflow jet, a focused jet of wind that feeds the tornado. They're explained in detail with pictures in this video: ua-cam.com/video/bq0-QXXtOro/v-deo.html
You bring up something I have been saying ever since the May 2013 group of storms. Namely, that these chasers focus too much on the funnel (over there) as if that is the only part that is dangerous and don't watch the whole super cell that is rotating right above them. Often its the larger rotating part of the super-cell that becomes the mile wide tornado and could drop a vortex anywhere.
A few years ago, my dad decided to ignore my advice and took us to a ceremony for my brother while a storm was occurring, because I guess he didn't think it was that bad. I was dragged along, much to my chagrin, because the sky was obviously unhappy, clouds, green color, rotation, and all. I started filming the rotation since I was captive and might as well make use of my phone camera. On the way, the radio alert went off and told us to take shelter immediately. I like to think I was relatively composed in and of the fact that I didn't scream at my family for dragging me along. The moment we got to the location, ran for the bathroom to take shelter, yelling at the people rubbernecking all the way. We were lucky, the storm ultimately produced a very short-lived EF1 that impacted a single building on the opposite side of the city, and no one was hurt. My dad started listening to my advice more after that.
Excellent analysis. Very good job and very informative, Well done. This could definetely save the lives of storm chasers and residents, I wish more people knew about this video, especially in the Great Plains
Absolutely the best analysis I have ever seen. Also important for aspiring chasers looking to chase. There are quite a bit of chasers that have an aggressive or cocky style of chasing that can ultimately lead to their demise. Totally insightful & a must view for anyone period! Not just aspiring or current chasers! Especially those that travel the country all the time & pass through regions of the US well known for their tornadic weather. Thank you for putting this together!!!!
Tim was in a bad situation and that’s problems with chasing storms he wasn’t “cocky” in fact he had a conversation about it but he was most likely shocked and wanted to get the heck out of there and those are the risks with chasing storms if your caught in a bad situation it’s best to be safe than sorry. Yes the situation was avoidable but the chances are reduced on the fraction of shock/surprise a chaser has and how they deal with it it can be fatal when your in a bad situation like the twistex then the best thing is to stay calm and think instead of panicking not like Tim did but it could be the shock which I was already talking about
Skip, I'm watching this again in preparation for chase season. Thanks for taking the time and effort to share what you have learned with everyone else. This video might save a life or two someday. I know that I will be more likely to reconsider heading south or east and less likely to chase from the bear's cage after watching this video. And after chasing for 8 years I must admit I didn't know how dangerous the rear inflow jet could be.
amazing video, i’ve been so caught up in learning about the el reno tornado the past few days and this is by far the best (and most understandable) video i’ve seen on it yet
This video is amazing and the amount of effort put into it is obviously immense. I feel like if anyone could produce a 3D diagram/animation of the 5/31 El Reno Tornado showing the tornado position along with the chaser positions that it would be even more beneficial and educational. Thanks for this Skip!
Tim and Carl's mistake was, I believe, to underestimate the size of the tornado while laying probes. The spot they ended up getting caught in would have been perfect for a probe line had the tornado not been so much larger than everyone expected. Laying probes is probably THE most dangerous science task a spotter/chaser could undertake: Howie Bluestein abandoned TOTO in 1983 because he had his own Dan Robinson moment. But Tim kept the idea going, and he had real faith in probes, especially after Manchester (100mb drop in 5 seconds, a world record). He felt he could deploy his probes much faster than TOTO and thus had a better safety margin, which proved not to be the case. I'm guessing for future probe deployments we should design some kind of remote system to drop them out the back without having to stop. Having to get out and lug 40-lb probes out of the trunk of a compact Chevy Cobalt might well have cost them the time they needed to get away. Either way, they died for science... what a shame. In contrast, it's a real eye-opener to see the Mike Bettes TWC team's blunder, though, because it was so different. Not only did they do an inexpert and overly aggressive core punch on a rain-wrapped tornado simply to try and get $$$ footage for TV (not a smart move), then, disappointed that this was a non-photogenic rain-wrapped blob, CONTINUED to drive south through the bear's cage saying "Derrr, where is it? We must get closer!" until they literally T-boned the tornado headed eastbound. Bettes then repeatedly lumped his case in with the Samaras/Young team and acted like he'd been blindsided by the north turn and expansion, when in reality he'd stumbled into the circulation from the north while it was still heading basically due east. I'm surprised only one person ended up seriously injured (broken neck), but the whole thing falls directly in Mike Bettes' lap. As the team chief and most experienced man, he should have known better. Their speed as they ran south makes me suspect they weren't even trying to flee, just get closer, but that might just be my bias... panic/confusion is equally likely. Your call. Meanwhile, somewhere in the midst of it all, Skip and Brindley are perfectly documenting the whole catastrophe from a safe and reasonable distance. At the end, they're heroes too, I'd say. The best service to the dead is honesty, and this is the most honest analysis of El Reno thus published anywhere. Skip's the man.
Can't say for certain, but Paul was just a Photographer, and whilst his opinion would have been valued, it was likely Tim and Carl's call more than anything as they were the experts on Storm Chasing.
Sadly, your analysis seems spot on. I certainly hope a lot of chasers are taking a really close look at this and learning from the mistakes made that day, so they don't end up taking similar risks and end up becoming statistics for future chasers to learn from. My sincere condolences to the friends and families of those who didn't make it out that day. Safe chasing, folks.
It's way too simple to call Bettes' team's maneuver a "blunder". If you continue watching the video, They point out that the conventional wisdom at the time was to head "for the clear". That is exactly what they did - they were not purposely heading into the center of rotation in a blind pursuit of footage, even if that was their original intent. They were trying to flee when hit.
You're right that Bettes was trying to flee, but their maneuver was very much a colossal blunder. It was quite apparent while they were stopped during their broadcast which direction that tornado was moving, and again apparent that they were racing across its path and indeed directly into it while they were fleeing. I'm not sure why Bettes didn't simply stop or turn around, but I'm guessing he panicked and wasn't thinking rationally anymore, or this is just gross incompetence on his part. The knee jerk reaction to flee south is not conventional wisdom, it's a dangerous mistake that needs to be addressed head on.
I still think the Enhanced Fujita Scale is bullshit compared to the Original Fujita Scale. It shouldn't be measured based on the damage that it CAUSED, but rather on *How Much Damage it is CAPABLE OF CAUSING in the first place BEFORE IT HITS*. In which case, that can be determined by looking at it's Windspeed, it's Size, how fast it's moving while on the ground, etc.... By the Enhanced F-Scale's Faulty Logic, a tornado could have excess of 300 MPH Winds, but if the outer winds of it knock over a lawnchair and barely hit anything, that Tornado is automatically an EF-0. I'm sorry, but I'm calling SERIOUS bullshit on that one. >_> This isn't like the past where we didn't have the technology to determine the windspeeds of Tornadoes. We have ALL KINDS of Newer Technology to do that now. Compared to like the 70's and 80's? Getting Windspeed Readings from Tornadoes via Radar are MUCH easier to determine now a days. We've had Doppler Radars on Wheels since the 90's, and the technology for them has only gotten better and better as time passed. And now, it's almost become mainstreamed at this point. But regardless, this is a FANTASTIC Analysis here, Skip. Excellent job!
"And that is extremely easy to determine based on how fast the Windspeeds of a tornado is." That's the problem though. For the vast majority of tornadoes, we have no idea what the wind speeds are. You need a probe or a mobile radar to get those measurements, and those measurements only exist for a handful of tornadoes. Damage is currently the only consistent way to gauge a tornado's strength. The wind speed is inferred from the damage, not directly measured.
***** WackyModder84 They had given it a rating of EF5, but eventually downgraded it to an EF3 last year once they determined that only EF3 damage was done. The Enhanced Fujita Scale is a damage scale, based off of the damage done. It's used to estimate wind speeds since as Skip stated, there are no reliable ways to measure wind speeds on the vast majority of tornadoes. Therefore, a theoretical EF5 may not hit anything and get assigned a rating of EF0. I do believe that they should modify the scale to make exceptions for when reliable mobile radar data is obtained. However, at this point it's against the policy to rate tornadoes based solely upon mobile radar data.
***** I think it should've gotten an EF5 rating. The EF Scale currently doesn't allow it, though. I'm sure that the Norman NWS really wanted to rate it EF5. I think it's something that needs to be changed as long as there is reliable data on a given tornado, like El Reno. Another example of this is the Bennington, KS tornado. Mobile radar measured winds of 247 MPH, but it still only got an EF4 rating (which is higher than El Reno but still lower than what it potentially could've been).
***** Yes, but the Moore tornado is rated at EF5 with windspeeds of 210 MPH while the El Reno tornado is rated EF3 with windspeeds of 295 MPH. El Reno was clearly the stronger tornado, but it did not do as much damage because the area affected was mostly rural. As you said it's not always possible to measure the wind speed more reliable way of measuring the tornado's wind speed, though that could be many years away.
Mr. Talbot -- I live nowhere near tornado country, but I can now look up and see thunderstorms "going up like a bomb" even where I live. I have watched a ton of your videos, and find them among the most informative on the web -- and now, if I were to visit the Midwest or the South in the spring, I would know what to look for and the best ways of escape, in order to safeguard myself and others. Thank you for this unbelievably important public service, not just chasing but teaching the public about storms and especially supercells. Oh yes -- the videos are TREMENDOUS in terms of the chase as well! I've always loved weather, and I love good tornado videos!
First off I want to say this is one of the best edited videos I’ve seen, also 😢 for the chasers that lost their lives through this tornado and people who disliked this apparently want attention and doesn’t understand the reality of what happened this day
I had a nightmare some years ago that i was driving at night in the storm and suddenly thunder struck and revelead this massive tornado so close to me. Tornado itself wasnt so scary the fact that it was so hidden in darkness was. It was so terryfing to me that I remember every detail of that dream. You guys are heroes for chasing them updating their locations risking your lives to warn people so they can hide gathering info so we understand them better. Looking at these clouds i couldt even tell there was monster shrouded by rain.. Where i live we didnt have tornados at least from what i heard, and since like 2 years we have them every spring luckily we didnt get big one yet.
Thank you for your update on the previous version of this video, Skip. You are very well informed and give great information. I can only imagine how difficult both videos were to make due to the loss of the TWISTEX team. You do an excellent job and while you make chasing seem exciting, you also emphasize the dangerous side of it.
Correct me if I wrong, but another cause of why the El Reno tornado was such a chasing tragedy was because it's apparent distance (as in viewing estimation) seemed far, especially during its early stages, even though it was extremely close, mostly due to the fact that it had such a big wall cloud that there was a slight illusion of distance from the vertices. I don't know, I just have seen that with a lot of the El Reno tornado, people getting out of their cars to film during the beginning of the very powerful tornado. But great vid, I hope we can all learn from this (the video has also taught a lot to me myself).
+Random Guy Yes, misjudging scale and distance is a very common problem when storm chasing. There just aren't the familiar learned, visual cues that people can use to judge scale like they do with common everyday objects. Chasers were also misjudging what level of rotation they were looking at, with many fixated on a single subvortex thinking it was the main tornado, when the main tornado circulation occupied a much larger space.
Skip Talbot's Storm Chasing Chronicles Yup. The Hook Echo center and even the Debris field was miscalculated because the Supercell was so oblong shaped.
In Wichita Falls TX during the '79 Red River Outbreak, sixteen of the twenty five tornado impacted road deaths were people that left their homes to outrun the tornado which happened to come during rush hour traffic. Eleven of their homes were untouched. (Not clear if any shared a home). The deaths on the road in that one were the majority of the forty five killed in Wichita falls TX. Every video of this thing in 2013 evidenced how fast it was and how unpredictable was it's direction. This one is pretty damned proving of it. Excellent summations.
Thanks for your work here, both during and after, amazing. Clearly you show how much easier it is to make correct decisions when you keep a few miles away, simply because you can see the bigger picture. Although at 6:13pm you are very very close. Also, its very clear that in the four cases where vehicles were damaged; that they didn't actually get hit by the tornado, they drove directly into its path; more like "storm-interceptors" than "storm-chasers". Yes, details in hind-sight are 20-20, but when someone is too close to see the big picture, they are just too damn close. Additional information about some of the other team's history of getting away with risky decisions, like "punching the core" or "slicing the hook", likely produced a false confidence, that ended up with consequences down the road, especially since every storm is at least a little different. The actions of that Weather Channel team looked much more suicidal, than scientific. However, I do have sympathy for property owners and others who could not get out of the way. Sometime in the future, if its possible, it would be cool to watch Infared video synchronized with visual footage showing the currents of heat that fuel these awesome engines.
Very much enjoyed this. The best, and most in-depth thing I have ever seen on the subject. Your graphics are out of this world. I will most certainly share this with my local amateur radio/NWS spotters. Thank you!!!
Hello Skip Thank you for the work you've done here. I have two questions: 1. From watching the graphics it seems that the tornado widened considerably at one point. The town of El Reno itself seemed considerably smaller so I wondered had the storm hit El Reno would it have engulfed the entire city? 2. you stated that media recommended citizens leave their homes to drive away from the storm which I always thought was extremely dangerous advice. Do you know if there were any consequences for the person/persons responsible for the mass exodus and traffic jams that put more people in harm's way? THANKS
If the tornado hit El Reno directly, there would have been widespread damage of varying degrees across most of the town. Keep in mind that the intense subvortices packing the violent winds were much smaller than the 2.6 mile wide parent tornado. So if EF5 damage occurred, it probably would have been confined to a fairly small area, with a path maybe a few hundred feet wide at most. I'm not sure if there were any ramifications for those who called for a south bound evacuation of areas in the path. I'm guessing probably not, despite criticism from many and a study from Gabe Garfield of NWS Norman that estimated the catastrophic consequences if that tornado had impacted the gridlocked evacuating traffic: potentially hundreds of deaths.
@@skiptalbot Skip, I would like to thank you for making this video because I was impressed by the work you put into it and I was left feeling very informed about how bad the El Reno, Oklahoma tornado was and how to be safe. One necessity for storm chasers is a go-bag containing a fresh change of clothes, pajamas, a first aid kit, a toiletries kit (shampoo, conditioner, body wash, a shower brush, feminine hygiene products, nail clippers, tweezers, shaving cream or gel, shaving razors and aftershave, deodorant, and body spray,) an eyeglass case, eyeglass lens cleaner, glasses or contacts, sunglasses, contact lens solution, and any necessary medications.
Thank you for all the effort and research that you put into this excellent video report! I think your analysis of this tragic event should be a mandatory part of the NWS Spotter Training program. Your insights into the many hazards associated with tornadoes are valuable and critical to properly evaluating the threats and escape options for spotters, chasers and the general general public alike. Amazing work!
Great work here Skip. I just want to voice my sadness for Tim ,Paul and Carl. Also for the other chaser that died that day. One thought I did have in relation to escaping the circulation if you were to get stuck, just after viewing the issues that the cars had driving into the anti clockwise motion, with the direction of travel against the wind, you are adding extra forces against the car, that would double the difficulty, not to mention traction on the ground and small motors working etc. For example If Tim and co were to just stop, and turn around and use the wind in the rear assistance and not a hindrance. Not only would it not have slowed the progress, it would have assisted in pushing the car. I am not by any means a chaser, but what I do know well is cars and handling and skill levels of drivers as a race car driver myself. What I also notice a lot is the skill level of the drivers, what I can suggest also is advanced driving courses. No video I have seen, shows an adept car control. You need to know how to handle a car in adverse situations, When the car is moving underneath you, you need to know what that feels like and how to react accordingly, this should not be a thought process, but a natural reaction on how to handle it and how much throttle to put on to keep momentum and not just bury yourselves. Also roll cages and 4 point harnesses wouldn't go astray either. These are your lifeline and you all drive around in 2 wheel drive low powered cars or big slow vans and pickups. They are not agile at all. What you should have is a little all wheel drive rally car, WRX or the like with cage and harnesses and some knobby tyres. You are basically rallying half the time....in slow under-powered 2 wheel drives with bald tyres and things like that, just a thought. Keep up the great work :)
Thanks for the words and suggestions. We want to educate chasers on how to avoid driving into the tornado in the first place, because at that point it really doesn't matter what you're driving. The analogy I like is that of a railroad crossing. We educate drivers to wait at the crossing guards, not race across as they're going down, and to not stop on the tracks... rather than preparing drivers for impacts with trains by giving them helmets, harnesses, and fast cars that can beat the train. Tornadoes are trains. Once you've got a roadworthy vehicle that can safely cruise on a wet highway, any additional effort and investment would be far better served in learning safe chasing practices and escape route planning.
Very cool comment, a different, but valid perspective. I agree with what skip says about not being there in the first place; however in case of a misjudgment your idea could make a huge difference!
I was watching another stormchaser video yesterday; it might've been Skip's. Anyway, the chaser said that he doesn't go anywhere near OKC anymore because of the risk of a traffic jam from too many people and too many of them being amateurs or local gawkers. After watching some of these videos, I can understand why he feels that way.
Brilliant analysis. My supervisor was in Spencer, SD Saturday Night May 30, 1998 when the F4 tornado struck I remember seeing horizontal lighting all evening in Sioux Falls. At a back-yard party in Spencer, they saw the storm form and had enough time to get into the house, down the stairs and close the back door, as they did a cinder block hit one member of the group. They all made it safe alive. Their neighbor did not close the back door in time and was sucked out. Six residents die in all.
Hi Skip. I have a three questions; first, what goes through your mind when you observe a tornado this size? Knowing the death and destruction it is causing and will cause. I can't even imagine. Second, trees. What causes them to look as if they exploded? I heard that the air pressure difference from within the tree and outside of it causes this damage but that doesn't sound quite right too me. The air pressure difference can't be that significant, can it? Any ideas? And, lastly, at 1:15:38 when you said 'holy cow' what, exactly, were you reacting too? Thanks
+SkyWardDude 1. We don't know how destructive or deadly a tornado will be when we're observing it. On rare occasions we can see that the tornado is hitting structures. The mood and priorities of the chase instantly flip when we encounter damage or injuries, however. Rather than focusing on our priorities and chase experience, the victims become a priority. This is rare though, and of the 100+ tornadoes that I've documented, I believe less than 10 were killers, and of those only a couple I was in a position where I encountered damage or injuries. It's usually well after the event that we learn of the impact. Most tornadoes I document are short lived and stay over open terrain. With this particular tornado we were fairly sure it had missed El Reno, but also knew it had the potential to be violent. We were actually relieved afterwards knowing it had missed both El Reno and OKC and weren't aware of the fatalities until at least a day later. 2. The trees are blown apart and basically sandblasted by debris. You're right that the pressure drop does not explode trees. Trees that can stand up to a violent tornado usually have all of their branches removed and are debarked from the debris sandblasting, leaving a naked white stump. 3. I'm reacting to the size of the tornado and the appearance and motion of that subvortex that's orbiting the parent circulation. Again we had no idea of the destructive impact at the time or even how large this tornado was. We suspected it was at least a mile wide, but had no idea it would be deemed the record holder.
Skip, you one of my favorite storm chasers (if not THE favorite). You videos give priceless insight and your chase videos are awesome - you keep your cool and know how to read these unpredictable supercells. I thoroughly enjoy your videos and take alot from them....especially when I drive through the lower midwest and can take cues from storm structures and actively avoid the worst part of these storms when trying to get around them. Keep up the awesome work!!!
Thanks to Mr. Talbot and his associates for producing that video. thanks for keeping the sensationalism to a minimum on this one, and for making an active effort to provide sound advisement.
Want to know the strength of a tornado? Ask the people who’s homes were wiped off the map into piles of splinters. This video is amazing, I had to watch it twice because it was so interesting. As a trained spotter, people need to heed this video down to the last word. This one gets 5 stars!
I think it helps that ones like this are very rare, and that due to land use patterns, they usually hit in the middle of fields and such. Populated areas are dots on a map, so all that rural space around them is a much more probable place for a tornado to hit. Plus, having grown up in the area, I can tell you that most people in the area just a little crazy, even if only crazy stubborn
I have to agree with everyone else's comments. This is the best analysis of any weather event I have ever seen. Great work Skip and thank you for creating this video and providing this information. It is not only very interesting and intriguing but will surely save lives in the future.
Talbot's commentary here, in regards to Samaras, is in direct contradiction to the "he was the safest chaser out there" narrative I've heard in every other story on this tragedy. The fact that Talbot actually gives examples to back up his assertion that Samaras was somewhat recklessly aggressive in his chase style lends much credence to his critique.
Kevin Bailey I agree but I wouldn't go as far as to say Samaras was reckless. His motives for chasing, including placing probes in the paths of tornadoes, led to the dangerous positioning and aggressive chase style he engaged in. However, he certainly was concerned with the safety of his crew and carefully considered his actions. It's a media exaggeration and "feel good narrative" to claim he was the safest chaser out there. He wasn't at all. For the sake of safety of other chasers and spotters, this should be pointed out, and not left to statements like "well, if it happened to the safest and most careful, it could happen to me." There are lessons in safety to learn from this tragedy, and errors were made that need to addressed and used as examples. Otherwise we'll see chasers and spotters continue to make these mistakes with more deaths in the future.
Kevin Bailey i agree with skip his motavition was to get a probe in a tornado so this means he would have to get close then backa way but in certain situations he would back away and not go for it he would take a risk and he knew it with a son and a wife he had alot to loose and sadly he did not relize what could happen i have a theroy taht he thought the tornado would contiue to go left he nocticed that it turned left and maybe he thought it would contiue moving north and he could get out of the way sadly the tornado stayed where it was and hit his crew so it could of been avoided but i would not call him recless tahts not a good word to choose he was teh safest
Crystal Lane He wasn't the safest at all. He was brilliant, and he took risks in the name of his science. I have nothing for respect for him, but there's no reason to pretend he was other than what he was: a brilliant meteorologist, who gave his life doing what he loved.
+Kevin Bailey Sorry I got the wrong idea I'm sorry. I'm a storm chaser I started chasing in 08 and we all take risks. Its our job is to take risks to get a probe or something inside tornadoes to save people , increase warning times. But when this happens , when a chaser dies it makes you think. Epically for him he and his son and carl I met numerous times and they knew what they had to do and they did it right. It just makes you think everyday is a risk.
Great video Skip, thanks for putting this together. I'd make this mandatory viewing for anyone wanting to start out chasing. One of the subtle things that comes across in this video is the need to be cool, calm and collected especially when in severe danger. Thanks a heap :)
I have watched several videos of yours and am seriously considering getting into chasing storms. I live in Andover and saw the ef3 tornado in May of 2022 and it was incredible.
Skip: I'm a recent subscriber. Your explainations are better than I have encountered in a classroom. Thank you very much for all that you've contributed to people looking to further Tornado research to develop better warning systems for the public. You make a slight reference to the National Weather Service revising their standards for rating cyclones/tornadic events. For all of us that study and watch videos like yours and other chasers, we all know that the El Reno tornado (40 minutes long and 2.6 miles in diameter with winds upwards of 280mph with muliple satellite tornadoes) was an EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale regardless of the measurable damage it created for its actual EF-rating of EF-3. While I understand, and somewhat agree, with the National Weather Service's definition of destructive force of a tornado; I still think that its "potential" destructive force can and should be rated with a similar, if not exact, rating as its "actual" or kinetic destructive force. I've tried over the last few months to review and find if any changes to these ratings have occured to no avail. Perhaps, in lou of the 5-year anniversary of El Reno, you can shed more light on this subject for all of us.
Not aware of any further work being done to revise tornado rating scales, but someone could be doing it. Damage is the only thing we have to measure a tornado's force. We currently have no way to get wind speed readings at ground level in tornadoes. Until somebody comes up with a way to do that, we're going to have to stick with a damage based scale like the Enhanced Fujita.
The downgrade to EF3 is a joke--an absolute joke. There was plenty of support for EF5 in the data and the evidence. The NWS just had people doing the assessing that have no concept of nuance or context. It's an embarrassment to the NWS that they downgraded such an obvious EF5.
Kevin Bailey rember tornadoes are not measured by wind speeds there measured by damage there might bea tornado that is 2 miles wide and had 300 mph wind speeds but it can even be a ef0 aslong a sit doesnt hit anything
Crystal Lane This isn't even CLOSE to true. A tornado does NOT have to hit structures to be rated above an EF0. A tornado 2 miles wide, with 300 mph wind speeds should always be an EF5. Vegetative damage can lead to such ratings quite easily. If you really think a 300 mph tornado that is 2 miles wide would ever be rated EF0, you should probably read up a bit on tornadoes before commenting again.
Kevin Bailey You both make good points. The largest, most extreme tornado imaginable should always be rated EF5. Crystal is right, however, and because of the pitfalls of using a damage based scale, this isn't always the case. It certainly is possible for a two mile wide tornado packing 300 mph winds to be rated EF0. Since the scale is entirely damage based, it simply has to track over empty terrain where the is nothing to damage. There are large areas in the Great Plains where a tornado can track without hitting ANY damage indicators that the EF scale uses. When that happens, the tornado is almost always rated EF0, regardless of how intense its winds actually are. I've seen several "under rated" tornadoes, most notably in eastern Colorado, western Kansas, and the Nebraska sandhills where there are not only no structures, but not even any trees that they can use for damage assessment. The 28 March 2007 Bird City, KS F2 was likely violent based on visuals we had. The 17 June 2014 Coleridge EF3 was also likely violent. A great example though is the "Crazy Farmer" tornado of June '98 that was very obviously a high end violent tornado, but was rated F2 simply because it didn't hit much. I don't doubt there have been several EF5 *capable* tornadoes that were rated EF0 or not rated at all, simply because of a lack of evidence. It's not even possible to get a 5 rating using the standard DIs of the EF scale without structure impacts, as the high end vegetation DIs usually result in an EF3 rating. Another thing to keep in mind is that a two mile wide tornado is not packing 300 mph winds across its full area. The most intense winds are confined to much smaller and short duration subvortices. I'm not sure if either of you were inferring that, but you should keep in mind that almost all tornadoes that produced EF5 or F5 damage did it for only a small portion of their overall damage path.
***** Thanks for the reply, Skip. Even over flat terrain where, say, only a shelter belt of trees was hit, wouldn't 300 mph winds leave some ground scouring and other vegetative artifacts that would allow it to be properly rated? And are wind speed measurements NEVER used to aid in such ratings?
Kevin Bailey This is the kind of terrain I'm talking about: 2.bp.blogspot.com/-0Lb6F9i8vz8/VVKr6e3RCHI/AAAAAAAAF18/LP3VKGXHFnA/s1600/_JBE7662-e%2Bcopy.JPG There are no trees or structures for miles here, only grass and bare clay. Tornadoes, regardless of how large and powerful they might be, tracking through this terrain are always rated EF0 due to current limitations in the EF scale. Ground scouring is not used for EF ratings, but I believe it has been cited for some original F scale ratings. Fujita cited it for the 1990 Plainfield F5. It's probably just a matter of there not being reliable or consistent measures of ground scouring to incorporate yet. Stuff like soil type, looseness, wetness, vegetation cover, etc are going to amplify or prevent scouring marks. Radar data is not used when assigning an EF rating, and this is at the heart of the El Reno rating debate. The Norman office rated El Reno based off the radar data, but NWS policy is that the tornado must be rated based on damage, probably to keep a consistent rating database and statistics since radar measured winds may not correlate well to damage inferred winds. Keep in mind the radar is measuring winds above ground level and the duration and coverage of these winds are significant factors. It's unknown how these variables affect structures being impacted at ground level. There is a push for adding this data into the rating system, but this is ultimately why the tornado was downgraded. We simply don't know enough yet about how these radar measured winds translate to the tornado's actual ability to cause damage.
At 1:08:00 "we're making good speed; we got great roads"...while the tornado is gaining. Pretty sobering. Thanks for turning this into such a valuable learning and teaching opportunity.
This legend is still responding to comments of skepticism 7 years later. This level of dedication is truly something to appreciate out of any individual.
Skip was always someone who had the patience of a glacier and the brains of a novel prize winning genous.
@@shep9231it's not like he's inactive either, he still chases and uploads content about it.
You and Pecos Hank are by far the BEST storm chasers in my opinion. You both describe the storms so any person can understand how it works and I think that by far goes a long way in saving lives. Giving survival tips is also a great addition you both share with your viewers. Ive talked to do many through my years and know how often people have a differing understanding of safety and how they understand tornadoes and such which leads to many sharing unfounded and dangerous advice. Any that watch your videos are going to be who informed in both safety and understanding these storms. I can't count the people that have the thought that once a tornado passes one is safe and no worry is needed but your footage shows this isn't truth. Keep up the fantastic job, I'm subbed to your channel for life. Pray you stay safe out there.
It's sucking really hard it's coming right on top of me🤣 word of Pecos hank look up scariest tornado on his site
I AGREE!
Agreed.
Totally agree. Not only is Hank a great chaser, he doesn' t hesitate stopping and checking on people that he comes across. He stops and checks houses for victims. It's also fun to watch him with whatever critter crosses his path, always getting them out of the danger of the road.
I love Hank and totally agree that his videos are educational and well as entertaining (love his personality-and he’s funny!). Thank you for this helpful comment-I’ll be sure to check out more of Skip’s videos! Stay safe, everyone! 🌪❤️
Watching Tim's route plotted with the storm...it's chilling. I can't imagine what was going through their minds at the moment of realization that this thing was not going to let them go. Terrible, terrible day.
I agree. Hearing those birds chirp- when just three miles away is death, destruction, and chaos- is also super creepy.
+Christi G I know.....Such a happy sound in contrast to such a grim event playing out.....
Tim and his team decided to veer east for _one last shot_ to place those probes before getting out. If they had just cut their losses, they might still be here today.
He was a scientist to the end, but you HAVE to know when to fold 'em. You can live to chase another day. Don't gamble with your life.
Do you think that he thought he was in imminent danger and that he was making a risky move, or he thought he would be OK right there? I like to imagine he just misjudged it and until the last second he thought it was going to be OK. Tim was damn good - perhaps the best. It's a real shame, but it shouldn't of done what it did when it did it. Just goes to show you how small the margin for error really is. He deserved better than to die on the side of a shitty muddy road in Oklahoma.
@@GravyHucker The probe laying game is the most dangerous form of tornado science imaginable. It's why Howie Bluestein gave up on the famous TOTO back in back in 1983. Just too many damn close calls, including one in 1982 (unspecified which month, but I'd love to hear about it) when they zigged as the tornado zagged and basically had a Dan Robinson moment (except 31 years earlier!). Dr. Bluestein concluded it was simply too effin dangerous, and all the money got put into DoW.
Tim was the only guy still doing that kind of work. Regardless of anything else, the tornado still has a minimum range of safety, but he believed that by cutting deployment time down, he could work with smaller safety margins. At Manchester he was right, and recorded a world record; at El Reno he was wrong, and paid with his life. I'm reminded of Dr. David Johnston who died observing Mount Saint Helens. There is a certain fatalism associated with the sciences of the extreme.
What's so unbelievable about the wind speeds of this tornado was that when they found the Samaras vehicle, the two seats where the occupants were sucked out of still had the seatbelts buckled. The forces required to do that is unfathomable to even think about.
Not even gigachad could face this monster 👹
Crazy
This is false only Tim was wearing a seatbelt
@@lovontae8316 not true. Carl young's seatbelt was still buckled when they recovered their destroyed vehicle. His body was recovered half a mile from the sedan. This indicates that he was buckled in when the tornado hit the car, but the force of the suction on the vehicle sucked his body up and out of the seatbelt. The seatbelt stayed buckled because the body was pulled out in a way that did not break the buckled belt. It can be theorized that Paul also had his belt on, but it was broken while his body was ripped out of the car and thrown half a mile into a creek. Also, Tim, the only one found in the car, was not wearing a shirt or shoes when he was recovered. I think this gives an idea of the force that acted upon their bodies when the funnel hit them. His shirt and shoes were literally sucked off of his body while the car was carried, thrown, and smashed hundreds of yards by the tornado.
Jesus…this sounds like one of my clients that survived a direct hit during the horrific tornado that struck Tuscaloosa Alabama on April 27, 2011. She was at home alone when the tornado came through Concord Alabama which is a suburb just west of Birmingham. The only square foot of her house that survived was one tiny closet that she took cover in. The rest of the house was completely obliterated. She said that the suction forces when the tornado struck felt like her skin was being ripped off. She and her husband showed me a picture of what the damage looked like and the tiny void that she was in. It is almost impossible for your mind to wrap itself around how she could have survived it.
going down the rabbit hole and finding a 9 year old absolute gem of a video… thank you
Excellent video. It really shows that there are some problems with the enhanced fujita scale when one of the most intense tornadoes ever recorded is down graded to a EF3, They really need to start taking recorded wind speeds into account. If memory serves me this tornado had winds recorded very close to the ground by mobile radar at around 300 miles an hour. By all accounts aside for the lack of structures for it to damage in its path, this was one of the most powerful tornadoes to have been documented to date. Rating it an EF3 seems really silly when we have access to such solid wind speed data indicating it was so much stronger than that. It really illustrates the problem with using a scale that only can take into account damage.
I have to disagree. The Enhanced Fujita Scale is meant to measure the actual ground-level impact of a tornado, and nothing more. It was never meant to measure size or wind speed because those are just numbers after the storm is over, and frankly just numbers used by lay meteorologists to dick-wave in arguments about the "biggest" tornado. The damage on the ground is the sole thing with lasting consequences, which makes it, in my opinion, the most important thing to measure.
@@jeremiahmiller6431 That may be the case, but the damage indicators used in the EF scale were a way of quantifying the strength of a given tornado by translating the observed damage into projected/estimated wind speeds, and in fact Dr Josh Wurman even once admitted that one of the biggest shortcomings of the EF scale is that it can only way it can be applied is if the tornado actually impacts something and leaves damage. We now have reliable methods of obtaining wind speeds at nearly ground level, and since the Fujita Scale was originally created to determine the strength of a given tornado (using damage indicators as reliable radar data back then was hard to come by), if we have reliable radar and wind speed data of a given tornado then those readings should be taken into account even if the tornado does nothing but churn across an open field.
Melting Sky You are absolutely right. Wind speed had everything to do with why there were fatalities and injuries. It’s not enough to just look at the damage to static structures. The scale needs to take wind speed into account because of the proximity of dynamic objects like cars and trucks. How close is too close? A scale adjusted to account for wind speed might help define a quantifiable safe distance for both chasers and motorists.
@@gmlaster Don't we measure the "potential" destructiveness of nuclear weapons anyway? It's not like we blow up a city block every time we test them.
If the Fujitsu scale directly translates to tornadoes then why don't we also have a potential damage scale as well, since this would have easily been the most devastating tornado in recent history were it to have traveled further north.
@@jeremiahmiller6431
Actually, you are incorrect. The enhanced fujita scale's entire purpose is to estimate the strength of the winds in a given tornado. It has nothing to do with how much actual damage a tornado did and everything to do with the quality of that damage. For instance a long track EF2 tornado over a populated area can easily cause far more overall damage than an EF5 that hits a single well built concrete and steel reinforced shack in an open field. The EF5 in this case gets it's rating for the quality of the damage it did which is that it flattened a single well built concrete structure indicating a higher estimated wind speed. The far more destructive EF2 that smashed hundreds of mobile homes and killed people similarly gets its rating also due to the quality of the damage rather than the quantity which is completely irrelevant on this scale. The EF scale doesn't take into account how much damage a tornado does but rather the type of damage it does.
The entire point of the enhanced fujita scale is to quantify tornado strength aka estimate their wind speeds which is why it is incredibly outdated and short sighted to discount actual wind speed measurements from a scale whose entire purpose is to estimate said wind speed. The EF rating of a tornado is most useful in statistical analysis of severe weather which is why it should include any data that would help make these estimates more accurate. The scale is outdated and reflects an age when things like radar estimates of ground winds in a tornado were not possible.
Mike Morgan should have been fired for telling people to flee like that. Every other channel I turned to started talking about how evacuation could cause traffic and lead to more problems. A mom and her daughter died on the way home from gymnastics and the traffic caused them to be killed. The Oklahoma media then blamed the fraction of tornado chasers for this. I'm glad you brought this up, almost no other video talks about it.
Morgan is indeed a problem, because he's a Hollywood ham and an idiot, but the real problem is that emergency policy hasn't caught up with the public's access to information.
In the old days of county-sized warnings you could get away with the "everybody except trailers and cars, stay where you're at!" policy. Because honestly, back then, you couldn't guarantee the existence of the tornado, much less it's path, so people had a strong likelihood of wasting their time in a panic, or, worse, driving from a safe area into a danger path. People weren't likely to independently act on the tiny information they had, so the biggest problem remained getting them out of their cars and trailers, where most of the fatalities happen from even low-end tornadoes.
Nowadays, anybody who understands radar and Enhanced Fujita can tell when a likely EF4/5 is bearing down on them. Not that this happens frequently, but when it does happen, especially in the OKC area, people are savvy to it right away: how are you supposed to tell somebody who KNOWS their house won't survive an EF3 that they're a horrible fool if they take 5 minutes of their 30 minutes of lead time and simply drive north or south and wait it out? You're condemning a certain portion of people to inevitable death and injury to prevent the chaos of everybody trying to do it.
A single person making a quick, informed, calm decision to evacuate is (potentially) being smart. Chasers, after all, make those kinds of judgment calls multiple times while tracking an active tornado. But an entire city full of people stampeding blindly this way and that is a nightmare with potentially greater casualties than the tornado itself, and certainly greater vulnerability.
THAT is the problem we need an answer to, the divorce between the "best advice for the herd" and "best advice for the weather-wise and ready". Because that gap is RAPIDLY shrinking and until we figure something out, there's going to be lives lost and angry people either way.
Was he telling people to evacuate or was he offering a poorly worded, unclear tip to people caught in vehicles? Either way, it was a royal fck up.
@@orangejoe204 VERY well put; thank you.
Extraordinarily Basic The OG weatherman Gary England also told viewers to go south
@@orangejoe204 would *HAVE*. In what world would "would of" make any sense whatsoever
Easily the best and most important tornado video on UA-cam. As a frequent driver on interstates throughout the country, I've had to make decisions myself on which way to go, to avoid storms. I don't know how many times I've had to refer to my radar on my phone, and even maps of an area, to determine if I should zoom past an approaching storm, or stop where i am and let the storm pass.
This video will not only save the lives of your fellow storm chasers, it will save the lives of ordinary citizens like myself and others. Excellent job man.
This!! I used to travel for work and used Radar Scope all the time to help me dodge large hail. That radar saved me on more than one occasion! 🌪
I completely agree. The best I have seen.
This is the best analysis of El Reno that I’ve ever seen. Thank you for being very humble and not grandstanding like some others have done in the past. My deepest condolences go out to all those affected in the pursuit of science and the love of nature.
Hello Skip, i'm a viewer from the South American "Tornado Alley" . 7 years ago, there was an EF3 tornado in the small town of Xanxerê, which is my neighbor. Thousands of people were left homeless in Xanxerê, Ponte Serrada and Passos Maia (three cities close to mine). I feel very lucky that I wasn't hit by a tornado and so is my mother, she teaches at a school that was hit by the tornado. Even today, cases of extreme storms, cyclones and tornadoes are common here. Fantastic video, congratulations!
At around 1:16:38 in the video, this is where the tornado reaches its maximum intensity and peak width (6:27pm). Notice how the shape of it doesn’t even look like a tornado, it looks like the entire mesocyclone is on the ground. You guys kept a safe distance from this monster considering you were far south of the circulation. Great video!
This is the best explanation I’ve seen about the unusual nature of the El Reno tornado. Tim Samaris was my storm chasing hero. I was DEVASTATED when he passed. Thank you for this.
Tim was a good man...
Thanks! I'm watching this 9 years later - it's still fasinating!
I can’t imagine how many invisible hours work went into this. Really solid explanation, no fluff. Looking forward to your next video.
I've watched this presentation before and I still think it is one of the absolute BEST, most informative video's to date. Upon hearing of Tim, Paul, and Carl's deaths, I wondered how them, of any chaser, got themselves in a situation like that. Especially because of their careful style of chasing, but this explains it much more clearly. I was crushed to hear about their demise, being a weather enthusiast, I looked up to Tim. But I think it is especially important to show others with less experience what is possible, even with the most training and experience possible. I get some pretty incredible comments when I'm overly urgent on a day like this, where strong storms are possible, and I'm calling everyone in my phone book to be sure they are aware, and even more so when an warning is issued. Most of my friends and family don't have enough knowledge to even know the difference between a watch and a warning so I make it my job to be the one to provide the urgency. They tend to laugh at my obsession with tornadoes, but I always say, when this town is flattened, I don't want to be the only one still living. Excellent, excellent presentation!
God bless you for being the voice of reason, and caring to make those you know to be aware. Tornadoes are not child's play!
What happened, is that they're Chevy Colbalt was hit by sub vortecies. They TRIED to get out of its way, but the Tornado suddenly changed direction and descended right on top of them. I don't think Tim did anything wrong. They were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
R.I.P Twistex team.
Very well done. But basically it seems boil down to this. "Have a valid, reasonable escape route and use it rather than lose it." When in doubt, get the F out!
you need to get funded hope it happens for you
Skip, you are the voice of reason in all this. If I was to ever chase I would go with you. You're very smart and safe. This is such good work.
He also has a nice voice to listen too lol
Sir, this is one of thee most comprehensive tornado videos I have *ever* seen. You deserve a medal for real. I actually watched this twice all the way through. We need more people out there like you. Thank you for giving such a detailed view of this record-breaker. RIP to Tim Samaras and his son and collegue. They didn't die in vain.
I was about two miles away from this thing.
A chunk of hail came through our ceiling and caused a leak, we could see the wall cloud as well.
Was honestly terrifying.
It was incredibly unstable to the point, hail was the size of softballs. Falling at a high rate of speed.
You're very lucky.
crazy its been 7 years, this is still my favorite tornado video. It's equally amazing that you're still answering trolls and critics in the comments after all this time; a true educator.
The work you did here is amazing.
This is one on the finest film evaluations on tornadoes I have ever seen. Your attention to detail on every aspect of a lifespan of the El Reno tornado is not only amazing but terrifying at the same time. I have survived a tornado impact in 1980 and have always wanted to understand the how and why these forces of nature occur. This is Fine, detailed work that separates fact from fiction and is unmatched & will save lives in future storm chasing endeavors. Kudos to you and your team on the film. Thank you for sharing. Efren Villa, McKinney TX.
Absolutely the best video on chaser safety I have ever seen. I think that every chaser should watch this video if they are serious about it. Glad I subscribed. Keep em coming and thanks!
I heartily agree!
Well done, Skip Talbot. I’m not a storm chaser. I want to understand tornadoes better after seasoned professionals lost their lives. This is the most educational video on tornadoes & safety that I have seen. Thank you for compiling the information available to you in this way. I hope I never get surprised by a tornado while in my car, but I will be able to make safer decisions thanks to your work to relay this information so clearly & in layman’s terms. Keep being safe out there & thanks for keeping people informed about severe weather.
On May 31st, my dad heard the weather alert and panicked. He forced me into his truck and drove out toward Union City. His truck does not have a functioning radio and he didn’t grab anything. We could saw the mesocyclone about the same time it reached maximum width. As it disappeared the rain followed us as we drove East. Without a radio, and with poor visibility, I was absolutely terrified the tornado was still on the ground and could appear at any second. My neighbor begged me to get into her storm shelter, but I was only twelve and elected to stay with my dad. It was stupid, he was stupid and he could’ve misjudged the situation further and drove into the tornado. I hate myself for going with him to this day. What makes it worse? My mom and brother were in the hospital in downtown OKC and we couldn’t reach each other. I still have bad anxiety attacks when tornado watches or warnings come anywhere close to my area. I feel so lucky the tornado roped-out before reaching my house and my entire family was fine.
COMPLETE that is a very lucky thing but it’s good you realize it and everyone who watched this (hopefully) learned that avoiding the path of this storm while using your escape route is a must you never know the risks I hope you and your family are ok
Dont hate yourself
Much love, dude. Don’t despair. Nature spared you and your family that day and the best you can do is to just be more prepared in the future.
At 12 years old you were not responsible in the least .
Forgive me for asking but why were your mom and your brother hospitalized in downtown Oklahoma City? Were they by any chance injured in the tornado that hit Shawnee, Oklahoma on May 19 or the one that hit Moore, Oklahoma on May 20?
An interesting thing I noted from the numbers: The Weather Network crew actually came *closer* to the center of the tornado itself than Samaras did. They came within 0.11 or so whereas the Samaras vehicle was about 0.14. This just goes to show that Skip is 100% correct in saying that it doesn't matter where you are within the "Bear's Cage", the winds are too unpredictable to unequivocally state that any area is more or less safe than any other area.
I heard it was a satellite that caught the Twistex car :(
I assumed it was Mike Bettes who made the decision to get closer because before the weather channel he worked at our local news station as the lead meteorologist and he nearly died on live television when he was swept away in a flash flood after he decided to anchor himself and step into the river to show how fast the current was. I think he gets so excited about extreme weather events and has no concept on danger.
@George-ue9qc Yes, the "Internal/Interior sub vortex. A sub vortex that rotates near or inside the main condensation funnel. This sub vortex moved at speeds of 80 meters per second, or 180 miles per hour. As the Weather Channel Crew/Tornado Hunt Crew raced south on 81, they came extremely close to the center, and Mike Bettes' GMC Yukon was directly hit by the sub vortex and his Yukon took off like an aircraft described by the driver of their lead vehicle, Kevin Parrish. At the same time, Dan Robinson and Twistex crossed 81 as the tornado was taking a left turn. The interior sub vortex was also moving north. As Twistex and Dan were engulfed by the Bears cage, the sub vortex took a large loop just west of Alfadale road. It headed east as it exited its loop. The sub vortex took a 90 degree turn to the north directly towards Tim, Paul, and Carl. The vortex took a small loop over their Chevy Cobalt. It tumbles over 5 times.
This is the best weather analysis video I have ever seen. Thank you so much. Both of the OKC tornadoes were tragedies, and it is important to understand why they occurred.
Thank you so much for this analysis. I am visual n I finally can see and understand exactly what happened that day. Everyone's position in relation to where the storm was. It's taken 5 yrs of study n trying to fill in the blanks from posted video n news reports. Bravo sir, n once again, thank you!!!
This is such a needed breakdown, there were so many unknowns right after this event you did an ECSTATICALLY AMAZING JOB the breakdown of the other chasers locations and the way you presented this is a GEM IN CONTENT POSTED A DECADE AGO ESPECIALLY!I feel strongly that everyone lost that day would be very proud of the factual details , the huge effort put into editing something this well especially back then especially team TWISTEX. RIP gents, was yesterday 11 years ago now rest easy.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to produce this excellent documentary/analysis. I believe that every high school student in the Alley needs to see the first part pertaining to the mass evacuation and the wisdom of instead sheltering in place.
Your dedication to clear thought, analysis, and well-crafted presentations is both admirable and a gift to all who view your videos. You are a significant asset of the chaser community.
still watching this in 2016, and I have to say, the colors are so powerful to me. I have never seen a sky that dark from a storm before. This was so big and powerful that it takes my breath away. It had to have been hard to read looking at it because way too many professionals got caught in it. This entire storm just looks nasty. Every part of it.
I live in Missouri and we have storms that will make 2 in the afternoon look like it was midnight outside. Most common throughout Mid spring to late summer. The thing that probably surprised me most is the fact the storm didn't make the sky look darker.
Watch Pecos Hank's video "The Darkest Day" about the 2011 El Reno tornado (almost exactly two years before this one, and arguably a more powerful tornado). That is one dark daytime sky.
An outstanding forensic analysis and presentation that we will share with our with family of spotters and chasers. From one Skip to another; Mr. Talbot continues his cutting edge skill of sharing tornado science and chaser safey. His ongoing efforts deserve recogition and appreciation. Skip Voros- Milwaukee Area Skywarn Assoc.
What is it with tornado chasers named Skip? :-P
MilwaukeeSkywarn,this was a great video,and all the 1's ive seen about this monster,and surprised it didnt hit OKC,El Reno or what was left of Moore after the may 20th monster,but being im from wisconsin,in west bend norht of where you are,what reminds me is until i found this video,no chasers,no news or the weather channel accept skip noone said this monster was anticyclonic,i did hear it was or another 1 touchdown near it that was,and this also reminds me if you know more about it or if skip wants to find out more about this 1 cuz theres no vidoes about it except a fire fighter that responded afterwards,so if you remember the 1981 west bend EF-4 that was anticyclonic that was after midnight that nearly took the city by surprise because it wasnt seen on radar,noone even seen it until it hit or after it hit,no watches or warnings,except for severe thunderstorms no sirens were turned on until after it hit,they said it was spawned by a downdraft from the storms that were getting weak,it had an odd damage path because it took out the northern part of the city,it caused over 20 million in damage,killed a few injured a few,had over 200MPH winds,but was only rated EF-4 and it was moving so fast that it was on the ground not even 5 minutes if that but caused EF-4 damage,and was anticyclonic so just wondering if skip or someone can look into this 1 and find out what actually happened that night you have to google it to find out about it
@@chriscrane5327 Holy crap, this is incredible word soup. How are you able to communicate with people at all if that is how you write/talk? I think you are suggesting the El Reno tornado was anticyclonic which makes me think that in addition to extremely poor communication skills, you are also a terrible listener (probably not a coincidence). Skip does NOT say this tornado was anticyclonic, although there was an EF-2 anticyclonic satellite that formed on the other side of the RFD flow
I wish I had watched this video sooner. Twice I’ve been in situations where I was driving in the middle of nowhere and encountered what I suspected but now know was a developing tornado. Not knowing what it was or what to do, I hauled ass and plowed straight through it, which was probably the worst thing I could’ve done. But with visibility being almost zero, I felt the worst thing I could’ve done was pull over. And not knowing where I was, I didn’t want to get off the highway.
This video was incredibly helpful. I never thought to put a weather radar app on my phone, or to look out for satellite funnels. Or even to ask Siri for an alternate route or to locate a nearby shelter. I would never have thought to pay attention to the direction the rain is blowing on my windshield to gauge where the wind is coming from in zero visibility conditions. I didn’t know there was a name for situational awareness, but I definitely knew when I’d lost it.
It would be awesome if someone like you put out a video for non-chasers to advise travelers what to do in the event they run into a tornado or emergent weather conditions like this on the road. Because clearly barreling right through it to get away from it isn’t smart.
Are you a storm chaser
Skip did mention some things in the beginning portion. I've watched this and others for as much info I can get, if only as a reminder of what to do or not.
I had the privilege of meeting Tim's team when they were up here in South Dakota a bit before this tragedy. Tim was a great guy and he is missed a lot, I loved their TV shows. Still watch them as I have recorded them and have them on a sever in my house..
Everyone underestimated the power of the El Reno twister. Sooo lucky it wasn't in a city or towns path.
Nobody was prepared for the direction it took. Just about every tornado I've chased, with the exception of the Plainfield, IL then F5 tornado, typically traveled to the East/Northeast. The Plainfield tornado caught people off guard too. I don't think anyone expected the El Reno tornado to expand to 2.6 miles either. The vortices alone were extremely violent, and always very unpredictable in any multi vortex tornado.
@@Bluenose352 I remember Plainfield vividly to this day though I was a good 30 40 miles away.
Was working for an HVAC company at the time and was sent to scrap out some homes under construction that we had finished in a subdivision in Mundelein.
Since the work truck had no radio I used my layman's knowledge of weather to keep an eye on some thunderheads off to the west southwest but as I pulled up on the first house to scrap out those threatening thunderstorms had dissipated leaving only a low cloud bank directly to my south.
About halfway through scraping out the second house I brought out the first load to go on the truck and in the 10 minutes tops I'd been inside that low cloud bank had exploded into a monster anvil top and I just remember thinking to myself who ever is under that was catching hell right now.
It wasn't until I'd got back to the shop and was in my car heading home that I found out how horribly right I was.
Bluenose352 what’s wild about this storm is that the entire mesocyclone basically just dropped down in a matter of about one minute. I don’t think there’s ever been a tornado that grew in strength as quickly as this one did. One second it was a wall cloud, and the next it was wedge funnel. Just fucking unreal. My only hope is that the science that was gathered from this event will help save lives in the future, because one day, one of these is gonna hit a metropolitan area in the Great Plains and it’s going to be exponentially more catastrophic than Joplin or Moore.
@@jackieparmz I am surprised OKC has not gotten hit yet. There has been many to enough close calls. I wish that it never gets hit although tornados form near it a lot. And if some tornados did not die off and kept moving, it could of potentially hit OKC. Which is scary to think about.
@@Tc-rn8lh Small correction here: the southernmost parts of OKC were hit in the 1999 EF5, and people were killed there. There is no reason why a violent tornado wouldn't hit 10 or 20 miles further north of Moore, or east of El Reno. Far too many people seem to mistake "it hasn't happened here" (in their memory) for "it won't happen here". The chances of outracing a tornado will be rather slim in what would be a huge traffic jam in more densely populated area of OKC. So having safe shelter is even more important than in the outskirts...
R.I.P. Team Vortex and the others whom passed on. You saved many lives with your work. Great job Skip, another amazing video!
Twistex
This video has proven to be a video I occasionally revisit due to the Fantastic detail as well as the lessons we learned that day. Thanks Skip. Your work has been greatly appreciated.
I was in Fire Fighter-1 class when this went down. I'm in West Central Kansas. I remember even the dew point and humidity here was ridiculous, and lots of wind. It was frightening to watch as it unfolded on the news. This is a great video, and Skip you really broke it down to where a person can actually grasp and comprehend the points you made.
2:23 rip tim samaras, paul samaras, carl young.
damn
Don't forget about Richard Henderson.
*Me: Never plans to chase a tornado ...*
*Me: Watches these videos anyways*
This information would still be helpful if you find yourself caught in a storm producing tornadoes
Watching this for the millionth time. Still excellent. I'll be visiting Team Twistex's Memorial site this Sunday to pay respect to them and the others affected by this storm on that day.
Wow, thanks for this very real lesson. How you point out where the chasers were at the time of impact kind of brings in the realism to this Super Cell. Knowing and seeing the time of impact and Samaras's position is so saddening. I've followed Tim, Paul, and Carl since they first came onto the scene in Storm Chasers on Discovery Channel. From Reed Timmer and his crew, Sean Casey and his guys to Tim Samaras, his son Paul and Carl Young, much respect for them, they go where most dare not venture. This EF-4 was the monster of all monsters, very unpredictable. First of its kind to be recorded.
Rest In Peace to all who risked it that day and found them selves caught by the beast.
The level of work and dedication you've sunk into this video is simply amazing.
Bravo Skip. This video should be taught In school to every last man, woman and child on this continent.
I'm from the UK this is a really well done video and very interesting - thank you. It also reminds me of when documentaries used to be less patronising towards the audience! Great job x
Thanks God we don’t have tornadoes here .
What an incredible video. I'm not a storm chaser, never will be - the one time my dad drove under a forming funnel was plenty enough for me. It was amazing, humbling, beautiful, and terrifying. I can easily see why storm chaser's get their kicks from them, it's breathtaking. But this was such a fascinating watch and it good to know for non-storm chaser's too. Fantastic work
Amazing job Skip, your attention to detail is astounding.
A tornado formed less than a mile from my house in May, it was only an EF-2, but my house was either in the RFD or Ghost Train, because the winds were strong enough to shake my house. They were definitely straight-line, but they moved with the tornado. Initially, the winds were coming from the northwest, then as the tornado moved off to the northeast, the wind switched to a westerly direction, almost as if it was feeding the tornado. It scared the crap out of me, as I'm not a chaser and I've only seen stuff like that in chaser videos and on TV. The rain that was happening sounded a lot like the rain in the above video around 25:30 looked...it was coming down in sheets, it would rain super hard for a second or two, then the rain would stop for a second, then more rain, then stop.
Thankfully, nobody was harmed in the local tornado, but I wouldn't have wanted to be caught outside in those kinds of winds. If I had to guess, the winds had to be close to 100mph, it blew shingles off of my brother's house, which is next to mine. It destroyed the local sawmill. I had a trash bag full of aluminum cans that were set to go to the recycling bin, it actually blew the bag up under my porch with such force that I had to empty the cans out to get the bag unstuck...there was no amount of force that I could have used to push them up under there like that. Wind is a strange thing and I hope I never experience anything like that again. It makes me appreciate what chasers do all that much more, putting their lives on the line so that folks can know where these tornadoes are located.
What is RFD and Ghost train? Thanks
RFD stands rear flank downdraft. RFD is outflow wind found near where a tornado would be if there is one. The "ghost train" is a nickname for the tornado's rear inflow jet, a focused jet of wind that feeds the tornado. They're explained in detail with pictures in this video: ua-cam.com/video/bq0-QXXtOro/v-deo.html
I can’t imagine how insane and breathtaking it would have been to see this in front of you in real life
You bring up something I have been saying ever since the May 2013 group of storms. Namely, that these chasers focus too much on the funnel (over there) as if that is the only part that is dangerous and don't watch the whole super cell that is rotating right above them. Often its the larger rotating part of the super-cell that becomes the mile wide tornado and could drop a vortex anywhere.
A few years ago, my dad decided to ignore my advice and took us to a ceremony for my brother while a storm was occurring, because I guess he didn't think it was that bad. I was dragged along, much to my chagrin, because the sky was obviously unhappy, clouds, green color, rotation, and all. I started filming the rotation since I was captive and might as well make use of my phone camera. On the way, the radio alert went off and told us to take shelter immediately. I like to think I was relatively composed in and of the fact that I didn't scream at my family for dragging me along. The moment we got to the location, ran for the bathroom to take shelter, yelling at the people rubbernecking all the way. We were lucky, the storm ultimately produced a very short-lived EF1 that impacted a single building on the opposite side of the city, and no one was hurt.
My dad started listening to my advice more after that.
This is amazing. Thank you, and thank you for your condolences to Twistex. A true loss to an amazing endeavor.
Excellent analysis. Very good job and very informative, Well done. This could definetely save the lives of storm chasers and residents, I wish more people knew about this video, especially in the Great Plains
Absolutely the best analysis I have ever seen. Also important for aspiring chasers looking to chase. There are quite a bit of chasers that have an aggressive or cocky style of chasing that can ultimately lead to their demise. Totally insightful & a must view for anyone period! Not just aspiring or current chasers! Especially those that travel the country all the time & pass through regions of the US well known for their tornadic weather. Thank you for putting this together!!!!
Tim wasn't Cocky.
Tim was in a bad situation and that’s problems with chasing storms he wasn’t “cocky” in fact he had a conversation about it but he was most likely shocked and wanted to get the heck out of there and those are the risks with chasing storms if your caught in a bad situation it’s best to be safe than sorry. Yes the situation was avoidable but the chances are reduced on the fraction of shock/surprise a chaser has and how they deal with it it can be fatal when your in a bad situation like the twistex then the best thing is to stay calm and think instead of panicking not like Tim did but it could be the shock which I was already talking about
Skip, I'm watching this again in preparation for chase season. Thanks for taking the time and effort to share what you have learned with everyone else. This video might save a life or two someday. I know that I will be more likely to reconsider heading south or east and less likely to chase from the bear's cage after watching this video. And after chasing for 8 years I must admit I didn't know how dangerous the rear inflow jet could be.
amazing video, i’ve been so caught up in learning about the el reno tornado the past few days and this is by far the best (and most understandable) video i’ve seen on it yet
This video is amazing and the amount of effort put into it is obviously immense. I feel like if anyone could produce a 3D diagram/animation of the 5/31 El Reno Tornado showing the tornado position along with the chaser positions that it would be even more beneficial and educational. Thanks for this Skip!
Tim and Carl's mistake was, I believe, to underestimate the size of the tornado while laying probes. The spot they ended up getting caught in would have been perfect for a probe line had the tornado not been so much larger than everyone expected. Laying probes is probably THE most dangerous science task a spotter/chaser could undertake: Howie Bluestein abandoned TOTO in 1983 because he had his own Dan Robinson moment. But Tim kept the idea going, and he had real faith in probes, especially after Manchester (100mb drop in 5 seconds, a world record). He felt he could deploy his probes much faster than TOTO and thus had a better safety margin, which proved not to be the case. I'm guessing for future probe deployments we should design some kind of remote system to drop them out the back without having to stop. Having to get out and lug 40-lb probes out of the trunk of a compact Chevy Cobalt might well have cost them the time they needed to get away. Either way, they died for science... what a shame.
In contrast, it's a real eye-opener to see the Mike Bettes TWC team's blunder, though, because it was so different. Not only did they do an inexpert and overly aggressive core punch on a rain-wrapped tornado simply to try and get $$$ footage for TV (not a smart move), then, disappointed that this was a non-photogenic rain-wrapped blob, CONTINUED to drive south through the bear's cage saying "Derrr, where is it? We must get closer!" until they literally T-boned the tornado headed eastbound. Bettes then repeatedly lumped his case in with the Samaras/Young team and acted like he'd been blindsided by the north turn and expansion, when in reality he'd stumbled into the circulation from the north while it was still heading basically due east. I'm surprised only one person ended up seriously injured (broken neck), but the whole thing falls directly in Mike Bettes' lap. As the team chief and most experienced man, he should have known better. Their speed as they ran south makes me suspect they weren't even trying to flee, just get closer, but that might just be my bias... panic/confusion is equally likely. Your call.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the midst of it all, Skip and Brindley are perfectly documenting the whole catastrophe from a safe and reasonable distance. At the end, they're heroes too, I'd say. The best service to the dead is honesty, and this is the most honest analysis of El Reno thus published anywhere. Skip's the man.
Alex Tocqueville Chevy cobalt.
Can't say for certain, but Paul was just a Photographer, and whilst his opinion would have been valued, it was likely Tim and Carl's call more than anything as they were the experts on Storm Chasing.
Sadly, your analysis seems spot on. I certainly hope a lot of chasers are taking a really close look at this and learning from the mistakes made that day, so they don't end up taking similar risks and end up becoming statistics for future chasers to learn from. My sincere condolences to the friends and families of those who didn't make it out that day. Safe chasing, folks.
It's way too simple to call Bettes' team's maneuver a "blunder". If you continue watching the video, They point out that the conventional wisdom at the time was to head "for the clear". That is exactly what they did - they were not purposely heading into the center of rotation in a blind pursuit of footage, even if that was their original intent. They were trying to flee when hit.
You're right that Bettes was trying to flee, but their maneuver was very much a colossal blunder. It was quite apparent while they were stopped during their broadcast which direction that tornado was moving, and again apparent that they were racing across its path and indeed directly into it while they were fleeing. I'm not sure why Bettes didn't simply stop or turn around, but I'm guessing he panicked and wasn't thinking rationally anymore, or this is just gross incompetence on his part. The knee jerk reaction to flee south is not conventional wisdom, it's a dangerous mistake that needs to be addressed head on.
I still think the Enhanced Fujita Scale is bullshit compared to the Original Fujita Scale.
It shouldn't be measured based on the damage that it CAUSED, but rather on *How Much Damage it is CAPABLE OF CAUSING in the first place BEFORE IT HITS*.
In which case, that can be determined by looking at it's Windspeed, it's Size, how fast it's moving while on the ground, etc....
By the Enhanced F-Scale's Faulty Logic, a tornado could have excess of 300 MPH Winds, but if the outer winds of it knock over a lawnchair and barely hit anything, that Tornado is automatically an EF-0. I'm sorry, but I'm calling SERIOUS bullshit on that one. >_>
This isn't like the past where we didn't have the technology to determine the windspeeds of Tornadoes. We have ALL KINDS of Newer Technology to do that now. Compared to like the 70's and 80's? Getting Windspeed Readings from Tornadoes via Radar are MUCH easier to determine now a days. We've had Doppler Radars on Wheels since the 90's, and the technology for them has only gotten better and better as time passed. And now, it's almost become mainstreamed at this point.
But regardless, this is a FANTASTIC Analysis here, Skip. Excellent job!
"And that is extremely easy to determine based on how fast the Windspeeds of a tornado is." That's the problem though. For the vast majority of tornadoes, we have no idea what the wind speeds are. You need a probe or a mobile radar to get those measurements, and those measurements only exist for a handful of tornadoes. Damage is currently the only consistent way to gauge a tornado's strength. The wind speed is inferred from the damage, not directly measured.
*****
Wait, seriously????
Where did you hear that?
***** WackyModder84 They had given it a rating of EF5, but eventually downgraded it to an EF3 last year once they determined that only EF3 damage was done. The Enhanced Fujita Scale is a damage scale, based off of the damage done. It's used to estimate wind speeds since as Skip stated, there are no reliable ways to measure wind speeds on the vast majority of tornadoes. Therefore, a theoretical EF5 may not hit anything and get assigned a rating of EF0. I do believe that they should modify the scale to make exceptions for when reliable mobile radar data is obtained. However, at this point it's against the policy to rate tornadoes based solely upon mobile radar data.
***** I think it should've gotten an EF5 rating. The EF Scale currently doesn't allow it, though. I'm sure that the Norman NWS really wanted to rate it EF5. I think it's something that needs to be changed as long as there is reliable data on a given tornado, like El Reno. Another example of this is the Bennington, KS tornado. Mobile radar measured winds of 247 MPH, but it still only got an EF4 rating (which is higher than El Reno but still lower than what it potentially could've been).
***** Yes, but the Moore tornado is rated at EF5 with windspeeds of 210 MPH while the El Reno tornado is rated EF3 with windspeeds of 295 MPH. El Reno was clearly the stronger tornado, but it did not do as much damage because the area affected was mostly rural. As you said it's not always possible to measure the wind speed more reliable way of measuring the tornado's wind speed, though that could be many years away.
Mr. Talbot -- I live nowhere near tornado country, but I can now look up and see thunderstorms "going up like a bomb" even where I live. I have watched a ton of your videos, and find them among the most informative on the web -- and now, if I were to visit the Midwest or the South in the spring, I would know what to look for and the best ways of escape, in order to safeguard myself and others. Thank you for this unbelievably important public service, not just chasing but teaching the public about storms and especially supercells. Oh yes -- the videos are TREMENDOUS in terms of the chase as well! I've always loved weather, and I love good tornado videos!
First off I want to say this is one of the best edited videos I’ve seen, also 😢 for the chasers that lost their lives through this tornado and people who disliked this apparently want attention and doesn’t understand the reality of what happened this day
I had a nightmare some years ago that i was driving at night in the storm and suddenly thunder struck and revelead this massive tornado so close to me. Tornado itself wasnt so scary the fact that it was so hidden in darkness was. It was so terryfing to me that I remember every detail of that dream. You guys are heroes for chasing them updating their locations risking your lives to warn people so they can hide gathering info so we understand them better. Looking at these clouds i couldt even tell there was monster shrouded by rain..
Where i live we didnt have tornados at least from what i heard, and since like 2 years we have them every spring luckily we didnt get big one yet.
Could really see the strong inflow in the Bettes part. Your vehicle was kicking up road dirt it was going directly towards the tornado.
This video, your rigorous analysis, and the extensive justification for each of your claims is absolutely excellent.
By far, the best tornado video I have ever watched.
Thank you for your update on the previous version of this video, Skip. You are very well informed and give great information. I can only imagine how difficult both videos were to make due to the loss of the TWISTEX team. You do an excellent job and while you make chasing seem exciting, you also emphasize the dangerous side of it.
Skip, this is absolutely fantastic. Thank you for the wonderfully detailed video with great intentions.
This is about as educational as it gets! I strongly appreciate the effort and experience putting this together!
Correct me if I wrong, but another cause of why the El Reno tornado was such a chasing tragedy was because it's apparent distance (as in viewing estimation) seemed far, especially during its early stages, even though it was extremely close, mostly due to the fact that it had such a big wall cloud that there was a slight illusion of distance from the vertices. I don't know, I just have seen that with a lot of the El Reno tornado, people getting out of their cars to film during the beginning of the very powerful tornado.
But great vid, I hope we can all learn from this (the video has also taught a lot to me myself).
+Random Guy Yes, misjudging scale and distance is a very common problem when storm chasing. There just aren't the familiar learned, visual cues that people can use to judge scale like they do with common everyday objects. Chasers were also misjudging what level of rotation they were looking at, with many fixated on a single subvortex thinking it was the main tornado, when the main tornado circulation occupied a much larger space.
Skip Talbot's Storm Chasing Chronicles Yup. The Hook Echo center and even the Debris field was miscalculated because the Supercell was so oblong shaped.
This is the most information storm chase video I've ever seen. You're incredibly smart. Well done.
this is soo well done
In Wichita Falls TX during the '79 Red River Outbreak, sixteen of the twenty five tornado impacted road deaths were people that left their homes to outrun the tornado which happened to come during rush hour traffic. Eleven of their homes were untouched. (Not clear if any shared a home). The deaths on the road in that one were the majority of the forty five killed in Wichita falls TX.
Every video of this thing in 2013 evidenced how fast it was and how unpredictable was it's direction. This one is pretty damned proving of it. Excellent summations.
Did Mike Morgan or any of the residents driving even know about the Wichita Falls tornado?
Thanks for your work here, both during and after, amazing. Clearly you show how much easier it is to make correct decisions when you keep a few miles away, simply because you can see the bigger picture. Although at 6:13pm you are very very close. Also, its very clear that in the four cases where vehicles were damaged; that they didn't actually get hit by the tornado, they drove directly into its path; more like "storm-interceptors" than "storm-chasers". Yes, details in hind-sight are 20-20, but when someone is too close to see the big picture, they are just too damn close. Additional information about some of the other team's history of getting away with risky decisions, like "punching the core" or "slicing the hook", likely produced a false confidence, that ended up with consequences down the road, especially since every storm is at least a little different. The actions of that Weather Channel team looked much more suicidal, than scientific. However, I do have sympathy for property owners and others who could not get out of the way. Sometime in the future, if its possible, it would be cool to watch Infared video synchronized with visual footage showing the currents of heat that fuel these awesome engines.
Very much enjoyed this. The best, and most in-depth thing I have ever seen on the subject. Your graphics are out of this world. I will most certainly share this with my local amateur radio/NWS spotters. Thank you!!!
Hello Skip
Thank you for the work you've done here. I have two questions: 1. From watching the graphics it seems that the tornado widened considerably at one point. The town of El Reno itself seemed considerably smaller so I wondered had the storm hit El Reno would it have engulfed the entire city? 2. you stated that media recommended citizens leave their homes to drive away from the storm which I always thought was extremely dangerous advice. Do you know if there were any consequences for the person/persons responsible for the mass exodus and traffic jams that put more people in harm's way? THANKS
If the tornado hit El Reno directly, there would have been widespread damage of varying degrees across most of the town. Keep in mind that the intense subvortices packing the violent winds were much smaller than the 2.6 mile wide parent tornado. So if EF5 damage occurred, it probably would have been confined to a fairly small area, with a path maybe a few hundred feet wide at most.
I'm not sure if there were any ramifications for those who called for a south bound evacuation of areas in the path. I'm guessing probably not, despite criticism from many and a study from Gabe Garfield of NWS Norman that estimated the catastrophic consequences if that tornado had impacted the gridlocked evacuating traffic: potentially hundreds of deaths.
@@skiptalbot Skip, I would like to thank you for making this video because I was impressed by the work you put into it and I was left feeling very informed about how bad the El Reno, Oklahoma tornado was and how to be safe. One necessity for storm chasers is a go-bag containing a fresh change of clothes, pajamas, a first aid kit, a toiletries kit (shampoo, conditioner, body wash, a shower brush, feminine hygiene products, nail clippers, tweezers, shaving cream or gel, shaving razors and aftershave, deodorant, and body spray,) an eyeglass case, eyeglass lens cleaner, glasses or contacts, sunglasses, contact lens solution, and any necessary medications.
Thank you for all the effort and research that you put into this excellent video report! I think your analysis of this tragic event should be a mandatory part of the NWS Spotter Training program. Your insights into the many hazards associated with tornadoes are valuable and critical to properly evaluating the threats and escape options for spotters, chasers and the general general public alike. Amazing work!
Great work here Skip. I just want to voice my sadness for Tim ,Paul and Carl. Also for the other chaser that died that day.
One thought I did have in relation to escaping the circulation if you were to get stuck, just after viewing the issues that the cars had driving into the anti clockwise motion, with the direction of travel against the wind, you are adding extra forces against the car, that would double the difficulty, not to mention traction on the ground and small motors working etc. For example If Tim and co were to just stop, and turn around and use the wind in the rear assistance and not a hindrance. Not only would it not have slowed the progress, it would have assisted in pushing the car.
I am not by any means a chaser, but what I do know well is cars and handling and skill levels of drivers as a race car driver myself. What I also notice a lot is the skill level of the drivers, what I can suggest also is advanced driving courses. No video I have seen, shows an adept car control. You need to know how to handle a car in adverse situations, When the car is moving underneath you, you need to know what that feels like and how to react accordingly, this should not be a thought process, but a natural reaction on how to handle it and how much throttle to put on to keep momentum and not just bury yourselves. Also roll cages and 4 point harnesses wouldn't go astray either. These are your lifeline and you all drive around in 2 wheel drive low powered cars or big slow vans and pickups. They are not agile at all. What you should have is a little all wheel drive rally car, WRX or the like with cage and harnesses and some knobby tyres. You are basically rallying half the time....in slow under-powered 2 wheel drives with bald tyres and things like that, just a thought. Keep up the great work :)
Thanks for the words and suggestions. We want to educate chasers on how to avoid driving into the tornado in the first place, because at that point it really doesn't matter what you're driving. The analogy I like is that of a railroad crossing. We educate drivers to wait at the crossing guards, not race across as they're going down, and to not stop on the tracks... rather than preparing drivers for impacts with trains by giving them helmets, harnesses, and fast cars that can beat the train. Tornadoes are trains. Once you've got a roadworthy vehicle that can safely cruise on a wet highway, any additional effort and investment would be far better served in learning safe chasing practices and escape route planning.
Very cool comment, a different, but valid perspective.
I agree with what skip says about not being there in the first place; however in case of a misjudgment your idea could make a huge difference!
I'm only 7 minutes into the video and it's already the best tornado information/how-to video I've ever seen.
I was watching another stormchaser video yesterday; it might've been Skip's. Anyway, the chaser said that he doesn't go anywhere near OKC anymore because of the risk of a traffic jam from too many people and too many of them being amateurs or local gawkers. After watching some of these videos, I can understand why he feels that way.
Brilliant analysis. My supervisor was in Spencer, SD Saturday Night May 30, 1998 when the F4 tornado struck I remember seeing horizontal lighting all evening in Sioux Falls. At a back-yard party in Spencer, they saw the storm form and had enough time to get into the house, down the stairs and close the back door, as they did a cinder block hit one member of the group. They all made it safe alive. Their neighbor did not close the back door in time and was sucked out. Six residents die in all.
Hi Skip. I have a three questions; first, what goes through your mind when you observe a tornado this size? Knowing the death and destruction it is causing and will cause. I can't even imagine. Second, trees. What causes them to look as if they exploded? I heard that the air pressure difference from within the tree and outside of it causes this damage but that doesn't sound quite right too me. The air pressure difference can't be that significant, can it? Any ideas? And, lastly, at 1:15:38 when you said 'holy cow' what, exactly, were you reacting too? Thanks
+SkyWardDude
1. We don't know how destructive or deadly a tornado will be when we're observing it. On rare occasions we can see that the tornado is hitting structures. The mood and priorities of the chase instantly flip when we encounter damage or injuries, however. Rather than focusing on our priorities and chase experience, the victims become a priority. This is rare though, and of the 100+ tornadoes that I've documented, I believe less than 10 were killers, and of those only a couple I was in a position where I encountered damage or injuries. It's usually well after the event that we learn of the impact. Most tornadoes I document are short lived and stay over open terrain. With this particular tornado we were fairly sure it had missed El Reno, but also knew it had the potential to be violent. We were actually relieved afterwards knowing it had missed both El Reno and OKC and weren't aware of the fatalities until at least a day later.
2. The trees are blown apart and basically sandblasted by debris. You're right that the pressure drop does not explode trees. Trees that can stand up to a violent tornado usually have all of their branches removed and are debarked from the debris sandblasting, leaving a naked white stump.
3. I'm reacting to the size of the tornado and the appearance and motion of that subvortex that's orbiting the parent circulation. Again we had no idea of the destructive impact at the time or even how large this tornado was. We suspected it was at least a mile wide, but had no idea it would be deemed the record holder.
Skip, you one of my favorite storm chasers (if not THE favorite). You videos give priceless insight and your chase videos are awesome - you keep your cool and know how to read these unpredictable supercells. I thoroughly enjoy your videos and take alot from them....especially when I drive through the lower midwest and can take cues from storm structures and actively avoid the worst part of these storms when trying to get around them. Keep up the awesome work!!!
Thanks to Mr. Talbot and his associates for producing that video. thanks for keeping the sensationalism to a minimum on this one, and for making an active effort to provide sound advisement.
That 1990 Hesston tornado put the hook in me. I been at it ever since. Every time has been a learning experience.
Love this Skip. I’ve watched numerous times.
Incredibly informative. Thanks for taking the time to detail all of the hazards and potential escape routes.
Great analysis, loved this video, very informative. Thanks for posting.
Want to know the strength of a tornado? Ask the people who’s homes were wiped off the map into piles of splinters. This video is amazing, I had to watch it twice because it was so interesting. As a trained spotter, people need to heed this video down to the last word. This one gets 5 stars!
I'm a Brit. I don't know how you guys cope with these things in your backyard. Absolutely terrifying.
I think it helps that ones like this are very rare, and that due to land use patterns, they usually hit in the middle of fields and such. Populated areas are dots on a map, so all that rural space around them is a much more probable place for a tornado to hit. Plus, having grown up in the area, I can tell you that most people in the area just a little crazy, even if only crazy stubborn
I have to agree with everyone else's comments. This is the best analysis of any weather event I have ever seen. Great work Skip and thank you for creating this video and providing this information. It is not only very interesting and intriguing but will surely save lives in the future.
Talbot's commentary here, in regards to Samaras, is in direct contradiction to the "he was the safest chaser out there" narrative I've heard in every other story on this tragedy. The fact that Talbot actually gives examples to back up his assertion that Samaras was somewhat recklessly aggressive in his chase style lends much credence to his critique.
Kevin Bailey I agree but I wouldn't go as far as to say Samaras was reckless. His motives for chasing, including placing probes in the paths of tornadoes, led to the dangerous positioning and aggressive chase style he engaged in. However, he certainly was concerned with the safety of his crew and carefully considered his actions. It's a media exaggeration and "feel good narrative" to claim he was the safest chaser out there. He wasn't at all. For the sake of safety of other chasers and spotters, this should be pointed out, and not left to statements like "well, if it happened to the safest and most careful, it could happen to me." There are lessons in safety to learn from this tragedy, and errors were made that need to addressed and used as examples. Otherwise we'll see chasers and spotters continue to make these mistakes with more deaths in the future.
My main point was just that the media narrative regarding "safest chaser" seems to have been basically false.
Kevin Bailey i agree with skip his motavition was to get a probe in a tornado so this means he would have to get close then backa way but in certain situations he would back away and not go for it he would take a risk and he knew it with a son and a wife he had alot to loose and sadly he did not relize what could happen i have a theroy taht he thought the tornado would contiue to go left he nocticed that it turned left and maybe he thought it would contiue moving north and he could get out of the way sadly the tornado stayed where it was and hit his crew so it could of been avoided but i would not call him recless tahts not a good word to choose he was teh safest
Crystal Lane He wasn't the safest at all. He was brilliant, and he took risks in the name of his science. I have nothing for respect for him, but there's no reason to pretend he was other than what he was: a brilliant meteorologist, who gave his life doing what he loved.
+Kevin Bailey Sorry I got the wrong idea I'm sorry. I'm a storm chaser I started chasing in 08 and we all take risks. Its our job is to take risks to get a probe or something inside tornadoes to save people , increase warning times. But when this happens , when a chaser dies it makes you think. Epically for him he and his son and carl I met numerous times and they knew what they had to do and they did it right. It just makes you think everyday is a risk.
Great video Skip, thanks for putting this together. I'd make this mandatory viewing for anyone wanting to start out chasing. One of the subtle things that comes across in this video is the need to be cool, calm and collected especially when in severe danger. Thanks a heap :)
I have watched several videos of yours and am seriously considering getting into chasing storms. I live in Andover and saw the ef3 tornado in May of 2022 and it was incredible.
Skip:
I'm a recent subscriber. Your explainations are better than I have encountered in a classroom. Thank you very much for all that you've contributed to people looking to further Tornado research to develop better warning systems for the public.
You make a slight reference to the National Weather Service revising their standards for rating cyclones/tornadic events. For all of us that study and watch videos like yours and other chasers, we all know that the El Reno tornado (40 minutes long and 2.6 miles in diameter with winds upwards of 280mph with muliple satellite tornadoes) was an EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale regardless of the measurable damage it created for its actual EF-rating of EF-3.
While I understand, and somewhat agree, with the National Weather Service's definition of destructive force of a tornado; I still think that its "potential" destructive force can and should be rated with a similar, if not exact, rating as its "actual" or kinetic destructive force.
I've tried over the last few months to review and find if any changes to these ratings have occured to no avail. Perhaps, in lou of the 5-year anniversary of El Reno, you can shed more light on this subject for all of us.
Not aware of any further work being done to revise tornado rating scales, but someone could be doing it. Damage is the only thing we have to measure a tornado's force. We currently have no way to get wind speed readings at ground level in tornadoes. Until somebody comes up with a way to do that, we're going to have to stick with a damage based scale like the Enhanced Fujita.
Amazing video! RIP TIM WE LOVE YOU! 🕊🙏🏼💔.
Definitely one of the most underrated channels on UA-cam
The downgrade to EF3 is a joke--an absolute joke. There was plenty of support for EF5 in the data and the evidence. The NWS just had people doing the assessing that have no concept of nuance or context. It's an embarrassment to the NWS that they downgraded such an obvious EF5.
Kevin Bailey rember tornadoes are not measured by wind speeds there measured by damage there might bea tornado that is 2 miles wide and had 300 mph wind speeds but it can even be a ef0 aslong a sit doesnt hit anything
Crystal Lane This isn't even CLOSE to true. A tornado does NOT have to hit structures to be rated above an EF0. A tornado 2 miles wide, with 300 mph wind speeds should always be an EF5. Vegetative damage can lead to such ratings quite easily. If you really think a 300 mph tornado that is 2 miles wide would ever be rated EF0, you should probably read up a bit on tornadoes before commenting again.
Kevin Bailey You both make good points. The largest, most extreme tornado imaginable should always be rated EF5. Crystal is right, however, and because of the pitfalls of using a damage based scale, this isn't always the case. It certainly is possible for a two mile wide tornado packing 300 mph winds to be rated EF0. Since the scale is entirely damage based, it simply has to track over empty terrain where the is nothing to damage. There are large areas in the Great Plains where a tornado can track without hitting ANY damage indicators that the EF scale uses. When that happens, the tornado is almost always rated EF0, regardless of how intense its winds actually are. I've seen several "under rated" tornadoes, most notably in eastern Colorado, western Kansas, and the Nebraska sandhills where there are not only no structures, but not even any trees that they can use for damage assessment. The 28 March 2007 Bird City, KS F2 was likely violent based on visuals we had. The 17 June 2014 Coleridge EF3 was also likely violent. A great example though is the "Crazy Farmer" tornado of June '98 that was very obviously a high end violent tornado, but was rated F2 simply because it didn't hit much. I don't doubt there have been several EF5 *capable* tornadoes that were rated EF0 or not rated at all, simply because of a lack of evidence. It's not even possible to get a 5 rating using the standard DIs of the EF scale without structure impacts, as the high end vegetation DIs usually result in an EF3 rating. Another thing to keep in mind is that a two mile wide tornado is not packing 300 mph winds across its full area. The most intense winds are confined to much smaller and short duration subvortices. I'm not sure if either of you were inferring that, but you should keep in mind that almost all tornadoes that produced EF5 or F5 damage did it for only a small portion of their overall damage path.
***** Thanks for the reply, Skip. Even over flat terrain where, say, only a shelter belt of trees was hit, wouldn't 300 mph winds leave some ground scouring and other vegetative artifacts that would allow it to be properly rated? And are wind speed measurements NEVER used to aid in such ratings?
Kevin Bailey This is the kind of terrain I'm talking about:
2.bp.blogspot.com/-0Lb6F9i8vz8/VVKr6e3RCHI/AAAAAAAAF18/LP3VKGXHFnA/s1600/_JBE7662-e%2Bcopy.JPG
There are no trees or structures for miles here, only grass and bare clay. Tornadoes, regardless of how large and powerful they might be, tracking through this terrain are always rated EF0 due to current limitations in the EF scale.
Ground scouring is not used for EF ratings, but I believe it has been cited for some original F scale ratings. Fujita cited it for the 1990 Plainfield F5. It's probably just a matter of there not being reliable or consistent measures of ground scouring to incorporate yet. Stuff like soil type, looseness, wetness, vegetation cover, etc are going to amplify or prevent scouring marks.
Radar data is not used when assigning an EF rating, and this is at the heart of the El Reno rating debate. The Norman office rated El Reno based off the radar data, but NWS policy is that the tornado must be rated based on damage, probably to keep a consistent rating database and statistics since radar measured winds may not correlate well to damage inferred winds. Keep in mind the radar is measuring winds above ground level and the duration and coverage of these winds are significant factors. It's unknown how these variables affect structures being impacted at ground level. There is a push for adding this data into the rating system, but this is ultimately why the tornado was downgraded. We simply don't know enough yet about how these radar measured winds translate to the tornado's actual ability to cause damage.
At 1:08:00 "we're making good speed; we got great roads"...while the tornado is gaining. Pretty sobering. Thanks for turning this into such a valuable learning and teaching opportunity.
I sort of get tornados now. Thank you Skip Talbot.
This is undoubtedly one of the best footages of the El Reno tornado ever made! Great job!