How close to chasers really get to a tornado?
Every year a chaser finds himself within a hundred yards of a tornado–not always on purpose. Very often these are a surprise and they are not caught on video. They are not large either. When a tornado is large, chasers rarely get closer than a mile, and more often, further than that. • Could a tornado pick up a tank truck like in Twister? No. We have often wondered why the tank truck, weighing perhaps 80,000 pounds or more was picked up, but the pickup truck, weighing 3000 pounds, was not picked up. I guess that is because it wasn’t in the script. In real life, the tanker would have been blown over, rolled, and mangled. • Tornadoes really seem to come in all different sizes and shapes–some are long and skinny, some are really wide, some are tall, some are short. Why does this happen? What makes them that way? There are at least three things you should consider. The first is that a tornado has a life cycle– it starts thin, gets wider and stronger, and then gets weaker and wider, or p
