How do tornadoes do strange things, like drive straw into trees, strip road pavement, and drive splinters into bricks?
The list of bizarre things attributed to tornadoes is almost endless. Much of it is folklore; but there are some weird scenes in tornado damage. Asphalt pavement may strip when tornado winds sandblast the edges with gravel and other small detritus, eroding the edges and causing chunks to peel loose from the road base. Storm chasers and damage surveyors have observed this phenomenon often after the passage of a violent tornado. With a specially designed cannon, wind engineers at Texas Tech University have fired boards and other objects at over 100 mph into various types of construction materials, duplicating some of the types of “bizarre” effects, such as wood splinters embedded in bricks. Intense winds can bend a tree or other objects, creating cracks in which debris (e.g., hay, straw) becomes lodged before the tree straightens and the crack tightens shut again. All bizarre damage effects have a physical cause inside the roiling maelstrom of tornado winds. We do not fully understand wh
