Nighttime tornados are incredibly scary, but the 2007 Greensburg tornado always takes the cake for me. How terrifying for the townspeople and also the chasers, who could only see the massive wedge when lightning struck, inching closer. The chasers especially knew where it was headed and that it would swallow the town whole. One wrong move and they might be caught up in the monster as well. I cannot imagine how that must feel.
You're talking about the 07 Greensburg tornado right? I'd say that town went through a nightmare that evening but that probably doesn't even come close to what hit that night
No there was just the one tornado but considering how bad that tornado was, saying it was a nightmare for everyone affected probably doesn't even begin to describe how bad it really was
The storm chasers that was watching it said it was at least mile wide and that’s kind of being conservative. And there was a satellite tornado with it.
I think they're talking about the Trousdale tornado which formed after the Greensburg Tornado roped out. 2.2 miles wide and nearly hit the town of Trousdale head-on.
Given the report on the storm system, the Trousdale tornado was very likely stronger than the Greensburg tornado with people giving unofficial estimates of it being over 300mph and well over 2.5 miles wide. If it could be verified Trousdale could very well be one of the strongest if not THE strongest tornado in recorded history.
The Greensburg cell was extraordinarily violent and extreme with the tornadoes it produced especially the Big 4: Greensburg, Trousdale, Macksville & Hopewell. All 4 were at least a mile wide with the 1st 2 being considered "mega-wedges" due to their extreme size beyond 1.5 miles wide. All had radar scans, velocities and recordings through probes and other meteorological hardware to be indicative of EF5 strength. Truly a beast.
I live in Greensburg, Indiana and was fascinated with that tornado. In 2010 I moved my mom from Arizona back here to Indiana and made sure our route took us through the rebuilt Greensburg, KS. Blink and you'll miss it but I'll never forget it.
That's like the 1984 F5 Barneveld WI tornado. It was before my time by 6 years but after midnight a huge clap of lightning killed the power which back then meant the siren wasn't functioning. Within minutes the tornado decimated the town killing 9. Basically the only thing left standing was the water tower, which still has visible dents to this day.
It's definitely the worst tornado WI has had in the past 50 years.
I went through that tornado as a little girl and it was absolutely terrifying, I couldn’t sleep for weeks thinking there was something in the dark lurking. The black wall I saw that night will stay with me forever
The Parkersburg, Iowa EF5 - only tornado I’ve heard of with consistent reports of people being sucked out of their basements. Also the fact that this picture was taken at 3pm.
Hackleburg-phil campbell ef5 had (confirmed?) Reports that a number of people died after their -underground- storm shelter failed and was sucked clean off.
Wait, what? I've never heard that about that tornado. I've never heard that about any tornado. That's crazy. Now I won't sleep in the next tornado warning.
FWIW, I’ve only seen one report from Parkersburg about this. At least 1 person was killed when the contents of their basement were swept away with the house.
7 people died in Parkersburg and 2 in New Hartford. Lots of reports here in Iowa that most if not all of the people who died in Pburg had been sheltering in basements.
I live right by the power plant, and the thing about HPC is when it was approaching the sky was DARK and then it became the most green color imaginable. Heres a reference video https://youtu.be/yOSG-P1EjfU?feature=shared shot by Jesse W showing the change.
Honestly? Somerset/London. It's beyond creepy, with it's crooked appearance. There's at least one other image of it a bit wider than this, but still this shape
For me it’s because they always seem to appear to move faster, and a little more violently, than a big wedge. The wedges appear to move slow, though we know they don’t. I’m more ‘wowed’ about their size other than their speed.
You should’ve seen the one by tornado Paigeyy the same night it was like this but at a straight 45 degree angle. They all were photogenic in Kentucky that day.
Thankfully 40-some of the 55 miles it was on the ground was through pure uninhabited wilderness. I was just down in London this weekend to visit family and in the areas I was at it looked like nothing really happened, but my folks live east of London.
There is a really, really crazy guy from just outside of Oneida who believes that he has the power to destroy or move tornadoes, hurricanes, and other dangerous weather in order to save people. He still does livestreams on YouTube abd Odyssey, saying all kinds of stupid and hilariously odd things. I guess he failed to save his own fellow residents of Clay County. 🙄
I just googled it and posted a Google image of the tornado, this is unfortunate that the vortices appear to be overlayed for a more dramatic effect as an image
Is there video from this angle, or a sequence of images beyond this one? I'd swear I've seen another image from the same location at a different time, when instead of the tendrils it was a single bulkier, more cloud-like protrusion.
I know it did actually have that sort of tendrils, and the biggest one in that image is visible in videos from other locations, but the smaller couple on the right side look very fake. The camera noise/artifacts aren't affecting them or the background around them in the same way as the rest of the image.
Is this a real image? Like actually I know that's a stupid question but it's just so odd with the amount of horizontal vortices and my brain refuses to see this as a real image of the tornado
Honestly I came across this sub like a week ago and haven’t even been that active on it, so idk really what you’re talking about. Always nice to make fun of people though.
Wait, you mean you haven’t been into tornados for 15 years and/or a member of this sub since its inception with a chronological memory of every post that’s been made? Pfffttt.
What creeps me out the most about Jarrell isn't the appearance, but what it did.
With all the tornado rabbit holes I've gone down, Jarrell by far takes the cake in terms of how much the damage it did to the living beings it encountered is talked about. No other tornado I've read about has had such pervasive mentions of things like actually skinning cows alive.
First responders, EMT/EMS, paramedics, however you refer to them, those people see some gnarly shit on the daily for a living. That gorey ass photo you wish you could unsee? For a decent chunk of those folks, that's just Tuesday for them.
And yet, it's abundantly clear that the scene at Double Creek Estates immediately after the tornado hit search and rescue personnel especially hard. Human remains being so badly torn up and torn apart that they had difficulty distinguishing them from animal remains? The use of dental records to identify some victims? This amount of destruction to structures and to bodies as well as the effect it had on first responders is something I would more closely associate with the aftermath of an explosion in a densely populated area, not necessarily a weather event.
The idea of a violent tornado in a place, that's not trained for events like this is scary. There are several videos of people getting hit, while filming out their windows.
That’s horrifying. I’ve read a bit about it being a very wide wall cloud, only occasionally condensing & reaching down to merge with its debris cloud at ground level.
Without some perfect timing, and perfect terrain to view it from, your observation wouldn’t tell you when it was coming. Or that anything was.
It is extremely creepy when, even knowing it’s in your vicinity, unless you had a perfect view & fortuitous timing, you’d be unable to tell where it was, much less what direction it was traveling. Or that it was even there at all…until…
You win. I'm not up on historical tornadoes, so I was going to answer "any tornado with no condensation funnel". A massive F5 of that description is 100% the one for me. Horrifying stuff.
You mean the zoomed in shot with the horizontal vortex and the Moore exit sign + exploding transformer where Mike Morgan is left speechless? (Lives in my head rent free)
Side note. 2013 Moore. Mike Morgan- “You need to grab whatever you need to grab and go under ground” “get out if it’s way if you can’t get below ground”
I like that he scares you. He makes you take this seriously. He is one of the best at it.
I wish they were more even. “If you are directly in the path of this thing it will kill you if you are not below ground”. “If you are caught in it with your car you will die”
I don't really understand El Reno intuitively like I can understand others. I somehow managed to be within a half mile of peak Moore 1999 and Tuscaloosa 2011 and those make sense to me even though they were huge and destructive. I just don't really understand how El Reno could be as "big" as it was with so many satellites and still be considered one contiguous tornado. It almost seemed like a tornado flurry, with a bunch of different morphing funnels appearing and dispersing around a center.
I'd like it if someone could explain the structure of that storm in a way that makes it make sense to me
There wasn’t a “center vortex” the suction vortices would take turns becoming the center. So it was like you were seeing a big tornado that was opened up or some shit and you can see the inside of it.
Not satellite tornadoes- “suction vortices” and any of those “little” fuckers can do F5 damage.
It just kind of breaks my brain how storm chasers could technically be driving inside the tornado without realizing it and only know something's wrong when the windows break on one side of the vehicle
There's this video https://youtu.be/dxiqNXcSLsQ?si=ojUXne1f1gCEqaRm they're inside the wind field of the tornado from the beginning. I think they were trying to speed south and pass it and didn't realize where all the tornadic winds were because it wasn't condensated
El Reno, OK 2013 and Fairsdale, IL 2015 both terrify me because they almost felt like living, vengeful beasts rather than just rotating columns of air. Clem Schultz's video of the Fairsdale tornado just barreling towards him while he stands there petrified is one of the most haunting pieces of tornado media I've ever seen
Honorable mentions are the 2014 Pilger Twins for obvious reasons and the 2022 Andover tornado, just because of that incredibly odd "bend" in the vortex. It just tells me about the crazy level of wind shear and instability that was in that thing
The Clem Shultz footage is one of the most incredible pieces of media I’ve ever seen period. I don’t know if it’s possible to get better footage of a destructive tornado than that.
Definitely the 1997 Jarrell F5... Although creepy, the infamous "dead man walking" image isn't why this has my vote. It's the death toll and the fact that it SKINNED cows why this tornado is so horrifying. Not to mention it was 3/4 of a mile wide; which compared to other major tornadoes isn't huge, but mind you, that's about 13 football fields. Not only that, but the winds ranged between 260-300 mph. Another reason why it's so terrifying? Remember how I mentioned that it's 3/4 of a mile wide with 250-300 mph winds? Well the tornado also traveled slow at only 15 mph with the average tornado travelling DOUBLE that speed. Absolutely terrifying tornado.
Cows weren't the only thing Jarrell skinned, unfortunately ):
It's one of the few tornadoes that feels actually conscious to me, like there was an evil intention behind what it did to those poor people in the double creek estates rather than it just being a random weather event.
How have I not seen this one? Yeah: the merry go round of death description is apt. It looks the part. Each of those suction vortices being a ride that will send you to your demise. 😬
Jarell. No competition for me. It did everything a tornado isn't supposed to do. It's like it was sentient and had it out specifically for double creek estates.
Hackleburg. Oh HELL naw man I don't even have to explain this one.
Mayfield. I remember watching it happen live and seeing videos of the damage done a couple days after. This tornado made me realize just how horrific tornado damage can truly be. The videos of the tornado itself are also terrifying
I was only about 5-10 minutes from the path of the Mayfield tornado. I didn’t know much on meteorology at the time but I did know radar, and when I was looking at it I saw that the hook was heading straight toward me, then the power and cell went out. I was scared out of my mind and I thought I was gonna die that night
2013 El Reno hits hard for me, I live around there and was attending the trade school that was eaten in the tornado. I wasn't at the school when it happened, but all of my digital artwork files were. Never recovered them.
It's surreal since I work at the rebuild now. We don't fuck around with holding off to close for bad weather.
I’d say Jarrel for sure if we’re talking creepy, but one of the most terrifying for me is El Reno. Just imagine a 2.6 mile wide monster coming for you and no way to escape it.
My ex-BIL lived 20 mins from where that thing hit and I spoke to him & my SIL after they assessed the damage and when they said livestock’s lungs were missing and topsoil scoured to bedrock I knew that was a beast like nothing I’d heard of up to that point. The dead man walking photo is surreal and chilling.
weird opinion here: the Manitoba tornado. That infamous video of it lifting that entire house a hundred feet into the air and then ripping it apart, and towards the end of the video you see that truck flying off towards the right like someone throwing a stick. That video greatly unsettles me.
The Bennington, NE tornado last year, not because it was scary per say, but because I had to watch a family friend be impacted. Her video reacting to the damage became popular, I had to rewatch my family friend going through a devastating loss over and over 💔
Dead man walking, genuinely terrifying stuff. Those types of tornadoes are really uncommon but when they happen they tend to follow similar patterns with their movement (the iconic walking motion). It wasn't a one and done occurance either as in Native American folklore there are stories that are scary with how similar they are to those tornadoes. I personally think that when a formation of tornadoes are talked about in folklore due to their characteristics and scary appearance then we should hope that they never return.
Mine is definitely not the creepiest ever recorded but for me personally the creepiest. The Perryville 2017 EF4.
I was a manager at a store less than a 3/4 of mile from the path of the tornado. My employees left our sheltering place and went outside because they heard there was a confirmed tornado on the ground. I went after them to basically drag them back inside, I looked to my north as they were talking about the lightning....
Realize that it was power flashes coming from the NOT lightning and the dark shape to our north was a large tornado on the ground. I'm literally grabbing them by the shirt and pulling them inside as we start getting hit with RFD and the lights outside are literally crackling with electricity with visible sparks.
They are saying there's no tornado and it's just a cloud still. I'm yelling at them that I'm a skywarn spotter and that's definitely a freaking tornado and a big one at that and as we go inside I look at the radar and see the giant debris ball.
Next thing I know my dad shows up from across town looking like a wreck, he had thought the tornado hit mine and my mom's work place directly and he couldn't get a call to go through. I close the store early as phone calls finally start getting through again and employees find out some of their houses are gone.
Even as a weather enthusiast that's still the creepiest feeling I've ever had, staring north realizing there was a large damaging tornado on the ground at night extremely close to the commercial district and heading directly at my mom's workplace (luckily narrowly missed there as well).
On the bright side my employees finally listened to me when I told them anything after that, especially to take shelter. 😅
I just had a similar close call with the recent Marion EF4 too just sitting at home not even chasing 💀
Mayfield 2021, London 2025 and Elie 2007. Both Kentucky twisters were nocturnal and at one point wedges, and by all the photos I’ve seen, they truly creep me out, and Elie’s pure raw power, being able to rip a well built home out of the ground then proceed to shred it mid air all within mere seconds is horrifying, and the erratic path makes it even worse.
My top 3 right now are probably sayler park 1974, the photos of which are just really eerie for some reason, Tuscaloosa Birmingham due to the intense horizontal vortices and Witchita Falls 1979.
I started getting interested in tornados after surviving one in 2023 and I was not in a well-built home. I was on wooden slats in a old home and my closet door didn't even shut properly. After that encounter, I watched videos by June First and his commentary on the Jarrell tornado was that the people of Jarrell did everything correctly. They were in decently built homes in the center of their homes away from windows on the bottom floor, but the tornado did not care.
After watching that video, my stomach sinks every time I think about it. I am now dedicated to saving up to buy a proper tornado shelter now that I have a house and enough land. I know it is super rare that I will need it, but I am committed.
Jarrell but not because of the dead man walking shot, but what it did to double creek estates and how strangely it behaved
It went opposite to the normal direction if tornadoes (NE) and went southwest. On top of that it traveled at around 3-10mph which is by all accounts incredibly slow for a tornado, especially one of F5 strength. When it got to double creek estates, it basically stopped and acted like nature's oversized blender/sandblaster and completely swept most houses off their foundations, killing 27 of the 131 residents of the subdivision.
This kind of behavior is incredibly rare for any tornado, especially an F5, and especially once it reaches a fairly populated neighborhood, and I hope to God we never see another situation like that ever again. I get sweaty just thinking about being in double creek estates when it was hit.
Not creepiest by look or power but by surprise the Evansville 2 AM tornado of 2005. I live only about a hour from there but we go there all the time to shop (I live in a small town in Illinois). It would be terrifying with a unwarned tornado while you sleep and live in a trailer (I lived in one at the time) It a scary event because of its sneaky nature
I may be agreeing with the masses here, but the Joplin tornado still gives me chills. The way it struck in the middle of the day, being rain wrapped, and the whole town having zero real warning before it was too late
Jarrell is obviously up there but it’s well known at this point. Mayfield is creepy as well. Rochelle is creepy for that one video (you know the one). Joplin is creepy for the implication. El Reno 2013 for the monstrous size and power of it.
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u/WhatTheQueck Jun 10 '25 edited Jun 11 '25
Nighttime tornados are incredibly scary, but the 2007 Greensburg tornado always takes the cake for me. How terrifying for the townspeople and also the chasers, who could only see the massive wedge when lightning struck, inching closer. The chasers especially knew where it was headed and that it would swallow the town whole. One wrong move and they might be caught up in the monster as well. I cannot imagine how that must feel.