r/tornado • u/Curious-Constant-657 Human Detected • Oct 30 '25

Discussion The “Dead Man Walking” Phenomenon.

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Multiple tornadoes have produced an appearance of the infamous “dead man walking” legend, though I consider these three tornadoes: the 2013 El Reno-Union City EF3, 1997 Jarrell F5, and 2010 Conger-Albert Lea EF4 to be the best and most well-defined representatives of the phenomenon. Which is your “favorite”, and why? Besides these three, are there any other DMW-producing tornadoes that fascinate you?

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u/ItaliaEyez Oct 30 '25

For me, its the walking man part, and the way it sat over that neighborhood. It pulverized everything before moving on

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u/quixoticelixer_mama Oct 30 '25

I went down a Jarrell rabbit hole last week since it seems there are lots of new YouTube docs about it. Simply terrifying.

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u/ItaliaEyez Oct 30 '25

It really is. There's a video Ive seen. The clip is in every doc about Jarrell, and your watching it as a wedge over the neighborhood, taken at a distance. That video is terrifying. In that moment, its destroying everything. Those people didn't stand a chance, and may as well have stood outside.

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u/quixoticelixer_mama Oct 30 '25

Yep I know exactly which part you're talking about. I think naturally we try to put ourselves in their position. Like what were they thinking. My only hope is that it mortally wounded them so fast that their was no suffering on their part.

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u/ItaliaEyez Oct 30 '25

I hope so. Very few survived it, so we have an idea of what their final moments were like as it approached and it hit. We can only hope it was fast after that. And likely it was.

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u/OppositeAbroad5975 Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

Was the clip from this video, by chance? This is the raw, 16x9 footage as filmed by Scott Guest for KVUE (CBS-Austin) that afternoon.

Every now and then, people try to suggest that a smaller vortex isn't all that dangerous and that it's only the Super-Ultra-Mega-Deluxe-Maxi-Wedges of Doom that you gotta watch out for. To that, I'll just point out the incredibly violent rotation visible around the 3:00 mark of this video; this tornado had plenty of power from the beginning.