yes, the wind is extremely strong tonight
so strong that it is frightening
then for a while, everything becomes still
and the wind comes blowing again
i wonder what is happening
That sounds like a sweeping tornado already, the still portion is the eye of tornado. That is the center. It is calm and cool and bright sky when you are at the center. You won't get a still moment if the eye don't sweep past you directly.
http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/tornadoes/insidetheeye.shtml
[ t o r n a d o e s : i n s i d e t h e e y e ]
So what is it like in the eye of a tornado? Survivors who have experienced the center of a storm report complete silence in the eye, and a strange, blue glow. Looking up, the tornado looks like a hollow column, slick-surfaced and opaque, about ten feet thick, resembling the inside of a pipe. It extends upward for over a thousand feet, swaying gently. At the bottom, according to one testimony, the funnel was 150 yards across and was larger higher up, and was filled with a bright cloud, shimmering like a fluorescent light. The column appears to be a stack of huge rings, each independent of the next. These rings cause waves to ripple from top to bottom. As each wave reaches the bottom of the tornado, the funnel’s tip snaps like a whip.
A Kansas farmer looked straight up a tornado near Greensburg on June 22, 1928. He described a circular opening in the center of the funnel, about 50 or 100 feet wide. Extending up for half a mile, its walls were spinning clouds and full of lightning flashes. He saw smaller tornadoes constantly form and break away from the center with hissing sounds.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/eye-of-tornado.htm
What is it like in the eye of a tornado?
by Charles W. Bryant
Bryant, Charles W. "What is it like in the eye of a tornado?." 31 March 2008. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/eye-of-tornado.htm> 22 April 2009.
Inside this Article
1. What is it like in the eye of a tornado?
2. Will and Roy's Big Adventures: Inside the Tornado
3. Lots More Information
4. See all Natural Disasters articles
Storm Chasers: A Direct Hit
Dorothy Gale and Toto might be able to tell you. Same with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt. But aside from in "The Wizard of Oz" and "Twister," has anyone ever been in the eye of a tornado and lived to tell about it? It seems that a couple of people have -- a man in 1928 and another in 1943. We'll get to them on the next page, but first, let's get into these tornadoes ourselves and see what all the fuss is about.
We all know what tornadoes look like, but what are they? The American Meteorological Society's official definition is "a violent rotating column of air, in contact with the ground, either pendant from a cumuliform cloud or underneath a cumuliform cloud, and often (but not always) visible as a funnel cloud" [source: American Meteorological Society].
Storm Image Gallery
Tornado
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If you saw this coming your way, you would a) stay the course b) pull over and watch it c) weep like a child. See more storm pictures.
A _tornado forms as a thunderstorm approaches. In the lower atmosphere, increased wind speeds create a horizontal but invisible spinning tube. Once the storm rumbles through, rising air tilts this tube from its horizontal position to the more recognizable vertical funnel shape. From there, tornadoes can have wind speeds up to 300 mph and cause a great deal of destruction where they touch the Earth. They uproot trees, flatten houses and send cars flying through the air like Frisbees. The sound is often described as a freight train barreling through your home. You can learn more about tornadoes and how they're rated in How Tornadoes Work.
So if a tornado can fling a car and turn a house into toothpicks, how in the world can anyone survive standing in the eye of the beast and what's it like in there? We'll get two firsthand accounts on the next page.
On June 22, 1928, Mr. Keller was with his family, checking out the damage to his wheat crop from a hailstorm that had just passed. He spotted an umbrella-shaped cloud in the near distance and had a feeling that a tornado might develop. Before he knew it, there were three funnel clouds heading his way in a hurry. Keller rushed his family to their storm cellar and, before climbing in himself, decided to take another look. He'd seen many tornadoes over the years, so he wasn't afraid, but remained cautious. Kellar said he was transfixed by the twister, and he held his position until it was directly overhead.
Once inside the swirling cloud, Keller said that everything was "as still as death." He reported smelling a strong gassy smell and had trouble breathing. When he looked up, he saw the circular opening directly overhead, and estimated it to be roughly 50 to 100 feet in diameter and about a half a mile high. The rotating cloud walls were made clearly visible by constant bursts of lightning that "zigzagged from side to side." He also noticed a lot of smaller tornadoes forming and breaking free, making a loud hissing noise. The tornado then passed, skipping over his house and smashing the home of his neighbor.
The second account from Roy Hall does nothing to disprove Keller's story. Hall was a soybean farmer in McKinnet, Texas. One spring afternoon in 1951, Hall and his family were outside when a nasty storm approached. He sent his wife and kids inside to hide under a bed but stayed to watch the coming storm. He claims to have seen green sheets of rain just before the tornado formed. After baseball-sized hail started coming down, he went inside. He then heard a loud rumbling followed by complete silence. The walls began to shake, and to his surprise, his roof was ripped away and thrown into the woods nearby. At this point, he looked up to find the tornado directly overhead. He described the inside as a smooth wall of clouds, with smaller twisters swirling around the inside before breaking free. Once again, non-stop lightning created a bluish light, enabling him to see everything clearly. And then, just like that, the tornado passed and the sky turned sunny. The same storm killed 100 Texans, but Hall and his family surv
