The Terrifying Truth About Being Inside a Tornado

The idea of what it looks like inside of a tornado is just fascinating. Even people who aren't really into tornadoes are curious on what it's like. What if you drove right into that thing? What if you had gone off the road and driven right into it? Is there any chance at all that you'd be sucked through the tube of the tornado? There's no eye in the center. There's no center where it's not moving, is it, in a tornado. There is a little bit of an eye. In some ways, it's kind of like nature's black hole. I guess nature's black hole is a black hole, but it's like Earth's version of a black hole. It's something that sucks things in, and no one really knows what's beyond the event horizon. Of course, if someone is making a movie about tornadoes, you know they're going to have a scene that showcases the inside of a tornado. It's just too fascinating. But what's it actually like inside of a tornado? Are there tons of smaller inner vortices? Are there strange electrical lights? Is there an eye of the tornado where everything is calm and you can even see the blue sky up above? Well, luckily for us, many people have been inside of tornadoes, and they have lived to tell the tale. Some have even captured footage of the inside of a tornado. And today, we're going to cover these stories. We're going to talk about the strange things that people saw in the eyes of tornadoes. But before we get to that, a quick word from today's video sponsor, American Financing. If you're feeling overwhelmed by the cost of everyday life, groceries, gas, utilities, those never-ending bills, you're definitely not alone. Right now, millions of Americans are leaning on credit cards just to stay afloat, watching that debt pile up with no clear way out. But here's something that might give you a little breathing room. What if you could delay your next two mortgage payments? Imagine keeping that money in your pocket instead of sending it straight to the bank. It's possible with today's video sponsor, American Financing. American Financing is helping homeowners just like yourself take control of their financial situation by using the equity in their homes to pay off high-interest debt. Their salary-based mortgage consultants are trained to find custom solutions that actually make sense. No pressure, no upfront fees, just honest help. In fact, their customers are saving on average $800 a month. That's nearly $10,000 a year. Money that could be used for your savings, emergencies, or just to catch your breath. And the process is quick. It's straightforward and it's stress-free. Whether you're looking to refinance, consolidate debt, or just need some room in your monthly budget, American Financing can help you get there. Call American Financing now at 866-891-7848. That's 866-891-7848. Or visit AmericanFinancing.net slash Swiggle. That's 866-891-7848. Or go to AmericanFinancing.net slash Swiggle to see how much you can save. Thank you so much to American Financing for sponsoring the video. So we're starting off with chapter one, the eye of a tornado. Is there a calm eye in the center of a tornado? So with hurricanes, as you might know, they have an eye. I mean, clearly they have an eye. If you just happen to be within that eye, everything is calm. In fact, there's even blue skies above you. A pretty surreal experience. But the question is, is this possible with tornadoes? Is there a moment of calmness in the center of a tornado? And could you experience it? Well, there's actually evidence that suggests that yes, this is possible. One intriguing eyewitness account comes from Roy S. Hall in 1948. On May 3rd, 1948, the town of McKinney, Texas experienced a pretty horrific tornado event. An F3 tornado tore through the town, killing three individuals and injuring over 40. There were also thousands of witnesses to this event. One such witness was Captain Roy S. Hall and his wife, who were sitting on their back porch as they saw the storm approaching. Now, Captain Hall was actually pretty into meteorology, and he instantly noticed that this was a squall line. A squall line is like the front of a storm that's coming in. Sometimes you get that associated shelf cloud that looks kind of like this. This is a squall line, and he recognized it instantly. But what he also recognized was a scud cloud. A scud cloud is a scattered cumulus under deck cloud that's part of a squall line. It kind of looks like a tornado, but it's not a tornado. It's kind of just a scary looking cloud. So Roy and his wife were sitting on the porch, and he saw this scud cloud coming towards him. At least, he thought it was a scud cloud. As the scud cloud and thunderstorm approached, the winds picked up immensely, and lightning began to strike all around. And his wife was like, yo, let's go inside. This is a terrible situation. So they went inside, but since Captain Hall was so into weather, he stayed by the window so he could keep watching the storm as it rolled in. But suddenly, he noticed that scud cloud dipping even further to the ground, and it was getting closer and closer to their house. As it approached, the winds got incredibly strong, and outside it got darker and darker and darker. He had even seen in his neighbor's yard trees being torn out of the ground. His wife decided to take shelter in the basement. But Roy, he was a proud man, and he wanted to continue watching the storm. So he stayed by the window. A decision he would regret because the winds got so strong that the wall and window in front of him were blown in, knocking him to the floor. But at this point, it was too late to go downstairs. Captain Hall had his shelter in place. All around him was chaos. Lightning was striking all over the place. High winds were destroying his house. But then suddenly, everything was calm. It was so quiet that according to Captain Hall, he thought he had lost his hearing. He also noticed that it was getting lighter outside. But this light was different. It wasn't like normal daylight. It was kind of like a blue fluorescent light. Assuming that the storm had passed, Captain Hall walked out the front door, and what he saw shocked him. Captain Hall had realized that the storm actually had not passed. He was right in the center of it. Him and his wife were literally within the eye of a tornado. He stated this. It was the lower end of a tornado funnel. I was looking at its inside, and we were, at the moment, within the tornado itself. The interior of the funnel was hollow, the rim appearing not over 10 feet in thickness. Its inside was so slick and even that it resembled the interior of a glazed standpipe. The whole thing was rotating, shooting past from right to left with incredible velocity. I was looking far up into the interior of a great tornado funnel. It extended upward for over a thousand feet, and was swaying gently and bending slowly toward the southeast. Down at the bottom, the funnel was about 150 yards across. Higher up, it was even larger, and it seemed to be partly filled with a bright cloud, which shimmered like a fluorescent light. After he had witnessed this, he saw the event horizon of the tornado approaching him. He got back inside. It got super dark, again, and super windy. And then, within a few moments, the whole event was over. They had apparently survived being struck directly by a tornado. It's a pretty insane story. But, is it true? Did this actually happen? I mean, it's not that crazy to think that someone would make up a story back in 1948. I mean, people make up stories all the time. I will say that there are some parts of the story that really don't make too much sense to me. I think one specific part of the story that doesn't make much sense is the fact that it was silent for a few moments. Even if you're within a calm area of the tornado, you're still going to hear the rumble of the tornado. People who are a decent distance away from a tornado can easily hear the tornado. It sounds kind of like a freight train. So, if you're in the middle of it, of course, you're going to hear it. So, that part of the story doesn't really make sense. In fact, if you look at his account, he talks about how the debris was moving around him so fast that it was breaking the speed of sound. And that's why he couldn't hear anything. Because it doesn't make any sense. And that part of the story, I don't really believe. I wanted to see if I could find any photos of this specific tornado to see how wide it was. Because I think a big part of, you know, if this is possible, is if the tornado is a specific width. If it's super thin, obviously, you're not going to be able to be in the eye of the tornado because it's just going to be super short. But if the tornado is a wedge tornado, if it's wide enough, maybe it is possible. I couldn't find any images. I did find some images of the damage from the tornado. But this was an F3. And F3s can be pretty wide. F3s are usually around the 400 meter mark. But they can be as wide as, well, two miles in extreme instances. So, it is possible that this tornado was wide enough to experience something like that. And he did also mention that when he looked up, it looked like it kind of swayed slowly. So, there is another possibility that maybe it was a smaller tornado. But he just happened to be inside of it when it was stationary. Tornadoes stop all the time. Sometimes they're moving and sometimes they stop for a moment and then they keep moving. Tornadoes can go in all sorts of directions and they can act very strange. Now, it does kind of help that tornadoes kind of go like this. You know, they get that cone shape. That shape does allow you to see higher up and maybe to see that, you know, that eye interior. But one question you might be asking is, could we possibly see an eye of a tornado on radar? And surprisingly, the answer is yes. There have been examples of the eye of a tornado showing up on radar. My favorite example came on April 30th, 2024 with this radar imagery right here. So, a massive, very powerful tornado occurred out in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma. Thankfully, it was a super rural area. So, there was no harm done. But if you look at the radar imagery, you see this right here? That's a couple of green pixels. That's the eye of the tornado. There is on radar a calm center area of this tornado. Absolutely insane. So, if you just happen to be within those two green pixels, yeah, it would have been chill for a few moments. Here's another radar image from that tornado. And just look how crazy this looks. This is insane. This looks like kind of like a little mini hurricane. So, in some ways, we have scientific proof that an eye really does exist. But to be in that, to happen, and to survive that, an extremely rare occurrence. If you really want to see the eye of a tornado, just look at Doppler on Wheels radar imagery. So, Doppler on Wheels are mobile radar units that can get really close to tornadoes. So, they can scan the tornado and they can get extremely detailed imagery. If you look at some of the radar imagery from Doppler on Wheels, you can totally see the eye of the tornado. They almost look like mini hurricanes. Absolutely insane. But there is another question that remains. Is it possible to see blue skies above you if you're within the eye of a tornado? If you've ever seen the movie Into the Storm, there's a moment where someone gets sucked up into a tornado and they look up and they see blue skies above them. I think they even have this in Twister. Is this possible at all? Can you see blue skies inside a tornado like you do inside a hurricane? No. I mean, probably not. It'd be an extremely rare situation. First of all, tornadoes are very chaotic. Just because you're in the middle of the tornado in one area, you go up a couple hundred feet and it's probably swayed a different direction. So, nope. No blue skies. Then you have the situation where there's a supercell above the tornado 99% of the time. A supercell is a massive mesocyclonic rotating thunderstorm that you're not going to see through this. Are you kidding me? But let's say you get sucked up way up high like Into the Storm, up into the thunderstorm itself. You're above the tornado. You're up in the mesocyclone. Could you see blue skies above that? Probably not. But there is a thunderstorm feature that we should mention known as a vortex hole. These are essentially eye-like calm areas within the supercell itself, way up high in the atmosphere. In fact, if you look at different tilts of reflectivity from the Hollister, Oklahoma tornado we talked about earlier, you can see this area of relatively low reflectivity. So, you could get caught in one of these in theory, but it's not like these go all the way up to the top of the supercell where there's blue sky above them. First of all, you can look at satellite imagery of supercell thunderstorms and you'll notice, oh, there's no holes in these things. At least most of the time. There is this specific image from Kansas in 2009 and this does kind of look like there's a hole in it. That's interesting. So, in conclusion, yes, there is an eye to a tornado and yes, you could in theory experience it, but the conditions needed to actually live and experience this are incredibly rare. Overall, an extremely rare experience that is technically possible. Another intriguing part about Captain Hall's story about the center of a tornado is that strange blue light that he witnessed. Apparently, there was like a fluorescent blue glow inside the tornado. Believe it or not, there are reports of a strange, weird glowing phenomena that is seen in the middle of tornadoes. You have, of course, the 1955 Blackwell, Oklahoma tornado incident, which involved a strange blue glow at the top of the tornado. This was seen from the outside, not necessarily the center of the tornado, but there was apparently some kind of glowing blue light that people witnessed. So, what on earth could be causing this phenomenon? Is it even a real phenomenon? Well, there actually are a few other accounts of people who were on the inside of tornadoes who witnessed a similar electrical phenomenon. One such story comes from a farmer named Alonzo Justice on June 22, 1928. Alonzo lived near Greensburg, Kansas, a town that has not a great history with tornadoes. In fact, it was completely wiped off the map in 2007. But way back in 1928, it had a close call with a tornado. Apparently, a tornado formed just to the northeast of the town. Now, Alonzo, he was in a pretty good position. He actually had a storm cellar and he was at the front of the cellar and he opened the door and saw the tornado approaching. And he was like, I'm just going to wait here until the last minute and then I'm going to go down and seek shelter. But as a tornado approached him, it actually started to lift up a little bit. So he was like, well, heck, let's see what happens. I must be safe because it's going up in the air. So he stayed there and then it passed directly above him. Alonzo stated this. Steadily, the tornado came on, the end gradually rising above the ground. I could have stood there for only a few seconds, but so impressed was I with what was going on that it seemed to last a long time. At last, the great shaggy end of the funnel hung directly overhead. Everything was still as death. I looked up and to my astonishment, I saw right up into the heart of the tornado. There was a circular opening in the center of the funnel, about 50 or 100 feet in diameter. The walls of this opening were rotating clouds and the whole thing was brilliantly visible by constant flashes of lightning, which zigzagged from side to side. Had it not been for the lightning, I could not have seen this opening. So in Alonzo's description of the interior of a tornado, it's more of a constant flash of lightning, little lightning things all around the tunnel just flashing constantly. So what's going on? Can the center of tornadoes actually glow? Well, there actually is a scientific explanation for all of this. You see, some experts have theorized that static electricity can build up. So you have a rotating column of dust and debris and all that static electricity builds up and then releases energy, perhaps in the form of a glow or in constant flashes of lightning, similar to maybe St. Elmo's fire. In fact, this is often seen with big dust storms. When dust storms come over out in the desert in Western America or in Australia, people have claimed to touch things and get shocked. Even blowing snow can cause this phenomenon. And of course, when you have debris and dust whipping around going over 200 miles per hour and all those little pieces of dust and debris are smashing into each other, causing a lot of friction, you're going to have some buildup of static electricity. My theory is that this does exist. It's just extremely faint and difficult to see. That's why you can only really see it during a nighttime tornado. Or perhaps if you're inside the tornado and the sun is blocked out and it's dark, you can see it in that situation. Many of you might be thinking these are power flashes. Clearly, they're power flashes. When a tornado goes over an electrical grid or a transformer, those can explode, causing a bright blue flash. It is possible that they might have witnessed something like that as well. A pretty interesting phenomenon that I'm thinking might get captured on film in the next decade or so. There's so many storm chasers chasing every tornado, even the ones at night. So if there really is any strange electrical phenomenon that can occur of tornadoes, we're going to find out soon. Another interesting phenomenon that Alonzo described when he was inside the tornado was tons of small little inner vortices. He stated this. Around the lower rim of the Great Vortex, small tornadoes were constantly forming and breaking away. These little tornadoes made a hissing noise. Now this is real. This totally exists. Multi-vortex tornadoes are pretty common. Now usually people think of a few, maybe two or three inner vortices. But sometimes dozens can occur. Reed Timmer has great footage of this in Greenfield, Iowa. And there's lots of drone shots where people fly around tornadoes and they see little mini tornadoes forming all around. This is a real phenomenon, which is actually kind of the reason why I believe his story. Because he witnessed this and wrote this down back in 1928. People had no idea that multi-vortex tornadoes occurred back in the 1920s. So for him to describe it so specifically, that's pretty impressive. It makes his story pretty credible. This is something that the movie Twister gets correct. When they're inside the tornado, there's that inner vortice. And that's real. I mean, people see that all the time with tornadoes. They see a larger vortex with a smaller tornado inside. In fact, one tornado that a lot of people were caught in the middle of was El Reno. And there were sub-vortices all around. So this is real. Another interesting phenomena that people experience when they are caught inside of tornadoes are their ears popping. This actually happens quite a bit. People who seek shelter in their homes are destroyed. They describe their ears popping or pain in their ears. Because a tornado is a low pressure region. So let's talk about footage. Now there are many pieces of footage that have been caught of the inside of tornadoes. And pretty much all of them come from tornado intercept vehicles. These vehicles are able to withstand high winds. And when the tornado passes over them, they gather a bunch of data as well as footage. If you look at the videos captured by tornado intercept vehicles as the tornado goes over them, it usually just gets extremely dark. For a few moments with insane winds and then it passes over. None of them really show a calm interior or any strange light phenomena. I think part of the reason why this is the case is most tornadoes that are intercepted are pretty small. They're not large wedge tornadoes that would actually be large enough to create that calm eye. One great video of the inside of a tornado was captured by Vortex 2 in Wyoming in 2009. Check it out. Even as it ropes out like this can be a dangerous tornado. It's certainly wider aloft than it is at the ground. But very interesting. We've watched the whole evolution to a narrow tornado to a wedge tornado. Look at that. You can see Dr. Forbes. You can look right inside the tornado. That is unbelievable. Look at that. You can look right into the top of it. That is awesome, Mike. And you can see there the counterclockwise rotation. It has little rings. It's like smoke rings that are rising in the tornado itself. In the end, as we get more and more videos of the inside of tornadoes, we're going to learn more. We're going to see what it's actually like in the long run. I do want, you know, if you're watching this and you have a tornado intercept vehicle, have a camera facing up. Because I kind of want to see, you know, all the people that are amazed by the interior of tornadoes who survived back in the day. They were amazed by what was above them. So instead of filming the road in front of you, look up. Might be kind of crazy. And with that said, thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.