Rare sideways tornado captured on video

[Hugabear]

Watch the video here: http://youtu.be/5ohIVzIZLuQ

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110428/sc_livescience/raresidewaystornadocapturedonvideo

<snip>
A rare sideways tornado was captured on video as it spun off of a massive twister that roared through downtown Tuscaloosa, Ala., yesterday (April 27).

Just how rare are these sideways spinners?

"There's not even a settled-upon name for those," said Bob Henson, a meteorologist with the National Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

In the video, horizontal, rope-like funnel clouds periodically twist off of the main funnel cloud. At 1:20 in the video, a large sideways funnel cloud forms in front of the twister.
<snip>

That is some seriously scary shit...

[Beaverhausen]

1. the person filming that has to be nuts

too close

[mod mom]

11. Absolutely. To risk your life for footage is insane.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Two things: A) The man who took that video is very brave and B) I swear that tornado had arms like..

...some surreal air elemental from hell.

How do I know he is brave? Watch that video. Listen to the guy. Whew. That took nerves of steel. From about 6:30 on, I think he flat out lost his mind. I don't mean this as a pejorative. If I saw that shit up close, I would hope I could lose my mind more quickly than he did so I did not have to deal with understanding what I was witnessing. That particular tornado did not look like any tornado I'd ever seen footage of. That looked like a fucking angry god from some nether-plane.

And as far as the tornado trying to grab him like some supernatural nightmare, if you watch the video keep a close eye on those tendrill-like vortices which form, seem to reach out, feel, grab...

I would LOVE to see that video stabilized.

Wow.

THIS is the video I'm talking about, in case there's any confusion.

PB

[joshcryer]

3. Seeing that video makes me wonder, though. :/

How many people attempted what he did only for the results to go the other way? Another few thousand yards toward him and he would've been done for.

[Poll_Blind]

4. As I watched that I kept thinking "Single. Young. Male." You're right, he could have easily been...

...killed, and killed in an unimaginably horrible way if he had grabbed that thing's attention. Very scary but amazing footage.

PB

[kas125]

5. Yeah, that was scary. Those things can change direction

and he should have gotten the hell out of there.

[TheMadMonk]

6. Watch the ground track and its speed. Absent a debris strike, 60 seconds,...

...or even 20-30 is more than enough time to cut and run, provided of course you have the space. An empty parking lot does at least give that space.

But if you're going to do this sort of shit more than once, buy a 4 camera surveilance system and put them in a box on the roof of the car. And fill the trunk with dumbells to go with the one in the driver's seat.

[TheMightyFavog]

12. I would think few HUNDRED yards.

That was freaking danger close.

[laundry_queen]

7. This morning

when more videos came out the meteorologist on CNN was talking about this - that it is very rare but that it seems that many tornadoes that day had them. He thought it was just because the atmosphere just had so much 'juice' and there was so much rotation that vortices were just spinning up everywhere. It's very unusual and it's going to be one of the things they study about this outbreak.

[PDittie]

8. Positively apocalyptic.

[WolverineDG]

9. No such thing as climate change, my butt

weird weather is one thing. this isn't "weird weather."

dg

[deutsey]

10. I can't watch at work...I want to check it out later n/t

[Brickbat]

13. Impressive.