See the entire story so far by referring back to previous posts. In promise to Weatherwise, I am not posting the entire tale; therefore, this will be the last post. But in closing (but please read below), Capt. Hall did see the lower lip of the funnel tip the house next door and it instantly disentigrated. He estimated the winds to be 1000 mph (not a typo). Okay, here we go, inside the tornado funnel itself!!
As I gained footing another jarring
wham caught me, and I found myself
on my back over in the fireplace, and
the west wall of the room right down on
top of me. The "whams" were just
that. Instead of being blown inward
with a rending crash of timbers, as one
would expect of a cyclonic wind, the
side of the room came in as if driven by
one mighty blow of a gigantic sledge
hammer. One moment the wall stood.
The next it had been demolished. The
destruction had been so instantaneous
that I retained no memory of its progress.
I was standing, and then I was
down, 10 feet away. What happened
between, I failed to grasp or to sense.
By a quirk of fate I was not seriously
injured, and as soon as I had my senses
about me I clawed up through the
wreckage, and crawled around and
through the hole where the east door
had been. I could tell by the bluishwhite
light that the roof and ceiling of
this room were gone also. I almost ran
over my four-year-old daughter, who
was coming to see about me. Grabbing
her up I was instantly thrown down on
my side by a quick side-shift of the
floor. I placed her face down, and
leaned above her as a protection
against flying debris and falling walls.
I knew the house had been lifted
from its foundation, and feared it was
being carried through air. Sitting, facing
southward, I saw the wall of the
room bulge outward and go down. I
saw it go, and felt the shock, but still
there was no sound. Somehow, I could
not collect my senses enough to crawl
to the small, stout back room, six feet
away, and sat waiting for another of
those pile-driver blasts to sweep the
rest of the house away.
After a moment or so of this, I became
conscious that I was looking at my
neighbor's house, standing unharmed
100 feet to the south. Beyond I could see
'~ .. something had billowed
down from above, and stood
fairly motionless, save for a
slow up-and-down pulsation
.we were . . . inside the
tornado itself!"
others, apparently intact. But above all
this, I sensed a vast relief when I saw
that we were still on the ground. The
house had been jammed back against
trees on the east and south and had
stopped, partly off its foundation.
The period of relief I experienced,
however, was a very short one. Sixty
feet south of our house something had
billowed down from above, and stood
fairly motionless, save a slow up-anddown
pulsation. It presented a curved
face, with the concave part toward me,
with a bottom rim that was almost
level, and was not moving either
toward or away from our house. I was
too dumbfounded for a second, even to
try to fathom its nature, and then it
burst on my rather befuddled brain
with a paralyzing shock. It was the
lower end of the tornado! I was looking
at its inside, and we were, at the moment,
within the tornado itself!
The bottom of the rim was about 20
feet off the ground, and had doubtless
a few moments before destroyed our
house as it passed. The interior of the
funnel was hollow: the rim itself appearing
to be not over 10 feet in
thickness and, owing possibly to the
light within the funnel, appeared perfectly
opaque. Its inside was so slick
and even that it resembled the interior
of a glazed standpipe. The rim had another
motion which I was, for a moment,
too dazzled to grasp. Presently I
did. The whole thing was rotating,
shooting past from right to left with incredible
velocity.
I lay back on my left elbow, to afford
the baby better protection, and looked
up. It is possible that in that upward
glance my stricken eyes beheld something
few have ever seen before and
lived to tell about. I was looking far up
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, judging from the
circle in front of me, the funnel was
about 150 yards across. Higher up it
was larger, and seemed to be partly
filled with a bright cloud, which shimmered
like a fluorescent light. This
brilliant cloud was in the middle of the
funnel, not touching the sides, as I
recall having seen the walls extending
on up outside the cloud.
Up there too, where I could observe
both the front and back of the funnel,
the terrific whirling could be plainly
seen. As the upper portion of the huge
pipe swayed over, another phenomenon
took place. It looked as if the
whole column were composed of rings
or layers, and when a higher ring
moved on toward the southeast, the
ring immediately below slipped over to
get back under it. This rippling motion
continued on down toward the lowertip.
If there was any debris in the wall of
the funnel it was whirling so fast I
could not see it. And if there was a
vacuum inside the funnel, as is commonly
believed, I was not aware of it. I
do not recall having any difficulty in
breathing, nor did I see any debris
rushing up under the rim of the tornado,
as there surely would have been
had there been a vacuum.
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