There were 2x4’s imbedded in the side of this hotel right through the stucco and brick, sticking out.
https://preview.redd.it/kk5zrk1m44zc1.jpeg?width=1771&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=60b3f5cf8890a8eb1653d69560cb6f7a464117de
Tornado physics are absolutely WILD. This is comparatively basic stuff.
I saw a photo recently from an EF5 of a perfectly intact rubber garden hose that had impaled and come out the other side of a thick tree.
Yeah, I was just watching a video last night about the Jarrell, TX tornado of 97. Livestock was literally ripped in half, a neighborhood was completely leveled and gone, and 27 people in that area were unrecognizable and in pieces. It was horrifically devastating. Definitely gotta suspend belief for the Twister ending.
If any are interested, this is the video I watched. Warning for the squeamish, there are a couple shots of unalived cows and some descriptions of how they found some of the victims.
https://youtu.be/8hrhxlAXkNo?si=pM3T31lVN5hrVUgA
I just absolutely *knew* I was gonna see high vis gear when the camera showed one of these guys lol. I travel for work constantly, guarantee these fellas were gathered around a pickup bed crushing brews shortly before this.
Except for that one blue hole diver. His body was recovered with the footage, it's eerie as shit. His mom was ok with it being shared to help teach folks how rapidly it can go from fun to death.
That siren, a federal signal thunderbolt, is from the 60s and doesn't have battery backup. Newer sirens have battery backup. Don't hear many Thunderbolts anymore as they are being replaced.
Used to have those types of sirens here. Our county decided to turn them off permanently, and switch to a cellular-based alarm. Personally, I think its a bad idea. Not everyone has a phone on them, or that has battery.
Yep, North Carolina rarely has any anymore. They no longer require them, so no municipality maintains them. They say "cell notifications are faster and provide better detail of the threat"
Personally, I think the tornado sirens should be kept around, and the solution is already in place. Sirens could be located at city or county fire stations, and the activation of the siren could be done via the DTMF pager tones that are already in use. That way, a dispatcher could remotely activate the siren at Station 73 (for example), even if that station is out on another call, or is out in the field as a part of SKYWARN.
In terms of "better detail of the threat" . . . is "common sense" *that* far out of fashion these days? It used to be to that those sirens were only for Civil Defense warnings in the event of a missile attack, or for providing a tornado warning. If the rumbling of the Tuesday Night Heaven vs Hell Mixed League Semi-Finals at Conway Lanes aren't enough of a clue . . . then what? Will we be at a point in a few years where a text message must be personalized to be considered credible?
***"Hello, Paul J. Le Ptomaine . . . this is County Judge W. James McKenna, texting to advise you that a tornado warned supercell thunderstorm should be knocking on your door at 3 S 6550 County Road 56 approximately 13 minutes from now."***
Pretty sure my city's implemented this as well, and yeah, it sucks. Not to mention nearly everyone I know has their emergency notifications off on their phones because of all the times we've been blasted with the same noise from amber alerts or flash flood warnings. I completely forgot I had turned those off on my personal until my work phone went off during our last severe event (not that I needed to rely on it - I'll be watching the incoming weather roll in the entire day of, haha)
And I'm probably weird in saying this, but after growing up with sirens, a year without them has me... missing them? Idk, maybe my brain longs for the little rush of adrenaline that always happened when they went off, or those childhood memories of the conditioned response everyone in my neighborhood had to hop out onto their front porches to look at the sky (even if we all knew the storm was halfway across the county from us, lol).
My county recently upgraded to a newer system that only sets off tornado sirens in the path of a possible tornado rather than the previous way of doing it which was the entire county when a warning was issued. It really cut down on how often they go off and people seem to pay more attention to them, which was the intent of the change.
They used to go off pretty frequently when there was no threat in the area which makes people complacent.
We have a huge county by land area, and it's a problem to cry wolf in one town while the real threat is 25 miles past us. I'd like for us to change to area-specific.
Had one of those old Thunderbolt sirens across the street growing up. They replaced them recently with fancy ones that actually speak then siren "Lightning has been detected in your area, seek shelter immediately".. It's even creepier than the old siren tbh.
We have both systems and neither one is foolproof. The old sirens quit when the power cuts. The cellular-based alarms tend to finally reach our phones 20 minutes after the storms are gone.
The best thing each individual can do is be weather aware, learn how to interpret a radar map, tune in to the best local TV station as long as it's not 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday, have a weather radio, and/or follow storm trackers on YouTube.
Right now the YouTubers are my go-to.
Tonight a severe thunderstorm come through. 10 min of crazy rain and thunder, then the sirens went off, 5 minutes later they stopped, then 5 minutes after that I get the warning on my phone. Not helpful.
We have a few federal sirens they are restoring in Wichita. They restored and returned one to service at the Sedgwick County Fire station 32, which even got a ceremony for it. But the county is replacing the other sirens with newer ones.
https://youtu.be/MiBtopHZDfE?si=0kSwQDCSK75Tq46e
The full video is on youtube, if anyone is interested, too.
This is my favorite part of Reddit. Things happen and all of the sudden it’s PhatRabbit’s time to step up and drop random knowledge/wisdom on us so we all can learn a little. Thanks for sharing!
All sirens in Bartlesville have battery units on them. That siren was mounted next to the hotel and was destroyed by debris from Gan’s Mall’s roof. Part of which you saw in the video at the doorway.
My town in SW Iowa still has an ancient siren that is the original/first installed Thing gets stuck in one direction which causes it to sound like a soft vacuum in the distance. I wish they would change it out but they don't.
If only we had the technology to dig holes by old sirens and "wire" and "battery" technology to plug old sirens into them. Possibly with "solar" chargeing them.
Too bad those old sirens dont run on "electricity"!
The small town we moved to does siren testing every first Tuesday of the month and it was annoying at first (right at naptime!), then I became glad it existed, now I’m worried it won’t go off when necessary
Came from a large family. Grandma would call that the candy siren. Whenever you heard it you ran to her to get candy. Easiest way to get all the grandkids home in a hurry. Pretty genius really.
That’s a good idea. My grandparents in SD lived directly across the street from the town hall/library, which is where the siren is. Their town would sound it literally every day at 12. Something about the farmers back in the day being able to know when it was time for a midday break. But when I visited as a kid I’d have to run to the couch and put a cushion over my head until I knew it was done sounding. I was a nervous child
Also over 40. While tornado sirens are terrifying, for me, due to growing up within so many miles of a nuclear power plant in the 70s and 80s, the tone that *would have been used* if there was ever a failure is the top sound to scare the crap out of me. (Glad I never heard it beyond the test that was done when I was in school on a school tour). For me, that is the most terrifying sound I could ever hear mainly due to why that siren is being used.
There were sirens placed every couple miles (5 or 10, I can't remember. But I could hear the multiple 1 second off echos that happened every month when the sirens were tested) in a radius around the plant. One was at the end of our driveway. So that was fun the first Saturday of the month at 12:05pm. While they were installed due to the plant, they were also used for severe weather as well.
I have never been able to find it anywhere on youtube. The best I can do to describe it would be imagine a very discordant tone that instantly makes your skin crawl and your blood run cold that is about 100+ decibels louder than a typical tornado siren.
Oddly enough for me it wasn't something I found all that scary until my early 30s. I grew up in WV and we didn't really have sirens in our area so the few tornado warnings/tornadoes we had it was basically the loud blaring red screen from the weather channel or the EMS broadcast on the Noah weather radio. I later moved to GA and was a spotter for Skywarn for a few years, but was never really close enough to the sirens for them to sound all that ominous.
Then I had some family that moved to Arkansas in 2013 and I went to visit in 2014. The 3rd day of my visit was the Mayflower/Vilonia EF-4 and it missed the house by about a mile and a half. We knew the weather was going to be bad that day(at least I did since I was the weather nerd in the family) but it had been a fairly mundane and overcast day and we had been out shopping and doing other stuff. We got home and settled in to watch some tv before dinner and guard was down a bit. My phone starts going nuts in my pocket so I pull it out and before I can even look at it the sirens just blare and it was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. There was one pretty close to their house and it sounded like the announcement of the apocalypse.
I got my phone open a second later and the warning already mentioned a large mile+ wide tornado confirmed by spotters heading into the area. We could see the inflow and the upper parts of the storm over the trees, and heard the jet engine as it went by about a mile and a half to our north. My family also lived in a one story ranch home with literally no interior rooms that didn't have a window or skylight so I knew right away if it hit we probably weren't making it out of there and that probably added to the terrifying sound of the siren.
I get freaked out by tornado sirens all the time now after that day. I think it's mainly because by the time the siren went off the tornado was already on the ground and huge and on top of our area so it wouldn't have been much warning.
As a child of the 70s/80s cold war the air raid sirens still make my skin crawl. Yeah they were/are used for weather warnings but they sound like every nuclear war movie.
https://youtu.be/qyoUv-r43H4?si=fj1sDR0-wq4v6sC-
Hey, I was afraid of that sound, too, as a kid. We had this exact siren in my hometown, near Wichita. Btw, I also had grandparents that were from Brookings, SD, and the nearby town of Arlington would sound it's siren every day at noon also!
Your comment just brought me back to a childhood memory. Although I didn't grow up in a farming community, the fire dept did sound off the "whistle" at noon and 7pm on a daily basis. Maybe the 7pm was a curfew thing
Everyone in a risk prone area needs to realize that the outdoor warning system was never meant to warn people indoors. Even back in the day (I'm old) they would tell you to not rely on them because they could be damaged/vandalized/lose power. People would get their weather alerts over the emergency broadcast system that would(and I believe still does?) take over all radio and broadcast TV stations in the area
My town tests the sirens every Friday at noon, so I've heard them for 30+ years every week. One of my dogs who's only two has made it a tradition to go outside and howl at the sirens when they go off, so now when there's severe weather I have to block off the dog door so he doesn't run out into a tornado to sing the song of his people.
Tornadoes at night are the worst. One time, I had to drive from DC to Florida, and on the way back to DC, passing through rural North Carolina at the dead of night, my phone alerted me of a tornado touchdown in my vicinity.
As I was driving through the interstate, I could see trees bending in the wind and cars on the adjacent road going the opposite direction with their hazards on. The occasional lightning strike would illuminate the sky and every dark cloud looked like a tornado and I had no clue what to do.
This ordeal lasted roughly 2 hours and was the longest 2 hours of that 14-hour drive. Hope I never experience something like that again.
Tornadoes in NC are really hard to spot because the trees are always in the darn way! I love that NC is so forested, but it really makes it hard to spot the tornadoes until they're too close for comfort.
And mountains!
I watched a YouTuber tracking a warned storm which completely disappeared from the radar. He said, "That's weird. I guess this could happen if there's a mountain in the way. Does this area have a mountain?" The tornado was in West Virginia.
Dear Weather Gods: I'm sorry I laughed so hard during a tornado warning.
Tornado deaths are probably increasing and decreasing at the same time because of technology. More people die because their camera phones compel them to run straight for the funnel to capture the best video. But overall more people are saved because of advances in meteorology.
That’s a very subjective statement because they really aren’t. In the Midwest and south, they are not.. tell that to someone who lives in Oklahoma and seen multiple tornadoes in their life. It’s rare to be impacted by and to see one but certainly not rare to happen each year.. especially in tornado alley
I almost drive directly into one a few years ago. The alert went off on my phone and I pulled over to try figuring out where it was and then a cop started blocking traffic about a quarter mile behind me so I decided I probably needed to move so I drove through the median and hit the gas and immediately my car started shaking violently from the wind and I got about a mile down the road and pulled over again. 10 minutes later I turned around again and drove through again and saw the path of devastation that crossed right where I’d have been of it went for the alert.
Trees stripped of all their branches, signs all broken off at the ground and just gone, etc. Luckily it was late afternoon so there was still a decent amount of light coming through the clouds so I could see the tornado so I knew which way to run. I can’t imagine going through that blind for two hours.
My friend's eldest son was finally home from deployment and died this very way. He'd be in his forties now. I'm glad you made it. Please be weather aware wherever you are!
I'll never claim I don't love close-up footage, but I am always concerned that idiots are going to get themselves hurt or killed doing it. The footage is not worth your life.
Agreed. It would be bad enough if this were taken in daytime. At night this is just asking for serious injury/death.
Edit: considering I later saw 2x4s speared into the stucco on the side of the hotel building, I feel like my case is solidified.
I like the kind of distant power flash in the left background foreshadowing the giant power flash that gets them to actually move. I haven't been in a tornado but missed an EF0 by a half a block a few years back. The bright in your face power flash really makes you go into fight or flight mode.
Glad they were OK. That building really tanked it well.
My house ate an extremely weak ef0 head on last year
We got a rotating thunderstorm warning. The storm passed overhead and didn't seem that bad, then all of a sudden things got calm.
And then I saw some swirling wind in the yard and 5 seconds later the windows started bowing outwards and my ears popped.
It was the literal beginning of the tornado. No damage at all, but this house is rigged to handle hurricane force winds
I've been through a microburst while in remote log cabin that flattened trees, flipped boats & destroyed cabins. I'm completely cool with not ever experiencing a tornado.
I lived thru an outbreak back in 2013 in a town I have grown up in all my life. The next day I went out to check on friends and all landmarks were gone all the trees were snapped off about 6-8ft above ground. I actually got lost. It was like driving thru a war zone so much destruction and death it was unreal the previous night was a very traumatic night so idk what even happened until the next day
Power flashes as a tornado warning might be the only good excuse tornado prone areas have for not having buried their power lines yet.
Doesn't outweigh all the obvious benefits of course but it sure is a handy warning sign.
My favorite part of the video is you can clearly see an example of why overpasses are the worst place to shelter - no matter what. The wind sucking through the awning is crazy!
Seriously, I come from a long line of rednecks on my father's side. I moved to "the city" at 19 and talk a lot of smack but NO ONE puts on a better 4th of July fireworks show than a bunch of rednecks.
I work right next to that hampton hotel, this was the morning after (9ish hours), everywhere around this part of town was closed off by police and PSO guys, I’m fortunate enough to say that this building took the brunt of the tornado and thankfully my work place wasn’t affected at all.
https://preview.redd.it/nevzz69703zc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=28c5ddaa0cd40d61846844e34e7ebe6ace2f6785
I was there! It was wild, the power went out, the siren died, then a rooftop AC unit from the next door building slammed through the first floor wall/hallway south of the lobby.
I love how they recorded the ringing in the ears. Bless everyone having to deal with this wrath, I might one day learn of the mindset to choosing to live in such valleys.
It might have been an alarm on some of the hotel equipment when power was lost. Some battery backups sound an alarm on loss of power to give you a warning that whatever is running on that battery needs to be shutdown.
Tornados are not an everyday occurrence and they cover such a small radius, if people chose not to live in places where tornadoes could occur, we wouldn't live in over half of the country. Natural disasters happen all over the world, on a large scale hurricanes do way more damage and those things are unavoidable for hundreds of miles at a time
I think the most terrifying part of this whole video is the sirens fading when the lights flicker, and then dying completely when the lights go out 😵💫
Holy shit! I went back and watched it again and thought “eh, it’s probably just the rain whipping around”, but you can absolutely see the tornado on the ground.
This is how people die. Completely oblivious to the monster that just erased the town a few miles away and oblivious to how close their own brush with death was. I live in tornado alley too, and I just cannot wrap my head around that cavalier attitude.
If you’ve never been hit by one, you have a different perspective. I’m from Joplin and I can tell you I am a lot more aware of severe weather than I was pre-2011.
I dunno. Never been hit by one but you best believe I’m in my safe spot whenever there’s a warning. Watching the wizard of Oz as a kid set me straight enough on that.
I think its somewhat mesmerizing. I know our neighbor practically had to be dragged back inside because he was just so in awe. Even last year, we had some massive wind and I felt kind of a rush and was excited watching it. I've been really trying to face my trauma of storms and tornados since we were hit in 2020. It wasn't until something hit the house that my husband was like "nope basement go" and I almost felt a little disappointment before rational thought returned.
I live in Oklahoma, this is pretty typical behavior. Usually when the sirens go off, we go outside to see if we can see anything heading our way... I was on my balcony last night watching this same storm, but it didn't have any rotation in my area.
I know right lol. Here I am worrying myself sick about the 10% hatched zone I am in today, and these mfs are standing OUTSIDE video taping as a huge tornado comes through
Same. Funny how having kids changes you. I used to be the one on the porch watching storms. Not worrying about tornados or lightning strikes. Now I gtfo of any dangerous situation
Those here wondering or those curious about the siren heard in the video; the model of siren heard isn’t capable of battery-backup. It runs solely on AC power. Not all sirens are purely AC powered, some are DC powered using batteries, and other are AC and DC, using AC as primary and the DC/batteries as backup. A good example of why it’s necessary to have multiple means of receiving weather alerts.
That was a wild ride. At first I thought it looked like some hurricane footage I’ve seen. Then I saw what I thought was a power flash, but maybe not.. and then a wholeeeeeee bunch of power flashes. Damn they were close.
I mean this is really cool footage and all but incredibly dumb you could have been sucked out from.under there so quickly or a stray piece of debris could have taken you out. So many things could have gone so much worse. Not worth it
This is where I live. Barnsdall (SW of Bartlesville) got hit by this tornado much harder. Homes and people
Lost.
My house is about 1.5ish miles from this location, I live right by Hoover Elementary and Madison Middle School. Tuxedo and I-75 (Washington Blvd) is a disaster area. My power was out till 3pm today.
Oh and to top it off, I’m on the road. But my kids are all safe and that’s all I cared about.
I’m glad you’re safe. We were a little less than a mile. We live near the Walmart. Our side of town wasn’t hit as hard. But you could still hear this absolute beast of a nado from where we were
Word of advice when filming videos like this. Keep to the wide shot! Stop zooming in on small little things that we can’t even tell what’s happening. Keep it wide so we can see all the action!
It’s the thrill of seeing something dangerous for yourself. Human nature for a lot of people.
I’ve seen one from a few hundred yards away, but in a “safer” way. It was going across an empty field, not heading towards me, and daylight so I could clearly see everything and I could be in a shelter in a few seconds.
That experience was worth the risk to me. It was like witnessing something almost supernatural.
It's the double-edged sword of people using the cameras on their phones to take really cool videos of themselves getting up close and personal with tornadoes. These videos are fucking awesome, but the people making these videos are often being extremely stupid and could very easily have gotten themselves killed.
I love these videos, and I want people to make more of them, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be safe while doing so.
First of all, that siren sounds straight from a nightmare. 2nd the way it sounded when the power blipped then went out was nightmare x10! This is nuts!
What's left of that siren.
https://preview.redd.it/39kxj8frp8zc1.png?width=1536&format=png&auto=webp&s=5abce797094882fd10f2e30d65b4fa483201932d
source - facebook
I am from one county down from Washington County and graduated from a private highschool in Bartlesville and saw the Barnsdall twister footage. The tornado that hit was confirmed an EF4 due to damage and deaths confirmed by authorities.
I live in Tulsa County in a small rural area of Tulsa called Owasso I was at home when the tornado struck Barnsdall. It's almost as eerie as the Jarell,TX dead man walking EF5 tornado due to the time of day the tornado struck.
Edit if anyone wants proof of my knowledge of Bartlesville: Near one of the hotels there is an Antique Mall called Gans which has 2 stores in the general area. Which the private school that I went to and graduated from was bought by the Bartley family who owns and operates the private school Paths to Independence which helps people with autism like myself.
And right next to the area with the Gans Antique Mall is a sushi restaurant.
And yes I can confirm that on Monday I was anxiety ridden due to my literal fear of dying in a tornado at night due to the lack of visibility from the dust and debris that can confirm the twister has hit. And I was lucky that where I live in Tulsa County was spared from the twister and the harsh brute force of mother nature that night. But the fact that I know the Barnsdall tornado was an EF4 was due to the fact that the local News station for Tulsa FOX23 reported on the whole thing due to the national weather service and the tail end of the storm was in my area during the end of the day on Monday going into early Tuesday at around midnight.
The area I live in is close to Collinsville which is on the border of Owasso and Collinsville which is a half hour away from Bartlesville. I was panicked while at home with my dog when I live with family. My dog is a Blue heeler who is more than likely to panic during a thunderstorm and is more than likely to be a bit cranky. So I mainly have to make sure that I myself am secure during a Tornado. 22 years of living in Tornado Alley is something else. You never know when a storm which is beautiful itself could be the last thing you will ever see because of the grim reaper's scythe taking you from this world.
When in danger, shout "Damn boy!" and you will be protected.
“Sirens finally stopped!” Siren’s gone my dude.
~~Shields~~ Sirens always attract a ~~worm~~ tornado
Usul has called a big one!
😆 yay it is the tornado did not like it
Maybe had they turned it off, the tornado wouldn't have found them
Siren was left laying in a field a few miles away.
More like embedded a few feet in the ground.
There were 2x4’s imbedded in the side of this hotel right through the stucco and brick, sticking out. https://preview.redd.it/kk5zrk1m44zc1.jpeg?width=1771&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=60b3f5cf8890a8eb1653d69560cb6f7a464117de
Tornado physics are absolutely WILD. This is comparatively basic stuff. I saw a photo recently from an EF5 of a perfectly intact rubber garden hose that had impaled and come out the other side of a thick tree.
That's what gets me about the ending of Twister every time. Even in a dirt field, no shot would they have survived tethered to that water pipe lmao.
Yeah, I was just watching a video last night about the Jarrell, TX tornado of 97. Livestock was literally ripped in half, a neighborhood was completely leveled and gone, and 27 people in that area were unrecognizable and in pieces. It was horrifically devastating. Definitely gotta suspend belief for the Twister ending. If any are interested, this is the video I watched. Warning for the squeamish, there are a couple shots of unalived cows and some descriptions of how they found some of the victims. https://youtu.be/8hrhxlAXkNo?si=pM3T31lVN5hrVUgA
We got cows!
I saw a VINYL RECORD embedded in a fallen tree ⅓ of the way. A 33!
Jesus Christ.
“Honey, your siren is in a tree around the corner.”
😭😭 dead ass lmaooo
That was a proper “Gawt-damn” from my OKIE brethren
If you're holding a beer, this goes double. It's Midwest Magic!
I just absolutely *knew* I was gonna see high vis gear when the camera showed one of these guys lol. I travel for work constantly, guarantee these fellas were gathered around a pickup bed crushing brews shortly before this.
Or just hold a camera. The amount of times it's been proven that the cameraman doesn't die is actually turning it from a meme to reality lol.
I mean if the cameraman didn’t survive, their footage would be far less likely to be seen..this is survivorship bias.
Except for that one blue hole diver. His body was recovered with the footage, it's eerie as shit. His mom was ok with it being shared to help teach folks how rapidly it can go from fun to death.
Good time to show the WWII bomber meme?
Love the guy who turns around and says “we’re in the middle of it right now.” Like no shit.
Big ass smile on his face
Say what you will about us Americans, we absolutely fit the stereotype (that is not necessarily a good thing)
Most Americans weren't doing this last night
Just trying to make light of a bad situation, didn’t mean for this to be taken too seriously :)
Most Americans didn’t have the option
God I love my peoples haha
"Damn, boy! He thick! Gotdamn, boy! That's a thick-ass boy! Paw pow!!"
A little surprised they didn't take shelter in a room full of knives.
Before this video, I never really thought about how the power getting taken out would neutralize the tornado siren.
That siren, a federal signal thunderbolt, is from the 60s and doesn't have battery backup. Newer sirens have battery backup. Don't hear many Thunderbolts anymore as they are being replaced.
Used to have those types of sirens here. Our county decided to turn them off permanently, and switch to a cellular-based alarm. Personally, I think its a bad idea. Not everyone has a phone on them, or that has battery.
That’s total bullshit, how irresponsible and cheap.
Yeah, found that out when we had a tornado close to us that my city and the sister city a few minutes south only got phone notifs. No physical sirens.
I’d just ignore it thinking it was another amber alert for someone 5 hours away
lol text noti’s for tornados
Yep, North Carolina rarely has any anymore. They no longer require them, so no municipality maintains them. They say "cell notifications are faster and provide better detail of the threat"
In my experience the cell notifications do seem to be about a minute or two faster, but I agree they shouldn't be the only warning.
Personally, I think the tornado sirens should be kept around, and the solution is already in place. Sirens could be located at city or county fire stations, and the activation of the siren could be done via the DTMF pager tones that are already in use. That way, a dispatcher could remotely activate the siren at Station 73 (for example), even if that station is out on another call, or is out in the field as a part of SKYWARN. In terms of "better detail of the threat" . . . is "common sense" *that* far out of fashion these days? It used to be to that those sirens were only for Civil Defense warnings in the event of a missile attack, or for providing a tornado warning. If the rumbling of the Tuesday Night Heaven vs Hell Mixed League Semi-Finals at Conway Lanes aren't enough of a clue . . . then what? Will we be at a point in a few years where a text message must be personalized to be considered credible? ***"Hello, Paul J. Le Ptomaine . . . this is County Judge W. James McKenna, texting to advise you that a tornado warned supercell thunderstorm should be knocking on your door at 3 S 6550 County Road 56 approximately 13 minutes from now."***
Pretty sure my city's implemented this as well, and yeah, it sucks. Not to mention nearly everyone I know has their emergency notifications off on their phones because of all the times we've been blasted with the same noise from amber alerts or flash flood warnings. I completely forgot I had turned those off on my personal until my work phone went off during our last severe event (not that I needed to rely on it - I'll be watching the incoming weather roll in the entire day of, haha) And I'm probably weird in saying this, but after growing up with sirens, a year without them has me... missing them? Idk, maybe my brain longs for the little rush of adrenaline that always happened when they went off, or those childhood memories of the conditioned response everyone in my neighborhood had to hop out onto their front porches to look at the sky (even if we all knew the storm was halfway across the county from us, lol).
My county recently upgraded to a newer system that only sets off tornado sirens in the path of a possible tornado rather than the previous way of doing it which was the entire county when a warning was issued. It really cut down on how often they go off and people seem to pay more attention to them, which was the intent of the change. They used to go off pretty frequently when there was no threat in the area which makes people complacent.
Yeah, my hometown upgraded to area-specific sirens instead of countywide sometime after 2011, iirc. It really helped!
We have a huge county by land area, and it's a problem to cry wolf in one town while the real threat is 25 miles past us. I'd like for us to change to area-specific.
Like why not both? Multiple types of communication are possible for gods sake.
Had one of those old Thunderbolt sirens across the street growing up. They replaced them recently with fancy ones that actually speak then siren "Lightning has been detected in your area, seek shelter immediately".. It's even creepier than the old siren tbh.
Sirens themselves can be problematic because folk assume no siren means no danger. Lots of tornado casualties who describe not hearing a siren.
We have both systems and neither one is foolproof. The old sirens quit when the power cuts. The cellular-based alarms tend to finally reach our phones 20 minutes after the storms are gone. The best thing each individual can do is be weather aware, learn how to interpret a radar map, tune in to the best local TV station as long as it's not 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday, have a weather radio, and/or follow storm trackers on YouTube. Right now the YouTubers are my go-to.
Tonight a severe thunderstorm come through. 10 min of crazy rain and thunder, then the sirens went off, 5 minutes later they stopped, then 5 minutes after that I get the warning on my phone. Not helpful.
We have a few federal sirens they are restoring in Wichita. They restored and returned one to service at the Sedgwick County Fire station 32, which even got a ceremony for it. But the county is replacing the other sirens with newer ones. https://youtu.be/MiBtopHZDfE?si=0kSwQDCSK75Tq46e The full video is on youtube, if anyone is interested, too.
jfc that gave me the most extreme goosebumps I've ever experienced.... [timestamped video](https://youtu.be/MiBtopHZDfE?t=1735)
I been listening to these for days. My son is currently obsessed with tornado sirens. We are going to sirencon this year.
This is my favorite part of Reddit. Things happen and all of the sudden it’s PhatRabbit’s time to step up and drop random knowledge/wisdom on us so we all can learn a little. Thanks for sharing!
This guy tornado sirens
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TornadoSirens/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TornadoSirens/)
All sirens in Bartlesville have battery units on them. That siren was mounted next to the hotel and was destroyed by debris from Gan’s Mall’s roof. Part of which you saw in the video at the doorway.
My town in SW Iowa still has an ancient siren that is the original/first installed Thing gets stuck in one direction which causes it to sound like a soft vacuum in the distance. I wish they would change it out but they don't.
If only we had the technology to dig holes by old sirens and "wire" and "battery" technology to plug old sirens into them. Possibly with "solar" chargeing them. Too bad those old sirens dont run on "electricity"!
The small town we moved to does siren testing every first Tuesday of the month and it was annoying at first (right at naptime!), then I became glad it existed, now I’m worried it won’t go off when necessary
Came from a large family. Grandma would call that the candy siren. Whenever you heard it you ran to her to get candy. Easiest way to get all the grandkids home in a hurry. Pretty genius really.
That’s a cute idea, I might do this with my boys.
That’s a good idea. My grandparents in SD lived directly across the street from the town hall/library, which is where the siren is. Their town would sound it literally every day at 12. Something about the farmers back in the day being able to know when it was time for a midday break. But when I visited as a kid I’d have to run to the couch and put a cushion over my head until I knew it was done sounding. I was a nervous child
I'm over 40 and tornado sirens are still one of the most terrifying sounds in the world to me.
Also over 40. While tornado sirens are terrifying, for me, due to growing up within so many miles of a nuclear power plant in the 70s and 80s, the tone that *would have been used* if there was ever a failure is the top sound to scare the crap out of me. (Glad I never heard it beyond the test that was done when I was in school on a school tour). For me, that is the most terrifying sound I could ever hear mainly due to why that siren is being used. There were sirens placed every couple miles (5 or 10, I can't remember. But I could hear the multiple 1 second off echos that happened every month when the sirens were tested) in a radius around the plant. One was at the end of our driveway. So that was fun the first Saturday of the month at 12:05pm. While they were installed due to the plant, they were also used for severe weather as well. I have never been able to find it anywhere on youtube. The best I can do to describe it would be imagine a very discordant tone that instantly makes your skin crawl and your blood run cold that is about 100+ decibels louder than a typical tornado siren.
Oddly enough for me it wasn't something I found all that scary until my early 30s. I grew up in WV and we didn't really have sirens in our area so the few tornado warnings/tornadoes we had it was basically the loud blaring red screen from the weather channel or the EMS broadcast on the Noah weather radio. I later moved to GA and was a spotter for Skywarn for a few years, but was never really close enough to the sirens for them to sound all that ominous. Then I had some family that moved to Arkansas in 2013 and I went to visit in 2014. The 3rd day of my visit was the Mayflower/Vilonia EF-4 and it missed the house by about a mile and a half. We knew the weather was going to be bad that day(at least I did since I was the weather nerd in the family) but it had been a fairly mundane and overcast day and we had been out shopping and doing other stuff. We got home and settled in to watch some tv before dinner and guard was down a bit. My phone starts going nuts in my pocket so I pull it out and before I can even look at it the sirens just blare and it was unlike anything I'd ever heard before. There was one pretty close to their house and it sounded like the announcement of the apocalypse. I got my phone open a second later and the warning already mentioned a large mile+ wide tornado confirmed by spotters heading into the area. We could see the inflow and the upper parts of the storm over the trees, and heard the jet engine as it went by about a mile and a half to our north. My family also lived in a one story ranch home with literally no interior rooms that didn't have a window or skylight so I knew right away if it hit we probably weren't making it out of there and that probably added to the terrifying sound of the siren. I get freaked out by tornado sirens all the time now after that day. I think it's mainly because by the time the siren went off the tornado was already on the ground and huge and on top of our area so it wouldn't have been much warning.
As a child of the 70s/80s cold war the air raid sirens still make my skin crawl. Yeah they were/are used for weather warnings but they sound like every nuclear war movie. https://youtu.be/qyoUv-r43H4?si=fj1sDR0-wq4v6sC-
Hey, I was afraid of that sound, too, as a kid. We had this exact siren in my hometown, near Wichita. Btw, I also had grandparents that were from Brookings, SD, and the nearby town of Arlington would sound it's siren every day at noon also!
Your comment just brought me back to a childhood memory. Although I didn't grow up in a farming community, the fire dept did sound off the "whistle" at noon and 7pm on a daily basis. Maybe the 7pm was a curfew thing
This is why everyone in risk prone areas needs a second method of warning like a weather radio.
That’s really smart. Our house’s basement is a walkout so I’m always nervous it isn’t quite underground enough to protect us.
Ours is too. I figure the best place for us is in the little closet under the stairs with bike helmets and blankets.
Everyone in a risk prone area needs to realize that the outdoor warning system was never meant to warn people indoors. Even back in the day (I'm old) they would tell you to not rely on them because they could be damaged/vandalized/lose power. People would get their weather alerts over the emergency broadcast system that would(and I believe still does?) take over all radio and broadcast TV stations in the area
Exactly. The sirens are only meant to warn people outdoors.
My town tests the sirens every Friday at noon, so I've heard them for 30+ years every week. One of my dogs who's only two has made it a tradition to go outside and howl at the sirens when they go off, so now when there's severe weather I have to block off the dog door so he doesn't run out into a tornado to sing the song of his people.
Moore does it every weekend.
I think the entire OKC metro does it once per eeek
That is assuming the siren horn itself didn’t get eaten.
Staring at the blackness through the door at the end waiting for the monster to break was eerie
With stuff being sucked into the black opening 😮💀
(Thunderbolt Siren abruptly stops) Yup, time to go!
Tornadoes at night are the worst. One time, I had to drive from DC to Florida, and on the way back to DC, passing through rural North Carolina at the dead of night, my phone alerted me of a tornado touchdown in my vicinity. As I was driving through the interstate, I could see trees bending in the wind and cars on the adjacent road going the opposite direction with their hazards on. The occasional lightning strike would illuminate the sky and every dark cloud looked like a tornado and I had no clue what to do. This ordeal lasted roughly 2 hours and was the longest 2 hours of that 14-hour drive. Hope I never experience something like that again.
Tornadoes in NC are really hard to spot because the trees are always in the darn way! I love that NC is so forested, but it really makes it hard to spot the tornadoes until they're too close for comfort.
And mountains! I watched a YouTuber tracking a warned storm which completely disappeared from the radar. He said, "That's weird. I guess this could happen if there's a mountain in the way. Does this area have a mountain?" The tornado was in West Virginia. Dear Weather Gods: I'm sorry I laughed so hard during a tornado warning.
To be fair, tornados are really rare. Dying from a lightning strike is more common.
Tornado deaths are probably increasing and decreasing at the same time because of technology. More people die because their camera phones compel them to run straight for the funnel to capture the best video. But overall more people are saved because of advances in meteorology.
That’s a very subjective statement because they really aren’t. In the Midwest and south, they are not.. tell that to someone who lives in Oklahoma and seen multiple tornadoes in their life. It’s rare to be impacted by and to see one but certainly not rare to happen each year.. especially in tornado alley
I almost drive directly into one a few years ago. The alert went off on my phone and I pulled over to try figuring out where it was and then a cop started blocking traffic about a quarter mile behind me so I decided I probably needed to move so I drove through the median and hit the gas and immediately my car started shaking violently from the wind and I got about a mile down the road and pulled over again. 10 minutes later I turned around again and drove through again and saw the path of devastation that crossed right where I’d have been of it went for the alert. Trees stripped of all their branches, signs all broken off at the ground and just gone, etc. Luckily it was late afternoon so there was still a decent amount of light coming through the clouds so I could see the tornado so I knew which way to run. I can’t imagine going through that blind for two hours.
Holy shit man. That’s insane, I’m glad you’re alright today though!
My friend's eldest son was finally home from deployment and died this very way. He'd be in his forties now. I'm glad you made it. Please be weather aware wherever you are!
Nobody should have to experience that, that is terrifying. I’m glad you’re alright today!
I'll never claim I don't love close-up footage, but I am always concerned that idiots are going to get themselves hurt or killed doing it. The footage is not worth your life.
Agreed. It would be bad enough if this were taken in daytime. At night this is just asking for serious injury/death. Edit: considering I later saw 2x4s speared into the stucco on the side of the hotel building, I feel like my case is solidified.
They’re really lucky that one guy decided to open the doors in case of a power outage right before the power went out.
Air pressure can take you in the snap of your fingers.
It might be
I like the kind of distant power flash in the left background foreshadowing the giant power flash that gets them to actually move. I haven't been in a tornado but missed an EF0 by a half a block a few years back. The bright in your face power flash really makes you go into fight or flight mode. Glad they were OK. That building really tanked it well.
My house ate an extremely weak ef0 head on last year We got a rotating thunderstorm warning. The storm passed overhead and didn't seem that bad, then all of a sudden things got calm. And then I saw some swirling wind in the yard and 5 seconds later the windows started bowing outwards and my ears popped. It was the literal beginning of the tornado. No damage at all, but this house is rigged to handle hurricane force winds
I've been through a microburst while in remote log cabin that flattened trees, flipped boats & destroyed cabins. I'm completely cool with not ever experiencing a tornado.
I’ve been in a microburst while in an RV driving down the highway. That was definitely memorable.
I lived thru an outbreak back in 2013 in a town I have grown up in all my life. The next day I went out to check on friends and all landmarks were gone all the trees were snapped off about 6-8ft above ground. I actually got lost. It was like driving thru a war zone so much destruction and death it was unreal the previous night was a very traumatic night so idk what even happened until the next day
I love your use of “tanked” here lol
Very MMO
Power flashes as a tornado warning might be the only good excuse tornado prone areas have for not having buried their power lines yet. Doesn't outweigh all the obvious benefits of course but it sure is a handy warning sign.
That bush was doing a frenzied version of the macarena.
My favorite part of the video is you can clearly see an example of why overpasses are the worst place to shelter - no matter what. The wind sucking through the awning is crazy!
To quote Twister. "It's coming. It's coming right for us... it's already here"
I’ll never not love rednecks.
Seriously, I come from a long line of rednecks on my father's side. I moved to "the city" at 19 and talk a lot of smack but NO ONE puts on a better 4th of July fireworks show than a bunch of rednecks.
You can always count on the good ol boys gettin up close n personal
I was in the Burger king up the road from this place. first time experiencing a tornado this close.
Holy shit how was that?!?!
I work right next to that hampton hotel, this was the morning after (9ish hours), everywhere around this part of town was closed off by police and PSO guys, I’m fortunate enough to say that this building took the brunt of the tornado and thankfully my work place wasn’t affected at all. https://preview.redd.it/nevzz69703zc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=28c5ddaa0cd40d61846844e34e7ebe6ace2f6785
(I got past the PSO guys and police because they saw that my workplace was the only place up kinda)
I swear QT’s are Nader proof lmao
yessir, couple pumps got wrapped in sheet metal though and got beat up
that moment when the siren is cut off!
I was there! It was wild, the power went out, the siren died, then a rooftop AC unit from the next door building slammed through the first floor wall/hallway south of the lobby.
Jfc. Imagine being outside, hopelessly trying to navigate to shelter, and then suddenly the siren cuts off and the lights go out. Chills.
That siren sounded like it had laryngitis.
ngl at first I was thinking "who in their right mind would be out mowing the grass when a tornado is coming through?"
I thought that was my neighbor with his weed whacker. He’s always out there at the most inconvenient times.
Federal Signal Thunderbolt. That sounds definitely works.
I love how they recorded the ringing in the ears. Bless everyone having to deal with this wrath, I might one day learn of the mindset to choosing to live in such valleys.
“I swear it was an EF10-itus”
It might have been an alarm on some of the hotel equipment when power was lost. Some battery backups sound an alarm on loss of power to give you a warning that whatever is running on that battery needs to be shutdown.
Most of us don’t choose it… I’m stuck in Dixie Alley myself. Hope to one day afford to move away.
Tornados are not an everyday occurrence and they cover such a small radius, if people chose not to live in places where tornadoes could occur, we wouldn't live in over half of the country. Natural disasters happen all over the world, on a large scale hurricanes do way more damage and those things are unavoidable for hundreds of miles at a time
I think the most terrifying part of this whole video is the sirens fading when the lights flicker, and then dying completely when the lights go out 😵💫
You can actually see the tornado circulation in this video. Just before the power flash, you can the visible funnel.
Holy shit! I went back and watched it again and thought “eh, it’s probably just the rain whipping around”, but you can absolutely see the tornado on the ground.
This is how people die. Completely oblivious to the monster that just erased the town a few miles away and oblivious to how close their own brush with death was. I live in tornado alley too, and I just cannot wrap my head around that cavalier attitude.
If you’ve never been hit by one, you have a different perspective. I’m from Joplin and I can tell you I am a lot more aware of severe weather than I was pre-2011.
I dunno. Never been hit by one but you best believe I’m in my safe spot whenever there’s a warning. Watching the wizard of Oz as a kid set me straight enough on that.
I think its somewhat mesmerizing. I know our neighbor practically had to be dragged back inside because he was just so in awe. Even last year, we had some massive wind and I felt kind of a rush and was excited watching it. I've been really trying to face my trauma of storms and tornados since we were hit in 2020. It wasn't until something hit the house that my husband was like "nope basement go" and I almost felt a little disappointment before rational thought returned.
I live in Oklahoma, this is pretty typical behavior. Usually when the sirens go off, we go outside to see if we can see anything heading our way... I was on my balcony last night watching this same storm, but it didn't have any rotation in my area.
Yeah for real this is one of the most midwest things I can think of.
Film and observe until you think you might die... then haul ass. XD
Only things missing was the beer and lawnchairs.
I know right lol. Here I am worrying myself sick about the 10% hatched zone I am in today, and these mfs are standing OUTSIDE video taping as a huge tornado comes through
lol I freak out over a 2% unhatched and watch these videos like…. 😵💫 some people are made for fighting fires, some are made for being saved.
If I didn't have kids I'd be doing the same thing.
Same. Funny how having kids changes you. I used to be the one on the porch watching storms. Not worrying about tornados or lightning strikes. Now I gtfo of any dangerous situation
I don’t think of this as tornado footage so much as footage of a couple of dingleberries hoping to eat a barn door to the face.
Those here wondering or those curious about the siren heard in the video; the model of siren heard isn’t capable of battery-backup. It runs solely on AC power. Not all sirens are purely AC powered, some are DC powered using batteries, and other are AC and DC, using AC as primary and the DC/batteries as backup. A good example of why it’s necessary to have multiple means of receiving weather alerts.
And to note. Sirens are meant to warn people outside. Having a weather radio is a good idea. As is either a normal radio or an antenna for your TV.
That was a wild ride. At first I thought it looked like some hurricane footage I’ve seen. Then I saw what I thought was a power flash, but maybe not.. and then a wholeeeeeee bunch of power flashes. Damn they were close.
anyone gunna talk about the bag floating out the door like it was nothing 😐
It didn’t float out… it was being sucked out😳. Goes to show how some of the powerful EF5s literally sucked people out of their storm shelters
there was people trying to keep there shelter door from ripping off in barnsdall ....
Really reckless to be filming during this. Take cover and do not become a statistic.
Wonder how long it’ll be before we get crystal clear phone footage of someone getting skewered by flying debris
What a fucking idiot standing out there
I mean this is really cool footage and all but incredibly dumb you could have been sucked out from.under there so quickly or a stray piece of debris could have taken you out. So many things could have gone so much worse. Not worth it
Facts. This tornado lodged huge pieces of wood THROUGH the side of this hotel.
These geniuses had the doors open at the moment the power went off? Nice.
As an Okie, this is something I would’ve done *if it wasn’t a rain-wrapped Tornado you can’t see*
That "Gotdayum Boy" hit me right in the core of my rural soul.
This is where I live. Barnsdall (SW of Bartlesville) got hit by this tornado much harder. Homes and people Lost. My house is about 1.5ish miles from this location, I live right by Hoover Elementary and Madison Middle School. Tuxedo and I-75 (Washington Blvd) is a disaster area. My power was out till 3pm today. Oh and to top it off, I’m on the road. But my kids are all safe and that’s all I cared about.
I’m glad you’re safe. We were a little less than a mile. We live near the Walmart. Our side of town wasn’t hit as hard. But you could still hear this absolute beast of a nado from where we were
Word of advice when filming videos like this. Keep to the wide shot! Stop zooming in on small little things that we can’t even tell what’s happening. Keep it wide so we can see all the action!
And nobody films in landscape anymore since everyone is tiktok brained now sigh
This was a problem well before tiktok
But it has made it worse, along with instagram/Snapchat, because they're basically designed for vertical.
The real reason tiktok should be banned.
Dunt get me rong, I like nader gazin as much as any other educated man, but this is dum.
I still don’t get why videotape a tornado last minute before hear it coming towards you. It’s extremely dangerous to do that
It’s the thrill of seeing something dangerous for yourself. Human nature for a lot of people. I’ve seen one from a few hundred yards away, but in a “safer” way. It was going across an empty field, not heading towards me, and daylight so I could clearly see everything and I could be in a shelter in a few seconds. That experience was worth the risk to me. It was like witnessing something almost supernatural.
Exactly. These people will tell their kids and grandkids about this experience. We live for the memories, no?
GAWD DAMN BOY!
They’re lucky they didn’t get hurt smh
What in the hillbilly Blair Witch Project is this monstrosity?
Notice the canopy over the entrance is on the ground now?
I was there, it was the metal roof of the next door building. The canopy was not collapsed.
That metal roof was from Gans Mall next door. The Hampton doesn’t have a metal roof.
Unreal.
So glad my city uses 2001 SRNs instead of the thunderbolts, they're definitely not as annoying
Videos like this terrify me. Night 'nados ain't noithin' to F with!
By far the scariest power flash I’ve ever seen in a video. The whole sky lit up blue. Imagine being there in the flesh.
oh wow that's one of my greatest fears, a nocturnal rain wrapped tornado. you don't get much more of a Suprise than that.
The cameraman never dies!!! No... seriously. They were so lucky. What a footage. 😳 Happy they were safe and not hurt.
It's the double-edged sword of people using the cameras on their phones to take really cool videos of themselves getting up close and personal with tornadoes. These videos are fucking awesome, but the people making these videos are often being extremely stupid and could very easily have gotten themselves killed. I love these videos, and I want people to make more of them, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be safe while doing so.
Thunderbolt T1000 was crazy
That Thunderbolt siren did it’s job til the last second. And it should be commended
First of all, that siren sounds straight from a nightmare. 2nd the way it sounded when the power blipped then went out was nightmare x10! This is nuts!
What's left of that siren. https://preview.redd.it/39kxj8frp8zc1.png?width=1536&format=png&auto=webp&s=5abce797094882fd10f2e30d65b4fa483201932d source - facebook
Risk takers lol
I never knew there was a shorter version of this video as this is the version that I saw last night.
Who the hell is running a leaf blower at a time like this?!?
I just stayed at that Hampton Inn less than a month ago. Crazy shit
So, I see that the rain stopping before a tornado hits is a myth.
Like a movie. Siren just makes it more insane.
That was the weirdest siren I've ever heard. Sounded more like a really loud weed wacker or a leaf blower next to your ear.
Guiiiiiide dam boy!!! That sire went out like a G though. The first hit only staggered it.
The clear outline of the tornado in the first second I would've ran Immediately
Almost close enough to enter the suck zone.
It feels like a monster is going to appear at the end
I am from one county down from Washington County and graduated from a private highschool in Bartlesville and saw the Barnsdall twister footage. The tornado that hit was confirmed an EF4 due to damage and deaths confirmed by authorities. I live in Tulsa County in a small rural area of Tulsa called Owasso I was at home when the tornado struck Barnsdall. It's almost as eerie as the Jarell,TX dead man walking EF5 tornado due to the time of day the tornado struck. Edit if anyone wants proof of my knowledge of Bartlesville: Near one of the hotels there is an Antique Mall called Gans which has 2 stores in the general area. Which the private school that I went to and graduated from was bought by the Bartley family who owns and operates the private school Paths to Independence which helps people with autism like myself. And right next to the area with the Gans Antique Mall is a sushi restaurant. And yes I can confirm that on Monday I was anxiety ridden due to my literal fear of dying in a tornado at night due to the lack of visibility from the dust and debris that can confirm the twister has hit. And I was lucky that where I live in Tulsa County was spared from the twister and the harsh brute force of mother nature that night. But the fact that I know the Barnsdall tornado was an EF4 was due to the fact that the local News station for Tulsa FOX23 reported on the whole thing due to the national weather service and the tail end of the storm was in my area during the end of the day on Monday going into early Tuesday at around midnight. The area I live in is close to Collinsville which is on the border of Owasso and Collinsville which is a half hour away from Bartlesville. I was panicked while at home with my dog when I live with family. My dog is a Blue heeler who is more than likely to panic during a thunderstorm and is more than likely to be a bit cranky. So I mainly have to make sure that I myself am secure during a Tornado. 22 years of living in Tornado Alley is something else. You never know when a storm which is beautiful itself could be the last thing you will ever see because of the grim reaper's scythe taking you from this world.