As a rare, complex concoction of fascinating manifestations, it is a magnificent creation, a sight we are privileged to behold. A tornado, representing the very limit of nature's fury, can be the beginning of our enlightenment. Argen and Jerrine Verkaik, Under the Whirlwind
At last the great shaggy end of the funnel hung directly overhead. Everything was as still as death. There was a strong gassy odor and it seemed that I could not breathe. There was a screaming, hissing sound coming directly from the end of the funnel. I looked up and to my astonishment I saw right up into the heart of the tornado. Will Keller, Greensburg, Kansas
...trees, limbs, rails, boards, hogsheads, etc, mingled with the heaven as feathers before an ordinary storm... Poughkeepsie Journal, circa 3 June 1837
The cessation of the storm was even more rapid than its onslaught, it retired to the eastward with hollow rumblings and growlings, leaving the levelled forest behind it sighing and sobbing in the breeze which followed it, which sigh and sobs, accompanied by a gentle rainfall, seemed the mourning for the thousands of the sons of the forest laid low by the unrelenting storm king. C.W. Irish, 1844
No language can do justice to the fearful magnitude of the tornado as it stalked wrathfully over the land...irradiated by blinding flashes of lightning, and accompanied by, in its devastating march, buy the music of a hundred cannon. Cleveland Plaindealer, 28 January 1854
The wind increased again, screaming. But now it was an icy blast...there was a combination of hellish sounds: the scream of high, cold wind; the sizzling fury of a lightning stroke; explosive boom of thunder; and overall of this a terrible earthen roar, like the sound of a continuous atomic explosion. Jack M Bickham, Twister
"Twisters," we call them locally. They are a species of cyclonic, bounding air funnel that could suddenly loom out of nowhere, crumpling windmills or slashing with devastating fury through country towns. Loren Eiseley, The Star Thrower
Not withstanding mistrals and hurricanes, no windstorm can do what tornadoes do — with such finesse and finality. Ann and Myron Sutton, Nature on the Rampage
Melissa: I gotta go Julia, we got cows.
Lines from the movies Twister, 1996
Jo: [cow flies by in the storm] Cow.
[cow flies by in the storm]
Jo: 'Nother cow.
Bill: Actually I think that was the same one.
Lines from the movies Twister, 1996
A roar was heard that caused stern faces to blanch and brace hearts to throb with terror. With a roar like ten thousand demons it swept down up the beautiful city. Like a great coiling serpent darting out a thousand tongues of lightning with a hiss like the seething, roaring Niagara, it wrapped the city in it s hideous coils. Trees bend down as wax candles in a furnace; barns and house sunk before its awful force as men sink down in battle. The work of the storm fiend is complete. [Rochester MN tornado 21 August 1883] The History of Olmstead County, Minnesota
...and then, after smudging the sky a weird gray green, proceeded to pinball madly from hillside to hillside for about fifteen minutes before heeling back up into the sky ... Like a gigantic pencil erasure, the twister neatly erased whole patches of woods and roughly smeared many other ones, where it whipped out just the tops of trees. Michael Pollan, Second Nature
The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air. Dorothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon. L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
From…confused clouds, furious winds, and momentary fires, sounds issued, of which no earthquake or thunder ever heard could afford the least idea; striking such awe into all, that it was thought the end of the world had arrived, that the earth waters, heavens, and entire universe, mingling together, were being resolved into their ancient chaos. Machiavelli, Italy August 24, 1456
Let any one picture to the imagination a vast column of smoke of inky blackness reaching from earth to heaven, gyrating with fearful velocity; bright lightnings issued from the vortex — the roar of the thunder — the rushing of the blast — the crashing of the timber — the limbs of trees, leaves and rubbish, mingled with clouds of dust, whirling through the air — a faint idea is then given of the scene. Samuel Strickland, Twenty Seven Years in Canada West
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