The only thing more terrifying than a tornado is two of them.
A tornado is arguably the most terrifying form of severe weather one can encounter. These rotating air columns often drop suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving massive amounts of destruction behind in their wake. They are highly unpredictable and can tear quickly across the plains, wiping out small towns before they know what hit them.
Sometimes nature throws an extra curve ball into the mix when a storm produces multiple tornadoes. Seeing multiple funnels is an extremely rare occurrence, but it does happen from time to time.
It does not even need to be a massive storm for it to happen either. Sometimes conditions are just right in a smaller storm for multiple funnels to start dropping on the countryside, destroying everything in their path. Just such a storm hit Nebraska and was well documented by a storm chaser. The sight of these two tornadoes on the ground at the same time is both scary and hauntingly beautiful.
Nebraska is just one of the states that is unfortunate enough to sit in the middle of tornado alley. It is a prime spot for these storms to generate every spring and early summer. About the only way for meteorologists to make a prediction on a storm like this is to closely watch for the distinctive "hook" on radar that indicates the rotating winds of the mesocyclones visible in this video.
Another frightening aspect to this one is how the funnels were sometimes hidden in a wall of heavy condensation. Some people likely would not spot these tornadoes until it was too late to get out of the way.
The larger of these two storms was classified as an EF 4 on the enhanced Fujita scale. That means the wind speeds could be as much as 200 miles per hour at the funnel. It does not take a whole lot of imagination to picture the kind of devastation wind speeds like that can bring. This just gives us even more respect for tornadoes as one of nature's incredible natural wonders.
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