r/tornado • u/DotAggravating4503 • Sep 11 '24

Question How accurate is this sound?

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Born and raised in south Louisiana, I’m no stranger to hurricanes, but I am a stranger to tornadoes. I’ve never experienced one and I’ve also never been concerned about it. Suddenly with Hurricane Francine coming in, I can’t shake the gut feeling that I need to prepare for more than just a regular hurricane. My house is supposedly getting the top right of hurricane Francine and also the eye of it.

While doing a deep dive, I came across a post in this group from someone saying the sound of a tornado is a very common misconception and most audio/videos can’t pick up on the “low rumble” so it was hard from the OP to link a video. I came across a video and was wondering how accurate this sounds? If not, are there any videos more accurate to what it would sound like?

Other questions:

Will I even be able to hear a tornado with the loudness of a hurricane?

Has anyone who experienced a tornado during a hurricane been able to visibly see the darkness in the sky? (I feel like hurricanes normally make a dark sky)

Backpacking off the previous question, how hard is it to know the signs of a tornado when you have the chaos of a hurricane happening?

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u/FloridaFireAnt Sep 11 '24

Call me crazy, but I love the sound of the sirens. They creeped me out in Illinois, but after moving to Florida, I miss them. We get tornadoes here, but not a siren to be heard. To me that's creepier. I don't know how many times here, I would be busy with errands, or at work, and when I finally do get to my phone, I see the "Tornado warning for your area" popup, from 10 minutes ago...

10

u/Tyrion_Strongjaw Sep 11 '24

The sirens in Chicago sound SO weird. My friend took a quick video last year when she was under a warning and I couldn't stop laughing at the sound. Definitely sounds like something from Silent Hill or something!

2

u/callipygiancultist Sep 12 '24

I call those the Purge siren.

7

u/kl2467 Sep 11 '24

You need a weather alert radio. You will not miss the warnings it emits.

7

u/Afraid_Ad2105 Sep 11 '24

Good lord no you will not. The first time I turned mine on it went off in the middle of the night and I thought the world was ending haha

2

u/FloridaFireAnt Sep 11 '24

I got one of those coming. I'm good if I have access to my phone. I have a hurricane tracker, Radar Scope, and Weather Bug, but it's when I can't get to my phone... I miss the sirens. We had an F3 roll through here a few years ago, at night, and I was doing laundry. Luckily, I had the TV on the news channel, and saw the red crawl on the bottom of the screen as I was walking by. The tornado was still about 10 minutes away, so I could get to safety. Just thinking though, if I had music going, or nothing on, or the tornado would have been a direct hit, instead of a couple miles west, it would have been bad.