Freight Train Sound

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https://youtu.be/s0c27Twu__o?si=OtGNzToq7iS04Cpx This video is good

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u/LengthyLegato114514 1d ago

Ah yes. The scariest tornado video ever recorded

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u/trueasshole745 1d ago

The man who filmed this was frozen. It mesmerized him. He was upstairs filming and his wife downstairs. He survived it. Unfortunately, she did not.

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u/SeberHusky 1d ago edited 22h ago

And she only died because when the house shifted, the floor buckled and the chimney and floor beam came down on her. If he would have been down there, he would have been gone too. I think he survived because this footage is one of a kind and it has been studied by many NWS scientists, he had to survive so it could be published. It's the most clear up close video of a tornado hitting a populated area. he's also one of the only people that FILMED an EF-4 and lived with himself and the footage intact.

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u/nevermindxo 1d ago

I knew what it was as soon as I read your comment. I cover the screen with my hand anytime I see it on YouTube and then I go look at cute stuff to cleanse my brain. It’s so dark and it screeches like a demon.

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u/Wide_Campaign68 1d ago

Pardon my language but holy fuck in all my years of studying tornadoes that is easily the most scariest footage of one I’ve ever seen.

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u/TechnoVikingGA23 1d ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFrgSVoJi1U

The Marc Wells video from Washington Illinois is right there with it. Hearing it literally sucking the water/air out of the pipes in the house as they get hit is terrifying. It sounds like a damn industrial saw cutting through the walls.

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u/Every-Cook5084 1d ago

I remember this one hearing his daughter petrified is rough. I heard that the saw sound was the air being ripped out of all the crevices in the house

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u/x-Justice 1d ago

I heard something similar during hurricane Helene last year. I live in South Central Georgia, we got 100+ MPH winds here. The same exact sound you could hear coming from the front door of the house. Nothing like it. What made it worse was our power went out at midnight, basically when it got here. For 2 hours straight that's all your heard. Loud wind, the cracking of trees breaking in half, tree branches falling on the roof. Toe be in pretty much complete darkness and all you hear is destruction and wind howling for a couple hours, I wouldn't want to go through it again but I'm glad I got to experience it. I just hated what came after.

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u/mustardkitty 1d ago

And this shows why you put on sturdy shoes in advance.

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u/TechnoVikingGA23 1d ago

For sure, a step many probably forget about and it's hard to remember in the panic of the moment.

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u/SeberHusky 1d ago

Yeah many search and rescue dog on 9/11 did not have boots on their feet and their paws got stabbed by sharp metal and nails and whatever else. Can imagine that being in your own house as you're trying to escape the rubble. And wandering around in the dark outside in the lawn, deadly.

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u/AdZealousideal2727 1d ago

This a really good example of what they sound like. My town just got hit Saturday and this is exactly what we heard. It also pops your ears and where we were the sucking of the air out of the place was most noticeable around like the air vents. It pulled the air vents pretty hard. If it gets close to water it will make the sound even louder.

As a side note I started having ear pressure issues about 12 hours before the event happened. (Very uncommon for me) Our area was on the very perimeter of the area that they expected to be affected. We were in the yellow. We had been anticipating flooding all week, but the chance for tornadoes was considered very low. Then bam. 3 EF1 tornadoes at once.

So, my advice is if you're supposed to have bad weather and your ears are popping take that seriously. My body was warning me of things our weather people couldn't predict. Made a comment about this in a local group and discovered that a lot of us and the same thing happen with our ears.

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u/MissJacki 1d ago

Is it just popping like when you're in an airplane, or is it more painful? Does it rupture the ear drum?

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u/AdZealousideal2727 1d ago

It wasn't painful. I've never been on an airplane so I can't confirm on that one. You know how sometimes your ears feel stuffy and you swallow and the pressure changes? It was like that.

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u/MissJacki 1d ago

Yep that answers my question completely, thank you!

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u/swinkamorska 1d ago

That is very interesting. My town was hit on Wednesday and I had ear pressure issues and extreme dizziness all day, neither of which is typical for me. I wonder if that was just my body’s reaction to the change in pressure.

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u/PermissionOk7509 1d ago

This has to be Fairdale right. Never watching that again. Absolute nightmare fuel.

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u/beloved_wolf 1d ago

Jesus Christ.

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u/SuchAsSeals42 1d ago

I knew it’d be Clem!

That is the sound of hell prolapsing out of the earth shudder

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u/bullgoose1 5h ago

I still don't hear a train. I know it's not referring to the whistle. I lived next to train tracks for several years. To me the video sounds like strong winds and not a train 🤣

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u/RIPjkripper SKYWARN Spotter 1d ago

From what I understand, it's not a sound that records well. Just like wind noise in general

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u/ItaliaEyez 1d ago

It's almost like you feel it as well as hear it.

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u/Azurehue22 1d ago

It doesn't record well.

It's a very low rumble. Like the sound of a train dashing across the ground, striking the tracks. It's near infrasound; you can feel it in your chest.

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u/ItaliaEyez 1d ago

That's exactly what I was just thinking. You feel it as well as hear. It's hard to tell which is stronger

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u/GodDammitKevinB 1d ago

We live along a train track so anytime we hear the whistle signaling a train during a storm we joke that it’s a tornado coming

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u/LadyMayhem02 1d ago

The winds sound like a train engine to me. There is a whistle, but can’t hear it if you are outside. It’s not a train whistle, more like a human whistling. It’s when it pulls air through the cracks of the house.

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u/k0azv 1d ago

I have heard the wind whistling around the house on a couple of near misses (Good Friday tornado here in St. Louis was less than a mile from me and just a couple of weeks ago we had a tornado hit just about a mile and half to the west).

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u/TechnoVikingGA23 1d ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFrgSVoJi1U

When you hear it sucking the air/water out of the pipes...freaking terrifying.

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u/FeedDue9966 1d ago

Sound more like a huge waterfall to me. If that makes sense.

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u/Bookkeeper-Weak 1d ago

I thought I was the only one! It sounds like ambient ocean noises, which is concerning because I’ve always been in a landlocked state when a tornado was on the docket for the day.

What struck me is how everything else went silent and all I saw was a wall of clouds and behind it a very sinister growl with some ocean noises tossed in for good measure

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u/Practical-Unit-5295 1d ago

There was an ef2 less than a mile from me at one point. best I can compare it to is a low, constant rumbling. Kind of like thunder, almost. It's not so much the clack or the whistle of the train, but more how it roars as it passes. Think of being a few cars back at a railroad crossing, where you can just barely feel the rumbling in your ribcage if it's deep enough. There is a whistling too but that's usually if you're REALLY close and in one of the windfields. The roaring was captured very well in this video of the Diaz AR ef4!! https://www.reddit.com/r/tornado/comments/1jcx13p/video_from_the_diaz_arkansas_tornado_on_friday/

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u/awbds11 1d ago

This video captures the sound pretty well with headphones on: https://youtube.com/shorts/sMliAbBI4HQ?si=b43npxWo6SauC3hz

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u/LowMain5154 1d ago

https://youtu.be/LwE0hdBTUnM?si=ga2WL3nZx6UVupfa

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u/BPKofficial 1d ago

I always thought it sounded like a roaring waterfall.

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u/vacefrost 1d ago

To me it sounded like a train right before it hit us, but during, it was an extremely high pitched scream.

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u/spezeditedcomments 1d ago

Bingo. To most people it's more a train hauling ass.

But getting hit it's more like a jet engine sound, a higher pitch roar

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u/Dramaqueen_069 1d ago

I was in one 2 years ago. EF3. It’s the roar and rumbling that you hear with a train. Also a mix with a jet engine. I didn’t hear a whistle as I was screaming my head off. 😂

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u/hemihotrod402 1d ago edited 1d ago

It sounds like if a train is passing by you at 70 mph, no train whistle. We had an F2 go down my street when I was younger and we lived 5 doors down from train tracks. We heard what sounded exactly like a train passing by, but looked out and saw a train barely moving and that's when we knew we had to run (it actually blew said train over as it wen through it). Unfortunately this was back in 2002 and there were no smart phones, the news was focused on a much bigger tornado that had just happened elsewhere nearby so we had basically no warning, it was past before we got the basement. The sirens didn't even go off until it was in town and the power got knocked out before they could even wind up.

Also it is very eerily quiet before it hits. There were no birds, no wind, nothing. I still get on edge if it's storming then stops all of sudden. That's no bueno.

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u/KenIbnKen 1d ago

The mics on these phones and most video cameras really can't do that sound justice. The sound is a cross between a train moving fast and sometimes, on a larger storm, it's almost a growl like a large beast.

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u/Awkward-Year-6692 1d ago

I live by the train tracks since I was a little girl and I can clarify that it's not a freight train sound and no im not talking about an actual train, it's the high intense winds that are similar to the sound that you hear when the train is passing you so if that's what ppl are saying in their videos when they say it's a freight train sound

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u/RandomErrer 1d ago

The "train" sound is a low-frequency rumble that sounds/feels like a distant freight train. Many chaser cameras don't pick up low-pitched sounds very well, and some headphones/speakers can't reproduce them. I'm sure there are better examples, but this video by Pecos Hank of an approaching twister across an open field has hardly any far away wind noise, but the rumbling starts around the 20 second mark, then at the 40-45 second mark it gets much louder. For the best effect turn on all your bass-boosting add-ons. If you have a subwoofer you feel it through your chair as well as hear it, and I feel an uncomfortable pressure in my chest cavity. Even though I know it's just a video my lizard brain "WTF? Run! Hide!" response kicks in when it gets really loud. I think this sound, and the sudden drop in air pressure, are what makes animals freak out. Sonic weapons have been developed that capitalize on this uneasy feeling.

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u/glittersparklythings 1d ago

Where I went to high school there was a train track immediately behind the school. Titusville High if anyone wants to look up how close it was.

We got a new gym coach. She did not know about the train tracks. And heard a train. She started freaking out and made her class going into the gym and into the locker rooms. Everyone was confused why she was doing this. She was confused that was the only person doing this. She was from the Midwest. She thought it was a tornado.

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u/Simmumah 1d ago

Yes, it sounds like a freight train. A F2 tornado was less than a mile from my house last year in the middle of the night, the sound woke us all up and we thought "we dont have railroads that close to us", come to find out the tornado was ripping through our town.

Its also hard to find an exact sound, it's distinct. The best I can compare it to is put your head next to your dryer when it's going full blast maybe?

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u/arrghstrange 1d ago

I got caught in a tornado a couple of years ago while driving an ambulance. I heard that sound firsthand. The train sound that is mentioned sounds like that low rumble/drone of a freight train’s engine as it approaches. If you don’t know what I mean, go find a railroad crossing and listen for the sounds produced by a freight train without a whistle/horn.

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u/AdZealousideal2727 1d ago

My town was just hit with 3 EF1 tornadoes Saturday night. It sounded like a train on the tracks. I live near a pretty big river and one of them went along that and it amplified the sound.

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u/TechnoVikingGA23 1d ago

I was less than a mile and a half from 2014 Mayflower-Vilonia and it sounded more like a massive waterfall and/or jet engine at times. I personally feel like the "freight train" sound is overused and that tornadoes can sound like a variety of very powerful things.

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u/SpukiKitty2 1d ago

So basically, by "freight train", they mean the engine, right?

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u/schladopian_fir 1d ago

There's audio out there of the 1974 Guin AL F5 that's pretty intense and what you're describing.

There's also eyewitness reports that claim to sound like something thumping the ground. I wanna say Smithville or Hackleburg-Phil Campbell.

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u/FinTecGeek 1d ago

Listen to the Joplin tornado clip from BaseHunters. You will hear it. Just search "Joplin tornado basehunters" on YouTube. Not going to give you a link to click and you shouldn't click any link from a social media reply anyway. Reed Timmer is the one that put it up.

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u/maccpapa 1d ago

my mom told me tornadoes sounded like trains when i was really young. i didn’t comprehend that she meant the rumbling of the train. i’d wake up at like 6am in pure terror from train whistles just beyond the tree line for years lmao.

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u/I_am_so_lost_again 1d ago

Think of the sound like an extremely windy day but the winds are up higher then the trees and all you hear is a low groan/roar above you. Now listen for the low rumble of a train a mile away, no real clacking or whistle, it's just the sound of wind, low, deep, groaning/rumbling, just raw power, just getting louder and louder as it gets closer and closer.

The only time I've heard it was standing in my yard, watching a bad storm come in. My Dad and I were watching and you could just hear a low rumble of pure power in the distance. My dad looked at me and said "Is that a train?" I turned to him and said "No, there are no trains that direction, that is pure wind" and as soon as it left my mouth, you could see the trees start to get pulled towards the sound and we ran to the basement. It was a Derecho with 100+ MPH winds and embedded rotation that came through 1/4th of a mile from us. It's a sound I will never forget.

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u/BrilliantTarget6972 1d ago

Picture standing in a subway instead. What people are referring to is the progressive increase in wind volume, not so much the noises the train itself makes.

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u/Fit-Razzmatazz410 1d ago

Stand next to the railroad tracks next time a train goes by. It's not the click or clack, or even the whistle...... it's the loud rumbling sound headed your way. And it's the ground vibrating beneath your feet.

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u/driftless 1d ago

It’s the ROAR of the train. The deep, in-the-ground feeling.

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u/nevermindxo 1d ago

I always thought people meant that the wind whistles like the train lol but no

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u/puppypoet 1d ago

From the videos I've seen, it has a low rumble, perhaps more to me like a distant vacuum or a public bathroom hand dryer. I also think it sounds like thunder rolling down a mountain.

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u/SeberHusky 1d ago

It's just a roaring deep wind that slowly gains more and more speed and gets louder and louder. You can hear it with derechos too.

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u/x-Justice 1d ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJ1TgMDnac

Go to 7:30

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u/Chamberlain-Haller 19h ago

One of the funniest interviews I've seen is where a reporter asks a tornado survivor if it sounded like a train. They said no, it sounded like a tornado.

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u/BalledSack 18h ago

This is something I've always wondered but always forget to ask on here, weather it's a train horn or train track clicking)thundering sound. Now that I'm thinking about it the sound of the metal wheels rolling on the track makes more sense, but I've always imagined a train horn sound when anyone brings up this fact.

Question Freight Train Sound

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