===TRANSCRIPT START===

Astonishing Legends Network.

Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And this week, I'm missing the weather. People think I'm crazy, but LA weather is so fucking boring. It's consistent and warm, and the only real difference between the months is how hot it gets. Sort of hot or very hot. And sometimes it rains. July is when it really starts to get obnoxiously hot, and it'll be that way through October. And don't get started on, oh, but it's a dry heat. Who cares? It sucks.

It's a fucking dry heat. You're wrong. It sucks. I'm sitting here sweating my ass off in Connecticut in a wet heat, and I hate it.

When we were at Ohio for Monster Fest, it was hot and humid. And guess what? Well, you remember, because I was saying it out loud. I was loving it. I was sweating, but I didn't care. That felt like summer to me.

Gross.

Because after all, you can't experience a summer storm in a dry heat. And besides fall, those storms are what I miss the most about the East Coast. The magic of the sky darkening, thunder rumbling and lightning flashing in the distance. The feeling of a storm coming on is exciting.

Oh, unless I'm picking you up from the airport and I got a dry of three and a half hours in this exciting storm. Like monsoon, you piece of shit.

Unless that.

You're not thinking about me in this scenario. You're romanticizing dangerous roads.

Well, I'm romanticizing dangerous roads, dangerous weather and dangerous wind. And part of the reason I can do that is because I never grew up around really bad storms. The worst that might have happened, the power goes out, maybe a tree falls onto a car or a house a couple times a year. But other than that, storms for me were meditative, if not outright peaceful. There is another kind of storm though, worse than the kind of storm that Ed drove through. The dangerous kind, the sort of weather that nightmares are made of. They capture our imagination because they are a demonstration of nature at its most magnificent and awe-inspiring, despite the death and destruction they bring. We call them twisters. And this week, Scared All The Time is going storm chasing. Now it is time for. Scared All The Time. Hey guys, welcome back to Scared All The Time. Thanks so much for joining us. As always, subscribe to the premium feed if you want, if you can. We have a lot of fun over there. There's a lot of good content that has already gone up and there is more good content on the way. If you're wondering if our episode on Twisters today has anything to do with the fact that Twisters starring Glenn Powell comes out tomorrow, it does. We took a look at the summer calendar and decided, you know what, we thought it would be fun to do a themed episode. And even though we aren't technically sponsored by Twisters, the film starring Glenn Powell that comes out tomorrow, if anyone over at the studio would like to write us a check to sponsor us, we are-

We have a PO box.

We have a PO box. We're open to sponsorship deals. And Glenn, if you want to come on the show, you know where to find us. And I guess I just wanted to read a couple five star reviews. You guys are fucking awesome. And you seem to be really loving this because we keep getting good five star reviews. So-

Hell yeah.

Ed, do you want to read this first, the newest one? I think this is a high compliment.

Oh, okay. It's going to be a cold read. I have to scroll to it. Let me see here. I had another one ready to go, but okay, here we go. Oh boy, geez, five stars, subject. Can you have a crush on a voice? Before I read this, Chris definitely doesn't have a crush on his voice. He's always like, I don't want to hear it.

I hate it. I can't listen to the episodes.

Yeah, I have to listen to them all a hundred times. Okay, so let's start this. So again, can you have a crush on a voice as a subject? I'm loving this podcast. I laugh, I cringe, I Google. Chris and Ed make it feel like I'm just hanging out with a couple friends, talking about things that interest me. The only negative, oh great, you didn't tell me there's a negative in this, Chris. The only negative, I'm discovering new fears. I had no idea I was so scared of waking during surgery, but now I know that it terrifies me. So thanks for that.

Yeah.

Oh, that's from Leroux916.

Fantastic, we've got a couple of other good ones here. There's one, I think maybe this other five star review here from Comic says, this show brings the goods. I tune in on the regular, I work solo in a spooky indoor growing environment. So this guy grows weed for a living.

Or mushrooms.

Oh girl, or mushrooms. I work solo in a spooky indoor growing environment a lot at work and I laugh out loud alone a lot because of this show. I like that, so do the plants. Thanks guys. All right, so we're sending out some good vibes through the mushrooms into the world.

All right, here's another one with a shout out to their hometown. It says, subject, love this show and they say, my hometown of Missoula, Montana was mentioned in the latest episode. I had no idea people actually knew we existed up here, much less anyone in the Astonishing Legends universe. Love the show and thank you guys for the laughs and amazing content that you've put out there. And that is from Swaggers, then all caps, yeet, a million exclamation points, 223.

Swaggers, yeet. I'm gonna peel back the curtain a little bit here. Not only do we know about Missoula Montana, I think the rest of the extended Astonishing Legends universe also knows about Missoula Montana. I can't say for sure I've heard Scott say Missoula, but I think he has.

He probably in his life has, in a dream, woke from a dream. He was saying, Missoula!

Yeah, you wake up screaming, wake up from a nightmare, Missoula! Oh God.

Yeah, so I think we'll leave it on that. We'll leave it with that one. We got a lot more for future weeks, but we want a lot more coming in, so.

Yeah, it's awesome that you guys are leaving these. So if you don't know what the fuck is happening right now, the deal is if you leave us a five-star review, we might read it on the show. And the more five-star reviews that get left, and the more we end up reading these, the more likely it is that yours will get read on the show because we don't have infinity number of five-star reviews, so.

Yet.

Yet. So with that, kick back, relax, go out, enjoy the summer, listen to this episode and enjoy Twisters. As far as things that strike immediate paralyzing fear deep into my heart, I'm not sure there is a sound on God's green earth more effective than that of a distant air raid siren. It never means anything good is on the way. It's not the sound of an ice cream truck. You know, when you start to hear that wail, could it be bombs? It could be bombs. Is it Godzilla? It could be Godzilla. And I think part of the fear, or part of what plays into the fear of an air raid siren is that you don't know exactly what you're being warned about. It's just a sky sound that might as well be shouting, you are so fucked.

Yeah.

There was one in Hershey that would just go off for no reason sometimes.

That's the Hawaii Missile Strike text of air sirens.

Yeah, well, it was weird. I remember it would go off and my mom would tell me that it was like, oh, that's like the fire department. But we lived in the woods, like miles from the fire department. And we would just hear this very specific and loud air raid sound.

That could be just weird redneck shit though. That could just be somebody who had stalled a house alarm in their truck.

That's true.

Just being dumb. Cause yeah, I mean, I've heard air raid sirens in my life and they're pretty recognizable. And usually you can find the source.

Yeah.

You can drive by and be like, that's what that is.

Yes.

They have some in LA.

I don't know if I've ever heard one in LA.

I've never heard one in LA, but I've driven by one on Olympic all the time. Like it's like by a church. I see like an old air raid siren there.

Yeah, they have that actually now that you mentioned it, there's one on right near that air one on Beverly in the post office. There's an old air raid siren coming off the top of the building that I guess is probably World War II era because they thought we might get hit by the Japanese.

Yeah, but you're not getting an air raid siren for earthquakes is like even with all the technology, we now have the ability to detect an earthquake up to like what three seconds before it happens.

Yeah, no, it's definitely not for earthquakes. I think it was for World War II.

Tsunamis maybe though.

Oh, maybe, yeah, maybe tsunamis.

Also, Godzilla's.

Also, Godzilla's. One thing's for sure though, the air raid siren in Pennsylvania never signaled a tornado. And that's not because it's impossible for Pennsylvania to have tornadoes. We think of them as a more Midwestern thing, but they can and do happen all over the place. And while Hershey, while I lived there, we had floods and hail and every other kind of extreme storm weather. We never got a funnel cloud. Did you, Ed, did you ever get a twister in New England?

No, a lot of Nor'easters, a lot of hurricane stuff, a lot of hail, dumb crap like that. I mean, I think there's always a chance, I guess, but I don't remember Connecticut ever. On my drive here, I had to reroute up to Kansas because northern Texas and southern Oklahoma were having so many funnel cloud tornado warnings in front of me that Google Maps was like, hey, just so you know, along your route right now, there's like an emergency broadcast, like you don't go there. And so I had to reroute up to Kansas, ironically, a place kind of most known for, at least in cinema, for a tornado. I don't remember where Twister took place, but Wizard of Oz is Kansas, obviously.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember where Twister is.

Twister is maybe Oklahoma.

Maybe Oklahoma, yeah. Speaking of Twisters, that might be why we're doing an episode. We're sponsored by Twisters this week.

Yeah, and also hope everybody likes Glenn Powell because he's here to talk about her. No, he's not here.

That'd be amazing.

Glenn Powell's not here, guys.

Glenn Powell's not here.

He seemed gettable until like a year ago, so we could have got him.

He absolutely was gettable until like a year ago.

And good for him. Good for being the only person to really use Top Gun 2 to create. He really rode the buzz of Top Gun 2 into a real nice body of work within two years of it coming out. I can't say the same for everybody else in it, although everyone's great in it.

I might be a sucker for a great smile, but I feel like the minute I saw him as the lead in something, and I feel like I might have seen him as the lead in something before Top Gun 2, but now I can't remember. It's just like, oh, that guy is obviously a movie star in the old school sense of a movie star. He just has it.

Yeah. If you told me he was 57 years old, I'd believe you. And if you told me he was 27 years old, I'd believe you. He's got one of those good ageless vibes too.

Yeah, I agree. Well, I asked if you'd ever seen a funnel cloud or experienced one in New England, because I know my grandparents in Springfield did. It was about 10 years ago. There was a pretty significant twister in Springfield, Massachusetts. I couldn't remember any of the details, so I went back and looked it up. It was June 1st, 2011. Right around 3 in the afternoon, severe storms developed over Western Mass and prompted a tornado warning to be issued at 328 for parts of Hamden, Hampshire and Franklin counties. And about an hour later, the warning was issued for Springfield and surrounding areas.

What year?

2011.

Wow, okay.

I didn't write this down, but in the research, I'm pretty sure I saw that 2011 was the most active year for tornadoes.

Really?

In a very, very long time, if not ever. So, yeah. I mean, hurricanes, I feel like New England's used to. Nor'easters and hurricanes. I forget what the name of the hurricane was. My grandmother would always tell me about the hurricane that hit like Musquamaca Beach in the 30s or something that just wiped out the whole area.

No, we were out of school and stuff because of hurricanes. I remember so many hurricanes when I was a kid. More so than now, but I remember Hurricane Andrew. I remember other ones. Fucking Ricky, Hurricane Ricky.

So, the first twister touchdown was confirmed near Springfield by local law enforcement and apparently amateur radio operators. And within a couple of minutes throughout West Springfield, 88 buildings were destroyed and two people were killed. One of them was a woman whose home collapsed on her while she was protecting her daughter. And another was from a five-foot-wide oak tree that crashed down onto a car and killed the driver. But then this is why I remembered that this thing happened because the tornado went straight across a bridge over the Connecticut River. Which must have been a wild thing to see. A funnel cloud just like moving its way across a bridge. And then it hit the city of Springfield itself. It destroyed over 500 homes and buildings and demolished entire sections of neighborhoods and forests. In total, it hit 10 towns and cities in and around Springfield. It caused $227 million in damage. Three people died and 200 were injured, which is the first time a tornado had killed anyone in Massachusetts since the 1995 Great Barrington Tornado, which I did not do any research on because I didn't care enough to learn.

Yeah, we're going to look up a 90s tornado. The only 90s tornadoes we care about are the ones killing the box office for Twister.

Hell, yes. The ones that Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton are on the run from.

Right, throwing Dorothy up into it.

Oh, one thing I didn't write down in the research, but I was reading the other day, since you just mentioned Twister, and I feel like we'll probably mention it a couple of times throughout this episode, but the making of Twister was a Scared All The Time episode in and of itself. It sounds like Jan Devont was a real asshole. He got so bad that he had a shoving match with his director of photography and pushed him down into the mud at one point, and then the DP quit and took his whole crew with him and was replaced by a different cinematographer. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt got their corneas singed by lights that were too bright during a storm sequence while they were driving. And then Helen Hunt got whacked in the head with a car door, I think it was. And at one point, they asked Jan Devont, it seems like Satt was pretty dangerous. Helen Hunt got injured. And he was like, well, she's pretty clumsy. And they brought it up with her in an interview, I think in 2020 in Vulture. They were like, what do you think that Jan Devont said that these injuries were because you were clumsy? And her response was, that's so brutal. Which it doesn't seem like they're on very good terms.

I mean, I remember the behind the scenes from that movie. I think it might've been on the DVD or something, might've had some clips or whatever. It was just like, cause all the trucks are tight and that you did the drives like that fucking red Ram or whatever. I'm like, hell yeah. But I remember it was like a fucking convoy that you would never do today because you just do it all on the volume or on green screen or something. But it was like three or four trucks, one's throwing like broken trees at the actors. This is while the actors are in a truck driving, which does not look like an insert truck if I recall.

Yeah, so when you're saying convoy of trucks, you don't mean in the film, you mean that this is the behind the scenes, there's trucks driving alongside the other truck.

Yes, what you would see is like the red Dodge Ram and like Paxton in there or whatever. But then in front of him is a truck with cameras. Then to the left of them, which you don't see on camera is like a truck with like just huge bricks of ice that they're shredding into hail. That's tossing it like all over people in society. Then another truck with like actively wood chipping or something tossing cornea scratching wood chips all over everybody while they're driving like 40, 50 miles an hour on this road. That's all happening in real time. And then like probably another like a blimp with like a fucking giant light burning up their eyeballs too. But the fact that we don't hear about three million deaths a year from like 1980s and 90s filmmaking is crazy to me. Like the craziest shit they would do.

Especially, you know, from watching all your schlock, if you go back to the especially kind of like the VHS era of low budget 80s action movies.

Yeah, when everyone could apparently get nine helicopters to fly under an overpass for $50.

I mean, like there's car stunts in low budget because every, you know, a couple of times a year, somebody will find clips that they throw up on Twitter or something from an older action movie starring like Mark Dyskaskos or something. And they'll have like a car stunt that's like better than anything you'd see in a $100 million movie today. And I think it's, I don't know if it's because they could get away with it, if they like skirted rules or stuff, but man, the shit that they would try to pull.

Well, what's funny is that it's the fucking John Wick guy, right? Like he was already a stunt man who, but that was the 80s. There were so many schlock movies where it was a second unit director in a fucking stunt man, or like the head of the stunt department, who would go and make their own straight to fucking video movies and just would hire their friends. In that way, they would sell it on the idea of, there's gonna be a crazy car chase, they're doing it anyway, and we'll just film it. And then the rest of the movie will be people talking in rooms and then like twice there'll be craziest action you'll ever see in your life. Now you become, I don't know, a hundred millionaire or something creating John Wick. But back then it was like, all right, what are you gonna do when we're done blasting Helen Hunt with fucking shaved ice? Well, I think I'm gonna go make another movie for $50 using the same equipment at night.

Yeah, exactly. It's called Night Twisters and it's awesome.

It's super awesome. Everyone's always like, I didn't see any twisters in there. I was like, yeah, we did it at night, so you wouldn't.

That's more intense.

We did it with sound design. Hear that whooshing? That's a night twister. Anyway, we have to light Helen Hunt's Stunt Woman on fire now. It's not even a scene in the movie.

Oh, one last twister fact. You and I talked about this the other day, I think. Todd Field, the man who directed Tar and Little Children and invented Big League Chew is an actor in that movie. He plays one of those storm hunters.

It's just a better time. It was a different better time.

Better time, man. So this tornado in Springfield was later rated a strong EF3.

What does that stand for? It stands for Everybody's Fucked?

No, it's the Enhanced Fujita Scale. It used to be the F scale was just the Fujita scale. And now the EF scale is the Enhanced Fujita Scale.

Oh, good for them.

So we'll talk about that in a little bit. But before we go any further, I think it's probably good to take a minute to define what a tornado is, what causes them and why they're scary. Because I think something, if I'm being a little self critical for a moment, I think something that I don't do a great job of sometimes, especially at the top of these episodes, is talk at all about why these topics are scary, because I think it's sort of self explanatory, but also, I don't know, sometimes it's good to take a moment to just really put you at a time and place if you've never really thought about what it would be like to see a twister before. I mean, imagine standing in the middle of a field or in a small town and hearing that air raid siren, the sky starts to go dark. It starts to turn like a weird kind of greeny, like dark green, sickly green color. And you feel that stillness that comes before a storm, except all of a sudden you can start to hear a roar and then you look and there is a thousands of foot high spinning whirling cloud ripping things up off the ground, tossing people and cars and houses through the air. I mean, if you have never thought about why twisters are scary, genuinely go watch Twister. They do a pretty good job of making them fucking scary. Or go on YouTube and just look up. As I was researching this, there's a lot of good footage on YouTube of people who have witnessed tornadoes. There's some footage of people who have like, recorded being in a house as a tornado rips the roof off of it kind of stuff.

Forget it, forget it.

It's real nightmare shit. And if you don't live near them, I guess you don't think about them that much, but they are forces of nature in the very definition of the word. Like there's no stopping them.

I would say they're scary enough and annoying enough that I'm so mad that I so often drive across the country in spring and summer, like tornado season. People are like, oh, I don't fucking live near it. It's not a big deal. But when you're driving across this country, the whole Midwest at any moment can just be, like I said earlier, all of a sudden Google Maps is like, hey, by the way, funnel clouds forming, where you're going. And they'll give you this massive patch of land that's like, it could land anywhere here. And I'm like, that's hours out of my way to go around this little part of the map. Like that's hours out of the way. But the options are go somewhere where that might happen versus go somewhere where it's definitely not happening. I will lose a day because I have no interest in being around when one of those things step down.

Yeah, if you're there when it happens, if you're unlucky enough to be there for the might happen, there's really nothing you can do. I mean, they move in fairly straight lines and it's not like it's gonna chase you down like a movie monster or something. But if you are in its path, you really can have a very bad day very quickly.

But it's a little bit like, and this is rude, but it's a little bit like how people who are always talking shit on California being like, look at wildfires that happens every year. Why don't you guys get it together? And I'm like, well, why do you keep building houses where you get blown away every fucking year in the Midwest? Like, it's just the same thing where it's like, I don't know, that's where you live and you keep doing it in California. That's where they live and they keep rebuilding after a forest fire.

I kind of think that, so there's this concept in some multiplayer games called permadeath, where if you build a character, then you die and you lose that character in the game, you can't bring that character back and keep using it. I kind of feel like places, cities, towns, homes, where there's natural disasters, there should just be a permadeath law where if your town gets wiped out by an earthquake or a twister, we just don't build there anymore. Like we tried, it didn't work.

That's a park now, that's a state park.

Yeah, exactly. Find somewhere else, rebuild somewhere else.

Well, it's funny you say video games because I think my earliest memory outside of the film Twister of Twisters of Tornadoes is SimCity. SimCity, you can destroy your town. That's one of the natural disasters that you can choose. And SimCity actually dictates a lot of my life. It is, well, not dictates in the sense that I'd change anything, but I do think about it a lot, especially as climate change and all this shit's going down and things are just so weird recently. I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, is it climate change or we live in a fucking computer and someone just clicked on the SimCity? Like, how come we're getting a tornado where it never was? How come we're getting hail where it never was? And there's probably real science reasons behind that, but in my mind, I'm like, fucking SimCity, bro, we're living in SimCity. Anyway, you were saying?

The simulation theory.

Oh shit, yeah, we should change it to simulations theory.

Well, let's simulate what National Geographic says a twister is. So according to National Geographic, a tornado is a violently rotating column of air that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground. It's often pretended by a dark greenish sky, black storm clouds gather, baseball-sized hail may fall. A funnel suddenly appears as though descending from a cloud. The funnel hits the ground and roars forward with a sound like that of a freight train approaching. The tornado tears up everything in its path. And, you know, I'm sure you've seen, like I said, if you haven't, go look them up on YouTube, videos that people have taken of these things from their homes as tornadoes roar by. Even from a mile away, you can see debris swirling around the base as they kind of rip through wherever they're ripping through. And one of the things that's really scary about twisters is that the science of what actually causes them is still evolving. So there aren't answers for every aspect of twister formation. They're still hard to predict. And while we know the physics behind how they form, it is still a little unclear why they form. So the how is that twisters form when warm, humid air, we're gonna put on our Bill Nye science hats for a minute here. This is a little bit dry, but it is important, I think, when talking about twisters to understand this.

Can't be that dry, it's humid. You just said it was humid.

Tornadoes, it's half humid, half dry. That's a tornado. They form when warm, humid air collides with cold, dry air, which is why, though they can occur at any time of the day or night, night twisters, you've been caught up by the night twisters. Night twisters. Most tornadoes form in the late afternoon. By this time, the sun has heated the ground and the atmosphere enough to produce thunderstorms. A warm air rises through cold air, causing an updraft, and the updraft will begin to rotate if winds vary sharply in their speed or direction. So as this rotating updraft, called a mesocycle, draws in more warm air from the moving thunderstorm, its rotation speed increases. And then cool air is fed by the jet stream, which is a strong band of wind that runs through the atmosphere, and that provides even more energy. And then the final step is that water droplets from the mesocyclone's moist air form the funnel cloud. The funnel continues to grow and eventually it descends from the ground. And when it touches the ground, it becomes a tornado. So essentially this insanely destructive force of nature is really just caused by hot air and cold air. And that's really it. I mean, they're still studying the exact physics of how and why and what kinds of, when they say something like, the updraft will begin to rotate if winds vary sharply in speed or direction. I think a lot of the stuff that is a little more unknown is the, you know, how exactly those winds are varying in speed or direction and what starts to create that rotation. I'll say it, they gotta be close. How hard is this to simulate in a computer? You gotta know almost everything about a tornado at this point.

Did you ever have that stuff you do in class or at your house where like you would take two, two liter soda bottles and like put them end to end and then had like a thing in the middle that would simulate like a tornado?

Oh yeah.

Like a whirlpool. I mean, we can do that. So that should get you halfway there.

Yeah, right. It doesn't seem like it should be that complicated, but you know, I guess there is somewhere in the science between hey, a big thunderstorm is coming and sound the siren, a tornado is about to touch down in a couple of minutes. There's a gap in there that makes it hard to predict with certainty that this thunderstorm will become a tornado.

Yeah, like all the alerts I got were tornado warnings. Like the actual language was like, we are seeing the beginnings of funnel clouding or whatever. It doesn't mean that it's actually. Now two things, one, if you look at a hurricane from space, also round, circular, like whipping around. So storms in general like to get pretty circular and whippy, which is annoying. And then B or two, whatever we're on, this is the dumbest question I've ever asked on this show, which is saying a lot.

I can't wait.

Does everywhere have tornadoes or is it like an American thing?

So that's actually a great question. We're gonna get to that. We're gonna start with elevations because most of the time we think of tornadoes and twisters as things that happen in low lying land, flat low lying land.

Which we got a lot of in the middle of this country.

Yes, where the air is warmer and less stable. But I was surprised to learn that tornadoes are rare, but not impossible at higher elevations. And I found a few here that I wanted to talk about. During what has been described as a rare and incredible meteorological event, an F4 tornado occurred at 10,000 feet in Northwest Wyoming on July 21st, 1987. It traveled through the Teton Wilderness, Yellowstone National Park and crossed the Continental Divide. And it's still the strongest tornado ever recorded for the state of Wyoming, which does see numerous tornadoes every year.

My God, this tornado was looking for someone. Yeah. This tornado was fueled by wind and revenge.

Whoever it was looking for, it didn't find. It stranded a couple of hikers for a few days, but luckily, even though it was a very strong tornado, at that elevation in that area of the country, there weren't really any buildings or people. So it ripped down a lot of trees and I'm sure it probably killed some animals.

This sounds like a tornado who other tornadoes were like, go kick off some steam, blow off some steam, bro.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like this tornado found out its tornado partner was cheating on it. And then it was like, I'm gonna fucking tear it out of town. It was like, they ain't worth it, bro. Just go to Wyoming and like blow up the trees, man.

Go to the mountains, yeah.

We're having a hard enough time reputation wise in America. So just go fucking knock down some trees, man. And it's like, all right, fine. I'm fucking coming for you tomorrow, Oklahoma City.

Go kick rocks.

Go kick rocks.

And he did. I also found a report with photos of a tornado, and again, in the show notes, that occurred within the Rocky Mountains. The National Weather Service in Boulder confirmed this tornado traversed across elevations of 11,800 feet, which is right around the elevation that the record holding tornado was observed at in Sequoia National Park, California. That record holding tornado occurred at 12,156 feet of elevation and was confirmed that it did indeed happen by examining weather data from Edwards Air Force Base.

This is, I don't like the term record holding followed by a storm. I don't like that they're out there trying to one up each other. They're getting gold medals. I can't, so you stop twisting for a second, I can't put this medal on you. And it's just, I don't know why I've so quickly taken to anthropomorphizing tornadoes, but it's a lot of fun.

You do love giving these guys names, personalities. So do meteorologists though, I feel like they always name.

They name hurricanes and there is like a rhyme or reason to it. Like the next one will be the next in the alphabet and then it's like certain ones are female, certain ones are male. I forgot what the actual reasoning is, but.

I thought they, do they switch on and off every other year? Like one year it's male names and the next year it's female names?

Yeah, there is a system in place, but I don't, and then they get to Z and then start over again.

Yeah. And to answer your other question, so that was the discussion about where gets tornadoes in terms of elevation, so.

Elevation's interesting and I know we're gonna get to the next thing, but elevation is interesting because when you're in Denver or something and it's like, oh, the air is thin, it's kind of hard to breathe up here. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm just like, if I'm a tornado, I'm gonna need some air, right? Like I'm gonna need some air to do what I do. And so if it's thin ass air, is it harder to form? Because it's like, I can't pull anything out of this.

They've had twisters in high elevations. This was like a whole other branch that didn't really go too far down, but there have been twisters recorded in and around the Himalayas.

Oh, so it doesn't need shit then, it's just out here.

Yeah, it can happen. It's rare, but it can happen.

Sure. Does anyone call them twisters or just the movie made that popular?

I'm using the word twisters just in case-

Glenn shows up.

There's a, in case Glenn Powell knocks on the door and is like, hello, I heard somebody using the word twisters.

Someone said twister three times and I have to appear contractually.

I am using twisters to appease the SEO gods and hopefully maybe there's a auto transcription of this episode somewhere.

There is now, Spotify does it now.

Yeah, so if that gets fed into the algorithm somewhere, it's gonna be twisters, twisters, twisters, twisters.

Wait a minute, these guys are just talking about ice cream cones.

Every US state has experienced a twister. Texas holds the record. They have an annual average of 120.

Also, it's a big patch of land, more surface area to win the award.

Yeah, tornadoes have been reported worldwide. Great Britain, India, Argentina, other countries, but they are most often seen in the United States. Each year, the US gets an average of 1,200 tornadoes, making up more than 75% of worldwide occurrences.

Why did I drive? Why do I drive in the summer?

So, they are sort of an American phenomenon, although there's stories coming up that are from all over the world, but yeah, and it's funny, I never really, until I researched this, I never stopped to think, where are they more common? But yes, they are a very American thing.

Yeah, they're big, they're badass, they're loud. Love it, that's us.

Which we'll get to. I think part of the reason that there's not a ton of history around tornadoes is because, while there are legends and lore and mythology from indigenous peoples in the United States around tornadoes, there's really not a ton of, you know, like America's a fairly young country as a country with written scientific history, and so I think that's part of why there's not as much a body of science around them, because everywhere else seems like they're not as common. So, sure. Now there is a difference, we were also talking about hurricanes. There's a big difference between tornadoes and hurricanes, and honestly, hurricanes are even bigger monsters than twisters.

Oh, you can see them from space.

Yeah. Tornadoes are usually only about 300 to 500 yards across, and their wind speeds reach 100, sometimes up to 300 miles an hour. They can cause havoc on the ground, but they typically only last a few minutes.

Oh, they're homunculi. They're homunculi out of their jar. They don't last long. Everyone's freaked out and running from it, but yeah, they don't even live long enough to be named.

True, that's true. Well, we get 1,200 a year, you'd run out of names so fast. But they rarely travel more than 10 or 20 miles, and they have little impact on the storms that spawn them, and they have equally little impact on the global circulation of the atmosphere, which makes them very different from their compatriots in nasty weather, hurricanes. According to NASA, hurricanes are large scale circulations that are 60 to over 1,000 miles across. Like you said, we can see them from space. A hurricane may travel thousands of miles and persist over several days or weeks. During the lifetime of a hurricane, it will transport a significant amount of heat up from the ocean surface and into the upper troposphere or even lower stratosphere, which for you spheres fans out there, you know the lower stratosphere that's getting up towards space, brother.

That's pretty high on the sphere tier.

Yes, very high on the sphere tier. Even though hurricanes form only sporadically, they do affect the global atmosphere's circulation in measurable ways, although exactly how is still a very active area of research. Here's a real nightmare though. It is possible for hurricanes to spawn tornadoes. So just because you've escaped one, doesn't mean you can escape the other.

Okay, so fucking tornadoes are Hercules and hurricanes are fucking Zeus.

I think, I don't know where you're going with that, but sure.

I'm saying is that one's-

The son of the other.

Not a full, one's like a demigod.

Sure.

And the other one's like a full blown, like I'm gonna be stepped down from Olympus to destroy your city.

Yeah.

It's literally spawning smaller god type thing. Look it, I don't have to add all this. The smart fans will know what I'm talking about.

That's true. Yeah, they are, they are. And I'll tell you what, if there was ever a global box office phenomenon called Hurricane, we'd be doing an episode on those instead.

Donnie worked on one.

Oh, Hurricane Heist?

Hurricane Heist. Hell yeah, our buddy Don like edited the trailer for this ridiculous movie. It's probably based on a true story of people like robbing a bank during a hurricane.

Yeah.

Robbing is something during a hurricane.

Directed by the guy who directed the first Fast and the Furious movie.

Rob something.

Rob Cohen. And when you look it up, it goes by the name The Hurricane Heist.

The Ohio State, that's-

Officially it is The Hurricane Heist.

Do you know The Ohio State? I know you're not a sports guy, so. Okay, well, our fans who know sports will know what I'm talking about.

I know one Ohio State, and it's the state we visited for Monster Fest.

Hell yeah, we did.

All right, so hurricanes can shoot off tornadoes, like little mini gods, level bosses.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sub bosses for the weather level. They're hard to see usually, cause they're wrapped in rain, and they are usually fairly weak F0 or F1 storms. The greatest number of tornadoes that were spawned from a hurricane is counted at 120 tornadoes from Hurricane Ivan in September 2004, followed by 115 birthed from the beast Hurricane Bula in September 67, and 103 from Hurricane Francis in September 2004, just a couple weeks before Ivan.

Who the fuck is doing that? What statistician is like, I'll count the tiny twisters. Like it's ridiculous, it's a ridiculous thing.

I don't know who counted them out in September 1967. I could see how the ones in 2004, maybe they went over like radar data. You know, they had like more video footage. There were probably some people, you know, flying around the hurricanes to like study them. But in 1967, I don't know what maniac was out there with an eight millimeter camera being like, one, two.

This is gonna hold the record forever. I'm sure of it.

Yeah.

Nope. You were wrong, sir. You died for nothing. I assume they died.

Yeah. This whoever, whoever counted those 115, there may have been 130, but number 115 sucked them up and spit them out.

They sunk their ship.

We're doing a lot of science on this episode. So we're gonna pause to talk about some more very scary shit.

With our guest, Glenn Powell, everyone, please welcome to the studio, Glenn Powell.

Thank you, Glenn. Thank you for being here. Glenn's here to talk about other types of weather phenomenon related to Twisters.

I'm sorry. Glenn is leaving because we do not have Fiji water. Sorry. Glenn is now left.

Fuck.

Yeah, we lost him.

We'll get him.

We lost him.

We'll get him by the end of this episode.

Yeah. We'll also stop doing the Glenn Powell bit.

There are a few other types of weather phenomenon.

Ladies and gentlemen, Sydney Sweeney, I'm just kidding. We're done. We're for real done.

There are a few other types of weather phenomenon related to tornadoes, all interesting, and some of them very scary in their own ways. Water spouts are weak twisters that form over water. They're not really all that scary. They sometimes move inland and become tornadoes, but they mostly just look like water tornadoes over the ocean and they're not very powerful. Then there's dust devils, which if you've driven through the middle of the country like Ed.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

You've probably seen there's those rapidly rotating columns of air that pick up some dust and dirt. They look really cool. I've seen a few. The big difference between dust devils and tornadoes is that even though dust devils can get pretty big, they're not associated with thunderstorms. So they're a different kind of cyclonical wind. This next one though is very scary. I didn't even realize this was a real term until I started doing the research, but-

Oh no.

Fire tornadoes.

What?

Which can spawn from wildfires.

That shouldn't exist.

They do. They spawn from wildfires. They're insane. They're absolutely terrifying. They're exactly what they sound like. Towering tunnels of flame spinning through the air. A fire tornado or fire whorl, which sounds much more whimsical-

Yeah, also sounds like a ride that'll break down the next Amusement Park episode.

These fire tornadoes consist of a burning core and a rotating pocket of air. They can reach up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and occur when a wildfire or firestorm creates its own wind, which can then spawn these large vortices. While fire tornadoes have been reported throughout history, they weren't scientifically confirmed until 2003. Get this though, the most extreme example of a fire whorl is the one that developed during the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake in Japan.

Well, it didn't have enough problems going on.

I know, I know. The Kanto earthquake ignited a large city sized firestorm, which in turn produced a gigantic fire tornado that killed 38,000 people in 15 minutes.

I'm so- what?

Yeah.

Holy shit.

If that happened in a summer blockbuster, a giant fire tornado that killed 38,000 people, I'd be like, oh, this is, you know, this is a little much, but apparently that is real.

What year was this?

1923, so there was a giant earthquake in Japan and the earthquake ignited a firestorm the size of a city. So quick aside about firestorms, something else I didn't know about. They don't always feature dramatic fire tornadoes, but they also sound like some of the scariest shit ever. A firestorm is the term for what occurs when a fire grows so large that it creates and sustains its own wind system.

I don't like this wind situation. It's just like, anything that makes its own wind, you've mentioned this like two or three times now, things have made their own wind. What the fuck? Including humans. Like, that's a fart. We're talking about farts here. Like, anytime someone's making their own wind, they need to quit it.

The phenomenon's determining characteristic is a fire with its own storm force winds directed from every point of the compass towards the storm center where the air is heated and then ascends.

So, it's sucking in air, hitting it with a tremendous amount of fire, and then it spits it out upward.

Yep.

It's like, give me your fucking wind, I'm going to make it hot as shit, and then I'm just going to blast it into a bunch of birds or something. I don't know what is hitting up there.

It gets worse.

Oh, good.

Violent, erratic wind drafts suck anything movable into the fire, and as is observed with all intense conflagrations, radiated heat from the fire can melt asphalt, metals, glass, and turn street tarmac into flammable hot liquid.

Why do these exist?

The very high temperatures ignite anything that might possibly burn until the firestorm runs low on fuel.

I hate this. Also, how come I'm just hearing about this? I feel like this should be, like, people should put their kids to sleep at night being like, and remember to be good, or the firestorm will come.

The storm is going to come for you. Yeah, I don't think they're all that common is probably one reason that we haven't. I'm sure if you were, like, a firefighter in the California wildfire scene or something, you've probably heard of these.

I know one hotshot firefighter. I wonder if I can get him for the show.

Yeah, ask the hotshot firefighter and see. Dante's Peak, I feel like. I know that technically that's a volcano, but I feel like there's some firestorm-like sequences in that movie where everything just starts, like, catching on fire and melting. But yeah, if you ever find out that a fire is turning into a firestorm, and I don't know how you would find that out, but if someone comes to you and says there's a firestorm, just run. Just run the other way.

Yeah, it doesn't matter who they are, it doesn't matter what time of day, it doesn't matter who you're holding. Drop your kids. Just run.

Yeah.

Run. Leave your kids as a tribute to the firestorm in hopes that it'll pass over.

Yeah. The firestorm may actually be scarier than the topic of this episode, so.

The only thing worse than a sharknado is a shark firestorm.

Yes.

Because then you're just getting hit with shark fucking skeletons that get blasted out of the chimney of this nightmare storm.

So that's sort of the quick look at the science of twisters, where they happen, why they happen, and some of the storms that are related to them. And I think it's important to also talk about, because it's something that made them even scarier and more mysterious for a long time. Until the mid 20th century, our scientific understanding of tornadoes was extremely limited. They strike relatively infrequently and without much warning, so they're really hard to study. And this kind of blew my mind. According to an article I found on history.com, meteorologists were forbidden from forecasting tornadoes or even using the word tornado until the 1950s. So I'm quoting here, the ban on the word had been in effect since the 1880s when weather forecasters first began developing methods of predicting tornadoes. At the time, forecasting was in its infancy and officials worried that meteorologists could not provide adequate forecasts of how a tornado might behave. They also underestimated the public, writes weather historian Marlene Bradford, and felt that telephone operators might panic if they were required to relay news of upcoming storms. Quote, meteorologists appear to have reached a consensus that forecasting tornadoes would do more harm than good, Bradford writes.

They're the mayor in jaws.

Yes.

They're just like, look, you say Barracuda, everyone goes, huh, what? You say tornado on 4th of July weekend and we got a real problem on our hands.

Yeah. Well, it's sort of, yeah, it's like War of the Worlds, you know, when they did that radio program in the thirties and everybody thought it was real and started to panic. I guess if you just got on the radio and said, you know, alert, there is a tornado coming. It might have similar panicky.

It's like we're still reeling from War of the Worlds and you want to tell people about a very real thing that's coming for real and actually happening. We can't have that because they're going to think again that it's real. And then the meteorologist is like, boss, I'm telling you, it is real. We're forecasting it. And it was like, no, no, no, that's not good enough.

Going to be panic in these streets.

They're going to tear down the Sears Roebuck. They're going to take all the things.

Well, anyway, the Weather Bureau had an outright ban on the word tornado until 1950. And then in 1971, Professor Tetsuya Ted Fushita of the University of Chicago laid out his scale to measure tornado intensity in a publication titled Proposed Characterization of Tornadoes and Hurricanes by Area and Intensity.

That title is as dry as the air necessary to make a tornado.

I know. I know. And the report itself is also very dry. But the basic idea here is that the F scale linked estimated wind speeds to something called the Beaufort Wind Scale and to the degree of damage that these winds caused. After about three decades of just using the F scale, the Weather Service decided to rework the scale in order to better define damage indicators in a way that accounted for construction quality and that way they could definitively correlate damage with wind speed. So essentially, this new EF scale classifies tornadoes based on the damage left behind. And by surveying that damage, scientists assigned a wind speed that is likely to have caused the damage there's 28 categories that range from flag poles and power lines damaged all the way up to schools and high rise buildings. And those categories exist because scientists take into account how sturdy different structures are. So a barn, for instance, will sustain catastrophic damage at much lower speeds than a brick house.

It's the three little pigs method.

Yeah, it's the three little pigs method of hurricane ranking or tornado ranking. So, yeah, it's all pretty boring, but very important because we otherwise would have no way to talk about how dangerous these storms are. And through the use of these scales, meteorologists have come to understand that F3 and F4 tornadoes account for only about 9 to 12 percent of all tornadoes, but they do produce 88 percent of tornado fatalities. And even though the scale goes up to F5, no tornado has ever been assigned the F5 designation.

No one would dare.

No one would dare. It would be like speaking the true name of God.

Yeah, you think the meteorologist's bosses were mad then? You try and bring like an F5 into the equation? People are gonna be like, dude, the world would collapse from fucking panic.

No, sir. So even though the F scale is new, people have been trying to describe and understand twisters for as long as we've been observing the world. I was curious about the first time human beings facedown twisters, so I started to dig into the history, and it should go without saying that because twisters are a natural phenomenon, it's a bit like wondering when earthquakes or volcanoes were first encountered by humans. The answer is forever ago. I can't even imagine how many insane natural disasters occurred before written records were around to document them. I'm sure they were frightening and awe-inspiring, and the world itself must have been frightening and awe-inspiring.

Although I want to say this, I don't know where this lands on the measurement of things that will survive a tornado, but I feel like a cave is a pretty good shot at surviving a tornado. So it wasn't until people started building huts and things out of grass and twigs where they'd have to have discussions after, like, we will rebuild. Before that, it was just like, hey, how's your cave doing after that, whatever God sent? And it's like, oh, it's doing fine. We had one piece of cave art fell off the wall, but it's fine. And then how about you? How is civilization going? It's like, oh, everything we built was destroyed. It sucks. We should never have left the cave.

We'll get to it in a little bit. But yes, there was when I was looking up stuff about indigenous tribes, encounters with twisters, the tribes that were nomadic, which was a number of them, weren't really all that concerned because they didn't have tons of standing structures. They definitely didn't have dense populations of standing structures. And also, as somebody on a Reddit thread pointed out, if you were worried about the survival of your tribe when you saw a twister coming, even if you didn't know which way the twister was going, you could just split your group into two and run in opposite directions.

Yeah, well, whoever lives will save half the tribe.

Yeah, exactly. And I was like, oh, I hadn't even... That's a very good point. I'd hate to draw the short straw, but...

There's also a bunch of dunces out there. Every actor, it's not their fault, it's how it was written, but every character in Prometheus is just running from a rolling spaceship. It's like, go left or right, you idiots. Why are you just running straight from this boulder? Innead Jones is stuck in that scenario. He couldn't go left or right. You guys have so much room to go left and right.

So many directions.

Spoiler alert for people who hadn't seen Prometheus, you're missing nothing.

So, yes, I wanted to dig into descriptions of twisters back through the historical record. And I think the study of these storms, even going back millennia, where it was especially essential to our survival as a species to figure out the how and why behind storms or rain or wind or sun or anything, because agricultural societies were reliant on that kind of knowledge when it came to planting and harvesting crops. So as with all science over the ages, not everyone agreed on the answers. And in the case of storms, ancient Greeks were so caught up in the debate that they actually wrote a comedy called The Clouds in 423 BC. So this part is not really scary, but Ed is a professional comedy writer. And when I found this, I was like, we have to talk about this on the show because it is so interesting. I don't know, you know, I'm almost ashamed to admit this, but I never took a humanities class in high school or college, really.

I don't know what humanities even is.

Humanities is like the study of the greats, you know, so they would study the Odyssey and Shakespeare.

No, but look, we're both smart guys. We figured it out. We didn't have to take a class on that.

True. I didn't know much and I still don't know much about ancient Greek comedy, but the guy who wrote this comedy, The Clouds, is a guy named Aristophanes, Aristophanes. Aristophanes was really ahead of his time. Tell me this couldn't be a sitcom episode.

Well, every movie the audience listening right now has ever seen in the history of fucking mankind comes from like Aristotle and like those guys. The Greeks figured out the three act structure, they figured out everything. So I'm not at all surprised that they'd also have a killer sitcom spec.

This is a killer sitcom spec. The play begins with an older man, Strepsiades, suddenly sitting up in bed while his son, Pheidippides, remains blissfully asleep in the bed next to him. Strepsiades complains to the audience that he is too worried about his household debts to get any sleep. His wife, the pampered product of an aristocratic clan, has encouraged their son's expensive interest in betting on horse races. So right there, that's a sitcom setup. The average Joe, rich wife, dopey son, it's perfect.

I can already see Jim Belushi in this.

Now Strepsiades has a plan to get out of debt. He wakes his son up and asks if he'll do something for him. Son says, sure, no problem. But then Strepsiades reveals that his plan is to enroll his son in a school called The Thinkery, at which point the son changes his mind and says, no way. The Thinkery is a school for wastrels and bums. No self-respecting athletic young man dares to be associated with that place. Strepsiades explains that the students of The Thinkery learn how to turn inferior arguments into winning arguments, and this is the only way that they can beat their aggrieved creditors in court.

I'll never make this money. I have to find a way to make them think me not having money is a better solution.

Right. So, Dipides refuses his father's pleas, so Strepsiades decides to enroll himself in The Thinkery even though he's much older than everyone else there.

I am loving this. I'm loving this.

Yeah. This is the like, hey, fellow kids, how you doing play.

Yeah. It's also Homer goes to college, Homer goes back to school episode because the power plant makes him go get a degree.

Yeah, so when Stripsiades gets there to school, to the Thinkery, which in and of itself is an amazing name. Yeah. And it must have been kind of a jokey name. I'm like, I don't know exactly what was funny to them and what wasn't, but the Thinkery, if that translation is accurate, seems very funny to me. But when he gets to the Thinkery, he meets a student who tells him about some of the recent discoveries made by Socrates, the head of the Thinkery.

That shot's fired because that's a real person.

Yeah. Oh, Socrates becomes a main character in this play. So some of Socrates' discoveries in this play are a new unit of measurement for ascertaining the distance jumped by a flea, which is the measurement is called a flea's foot created from a miniscule imprint in wax.

I love it.

He also discovers the exact cause of the buzzing noise made by a gnat, which in the play is because its butt resembles a trumpet.

Okay, this is getting childish now. This is like Alfred E. Newman's on the cover of this play, Bill.

And Socrates also discovered a new use for a large pair of compasses as a kind of fishing hook for stealing men's cloaks from pegs by reaching over the gymnasium wall. So we might have to punch the jokes up a little bit, but the idea here is that Socrates has come to the conclusion about all these dumb new inventions at the Thinkery. And then there's a scene straight out of a Farley Brothers movie in which Socrates then shows up in the play and tries to get Strepsiades to lie down beneath a blanket and meditate on whatever thoughts enter his mind, at which point Strepsiades takes the opportunity to start furiously masturbating.

Oh boy, so they went there fast. They ran out of good. This is not a Marx Brothers production.

No, no. This is full on poop and pee jokes in ancient Greece. Anyway, the scene that is most pertinent, and Ed, I know you love reading scenes with me, so I found a scene from this play to read. So this scene is pertinent to this episode because it's a scene in which Strepsiades asks Socrates what creates storms. So I thought we'd read it. I'll be Strepsiades and Ed, you can be Socrates. Okay, so we're starting off, I'm asking you, my teacher. But tell me, who makes the thunder then, the sort that gives me the jitters?

It's these who thunder by rolling round.

But how, audacious thinker?

It's when they're soaked to the limit with water and compelled to move about while sagging low, all teeming with rain, and then, in this heavy state, they collide with one another and make those sounds of cracking and rumbling.

But who is it, then, who compels them to move? Isn't it Zeus himself?

Not at all. It's the swirl of the atmosphere.

The swirl? It was lost on me that Zeus just doesn't exist, but instead it's swirl that rules the world? But you haven't yet taught me exactly how the rumble and thunder occurs.

Are you deaf? I told you, it's when the clouds are brimming full of water, then bang into each other and rumble because they're so compressed.

And scene, great stuff, no notes.

I didn't know how to read any of that. That's a cold read. That's a cold read of Socrates, bro.

It's a cold read. Cold read. The swirl rules the world is going to knock around in my head for the rest of my life.

That is a funny thing where the guy's like, the guy's like, I'm just getting over learning that Zeus isn't real.

Now you're telling me the swirl rules the world? Bro. All right. Sorry. I found all that fascinating and I just wanted to put it in the episode because we don't get a chance to talk about comedy writing very much, but.

I don't think we're going to have a long discussion about it after that. PG. Woodhouse it is not.

Back to scary twisters. I found a paper in the International Journal of Meteorology that traces the first recorded tornado to Friday, October 17th, 1091 in London. A woman named Florence of Worcester. So this is back so far that people were still just named first name of the place they're from.

And Florence was the first person to go, we should write this down?

Well, I don't know. I mean, 1091 is old. So I don't know why this was the first recorded tornado. But Florence of Worcester described the event as a quote, violent whirlwind that demolished 600 houses, a number of churches and killed two men. William of Malmesbury gave a different description of it as a quote, great spectacle for those watching from afar, but a terrifying experience for those standing near, which is the most straightforward description of a tornado I can imagine.

It's like, or fireworks.

Thanks, man. It is cool from here and scary from there. So they weren't too concerned about, I guess, details. But interestingly, I thought this was interesting. Very few of the ancient descriptions of tornadoes mention funnel clouds. What they do mention are instances of torches, smoke, and the likeness of fire, which scholars all think are meant to describe the dark, towering clouds that look like smoke coming off a torch. Some of these descriptions get straight up gothic. One, I love this one, describes, quote, There were seen in the air above the angels of Satan flying about.

Meaning that like it's because they'd be circling like vultures and so.

Yes, the angels of Satan were flying about, yes. The paper also has a passage that collects accounts of the suction effects of tornadoes from the same time period. And I love some of these. At Pillerton in 1222, a tempest passed over a pod and was said to dry it up in the twinkling of an eye. In 1279, quote, Watery places became dry and, quote, Men were carried away in the clouds. So that's a very Wizard of Oz description right there.

I mean, this is also like, I don't know, fucking medieval Europe earlier, what have you. I mean, these are the same people who thought that giants were carrying you up into the clouds.

Yes. So the paper also notes, quote, It is certain that a powerful tornado could carry a man a considerable distance, even in Britain. And I'm not sure what even in Britain means.

I guess it's more of that giant talk.

Yeah. I don't know. Were they full of beer?

You know, are are densely heavy populace filled with sausage, potatoes, beer, haggis. Jesus. I don't know. Yeah. Even in Britain, that's really funny. Like they're a heartier stock. We're not going to get picked up like a Guatemalan.

We can just toss them around.

Yeah.

The paper doesn't mention any references to dust devils or fire tornadoes, but it closes on one epic description of what it interprets to be a waterspouts. In June, 1233, quote, two huge snakes were seen by many along the coast, fiercely battling in the air. And after a long struggle, one overcame the other and drove it into the depths.

That's awesome.

That's so cool.

I mean, that could literally be action lines from like Percy Jackson or...

Yeah. It's a Godzilla movie. That's, can you like standing on the coast of Britain, seeing what you interpret to be two giant snakes on the horizon?

I kind of like that more than Godzilla.

Yeah. It's their version of Power Rangers, just standing and watching weather events. So, that's a brief look at the recorded history of tornadoes in Europe, but since we just learned that tornadoes are a very American occurrence, I wanted to know more about the horrors that pioneers and Native Americans faced when these things came down from the sky in the Midwest. And this was actually a more difficult undertaking than I thought it would be, because as with so many Native American legends, there's as many stories as there are tribes. So it's kind of hard to say that there is a blanket way that tornadoes were witnessed or experienced by indigenous peoples in the early US. In some cultures, the terms cyclone or whirlwind could be used interchangeably. In other tribes, each word meant something a little different. In these groups, cyclone was the term for a tornado that was a destructive force of nature, while whirlwind was more commonly used in the Great Plains and was the term for small twisters that caused little harm to the community. They were often interpreted as wandering spirits of the dead searching for the spirit land. Other times, they were considered to carry spirits that caused confusion. According to ancientorigins.net, a site that we have-

These websites you find Yeah, yeah, yeah. that someone's been paying for hosting on for years and years.

Yeah, I don't know if it's just what we look up for this show, but I do find a lot of the same sites coming up and ancientorigins.net is one of them that has risen to the top of the algorithm. But according to them, quote, the Shawnee, Lenape and Cato tribes spoke of the cyclone person, an anthropomorphic male or female figure with long hairs that thrashed and twisted, destroying the land. In Shawnee mythology, three primary entities created by the sacred grandmother spirit controlled the weather. The first was a group of four called the Four Winds, followed by the infamous Thunderbird that emitted lightning from its eyes as it fought the horned serpent during storms.

Now that I actually do know that character.

The Thunderbird?

Not character, but I'm saying I do know of Thunderbird in Native American mythology. I didn't know that it had such tornado roots.

Yes, so there was this group called the Four Winds. The Four Winds were followed by the Thunderbird that fought the horned serpent. And finally, there was the cyclone envisioned as a female with long entangled braids that made up the formation of the tornado. One of the most detailed firsthand accounts of indigenous people versus tornado that I could find.

Was it Joe versus the volcano? Oh, wait, no, indigenous people versus the tornado. It was a very different film.

Very different film. It's from a man named Isai, a Kiwa informant to the anthropologist James Mooney. The Kiwa are an indigenous people of the Great Plains, and they called tornadoes mancaia, which was a great medicine horse or horse-like spirit. So in this story, Isai was a member of a war party returning from a raid against the Oots when they encountered a tornado near the Washita River in Oklahoma. I'm quoting here an excerpt from Isai's account as relayed to James Mooney. Suddenly, the leader of the party shouted for the men to dismount and prepare for a hard rain. Soon too, with the approaching cloud, Isai recalled hearing a roar that sounded like buffalo in the rutting season. Sloping down from the cloud, a sleeve appeared, its center red. From this, lightning shot out. The tremendous funnel tore through the timber bordering the Washita, heaving trees into the air. Some of the young men wanted to run away, but the older, more experienced Kiwaz knew what must be done. They called for everyone to try hard and brace themselves. The elders drew their pipes from saddlebags and lit them. They raised their pipes to the storm spirit, entreating it to smoke and to go around them. The cloud heard their prayers, Isseo explained, and passed by. So they puff, puff passed to the tornado, and it twisted off.

You wanna hit this tornado? And it was like, okay.

Yeah, basically.

Oh no, that tornado took our lighter.

This is really cool. There are also stories of indigenous people who referred to tornadoes as the, quote, dead man walking. And they said that if you ever encountered the dead man, your people would die too. The theory for the reason that this phrase came to be is that it was a description of multi-funnel tornadoes that look a little bit like the legs of a giant striding across the landscape.

Oh, that's actually fucking a rad image.

It is, and there are existing images of what this looks like when it happens.

Double rainbow.

I found a user on Reddit who describes watching tornado footage in a documentary, and they say, quote, For the first and only time in my life, I saw the dead man walking. It looked like the hips, legs and feet of a huge giant. The two legs were connected at the top, which looked like hips or a lower torso. The clouds obscured the imagined upper body. The bend in the rope of the funnel cloud made knees, and the point of contact with the ground made a dusty swelling that could be thought of as feet. As each of the twin tornadoes rotated around each other, they created a haunting optical illusion of legs walking. It was a real heart stopper. After seeing that footage, I have no problem understanding how an oral tradition of an angry spirit scuffing his wife and moving his way across the landscape could occur. Even better, that user posted a link to a still image of the footage and we've put that image in the show notes. Sure enough, it looks exactly as described. It's really cool. I wanted to know more about where this footage that this person saw was taken and that led me to the 1997 Gerald Tornado. I found a documentary on YouTube about the storm. I don't think it's the same documentary that the Reddit user describes, but it's worth watching if you're interested in twisters at all. It's got a lot of really dramatic footage taken by residents of Gerald and details some absolutely stomach churning facts about how violent this twister was. The footage is so dramatic that I actually, I had multiple windows open while I was doing the research and I'd left the YouTube video on. And at one point it started playing this footage that like I'd forgotten that I had this documentary up and I thought it must be from like twister or something, because just the way people were talking and the we gotta get out of here, let's go kind of dialogue that was happening. I was like, wait, was that, did I leave the movie on? And then I flipped over and no, it's just actual footage from people trying to escape this thing. The twister was so violent that during recovery efforts, rescue workers had trouble telling human remains apart from remains of cattle. And some of the cattle had been hit so hard that they were found skinned by the force of the winds. Others were found with their lungs sucked out of their bodies.

Whoa.

So.

These things are coming for lungs.

Yeah, they're like cattle mutilating cattle. And actually that could describe a lot of cattle mutilation.

Incredibly small, isolated tornadoes. That's what's hitting Skinwalker Ranch.

Yeah, sucks their lungs out, sucks their skin off and flings them up into the air. That's like three of the symptoms of cattle mutilation.

Better not dig.

Better not dig, bro. At the right place and the right time, even scary twisters can be good guys. For instance, the story, Ed, you'll love this as a big fan of these here United States of America.

Hell yeah, go on.

Did you know the true story of a true patriot amongst twisters, the tornado that saved Washington, DC.?

Well, now I don't like it as much, but.

Get this.

Yeah, tell me more about this guy.

I'm pulling from an article in Smithsonian Magazine here. Quote, on the night of August 24th, 1814, British troops led by Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn.

What a wild name. Your family had something go on, but that's how they ended up with that name.

I know. Sir George of Burnt Cox. Marched on Washington, DC and set fire to most of the city. Dolly Madison famously saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington and a copy of the Declaration of Independence before she fled to nearby Georgetown. The British planned for this to be the beginning of an occupation of Washington, but they barely stayed more than 24 hours. Why? Because on August 25th, the skies over DC started darkening. With much of the city aflame, British soldiers didn't notice. They kept moving through the city, lighting more fires. Residents of DC knew a bad storm was on its way though, and they quickly took shelter. The British had no idea how bad a DC storm could get. According to the article, the clouds began to swirl and the winds kicked up. A tornado formed in the center of the city and headed straight for the British on Capitol Hill. The twister ripped buildings from their foundations and trees up by the roots. British cannons were tossed around by the wind. Several British troops were killed by falling structures and flying debris. The rain continued for two hours and doused the flames. The British decided it was time to leave. Local meteorologists later wrote in their book, Washington Weather, as the British troops were preparing to leave, a conversation was noted between the British Admiral and a Washington lady regarding the storm. The Admiral exclaimed, Great God, madam, is this the kind of storm to which you were accustomed in this infernal country? The lady answered, No, sir, this is a special interposition of Providence to drive our enemies from our city. The Admiral replied, Not so, madam, it is rather to aid your enemies in the destruction of your city. Oh, wow, there is two ways to look at it for sure, and he really got her on that one. Though the Brits described the first tornado in written history that we know of, they clearly were not prepared for another one to hit them in the United States, in Washington, DC. I'm sure there are other reasons the British left. I don't think this twister was so powerful that the Brits were just like, we're giving up, goodbye. But I don't know the political state of the war at that point.

Well, a famous American hero is a man by the name of Nathan Hale.

School me.

I'm just saying, it's interesting that we have a tornado as a hero, we have a man named Hale as a hero. I'm sure there's somebody named like fucking Dominic Rain or something.

Lightning Jones.

Yeah, Lightning Jones obviously was a famous American hero. I think-

Wait, are we pitching a Twister prequel?

Yes.

I think we are.

Yeah, shit. We should do like a weather-based historical epic about how all weather was named after these heroes. Like before Benjamin Tornado became a hero, they were just called like, they were just called Twisters.

Yes.

I don't know, maybe it's a terrible idea. I've been drinking.

Yeah, I'm not sure where this one's going, but I love it.

But Nathan Hale, his name is Hale. That's all I keep thinking.

Well, was Nathan Hale a hero during the War of 1812?

No, he was hanged in 1776.

Okay, so these Nathan Hale and George Lightning have nothing to do with each other.

No, no, no, no. These are separate people entirely.

Well, I thought we'd wrap up today by looking at a couple of the worst Twisters in history. Starting with the one that touched down on April 26th, 1989 in Bangladesh. This is the single deadliest tornado in world history. It carved a path a mile wide and 10 miles long, destroyed two towns, killed 1,300 people and injured 12,000 more.

In that same area in Oklahoma, it might knock over a piece of lawn furniture and maybe get one guy going home from somewhere. It's Bangladesh, like they're living on top of each other, man, it's like being in New York City or something.

Every single structure in a 2.3 square mile wide area was destroyed along a portion of the path of the tornado. It left an estimated 80,000 people homeless. So it was basically like a massive bomb went off.

Sure.

I don't know how big of an area, I guess a nuclear blast, like the center of a nuclear blast, well, now the center of a nuclear blast is probably much bigger, but I feel like in Hiroshima era, you'd wipe out two and a half square miles would be sort of the center of that blast.

The blast radius of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is about a mile wide.

Oh, okay.

It's bigger than, it's a bigger blast radius, if you will.

Jesus, all right. You heard it here first, folks. It's as strong as a nuclear weapon. In 2022, this tornado's death toll was challenged in a paper that argued that the actual deadliest tornado in Bangladesh and subsequently world history was the April 14th, 1969 Bangladesh tornado, which killed only 922 people. So they must have really reduced the number that they thought died from this 1989 tornado. Dr. Greg Forbes, the Weather Channel's severe weather expert notes that Bangladesh experiences some of the strongest and deadliest tornadoes outside the US, possibly up to F4 or even F5 intensities, though none have been officially measured at that strength. But in terms of numbers, this area of the world only gets about six twisters a year as opposed to our 1200. So guess what, motherfuckers? America, number one again.

Always, baby.

Always, baby.

Number one gun deaths, number one tornadoes. We'll take it, we'll just take any of them. As long as we're number one, baby, that's all I care about.

And that brings us to the single deadliest tornado in US history.

Tornado that had guns.

Known as the tri-

Tornado made of guns.

A tornado that tore through a weapons factory and just thrown around missiles and bullets.

Oh my God.

That would be a very American tornado. But no, this tornado is known as the Tri-State Tornado of March 18th, 1925, which is a good 25 years before anyone was allowed to even use the word tornado though.

Someone was hanged for talking about this.

It killed 695 people across three different states. It began as a small tornado that touched down near Ellington, Missouri and gained momentum over the course of the afternoon. Over the course of three and a half hours, it ballooned to record widths and speed. At one point, observers calculated that it was a full mile wide, which is extremely large for a tornado, and it maintained an average speed of 62 miles an hour with a top speed of 73 miles an hour. And that's not the wind speed within the tornado we're talking about.

That's like how fast it's moving across the plains, like a cheetah, like a cheetah moves.

Yes, yes. You could not, in 1925, there was nothing fast enough to outrun this if you were in its path.

I don't think the fastest pitchers were throwing 75 miles an hour in 1925. Yeah, it was bad for everybody.

It was a killer tornado from the jump. Within minutes of materializing, it had already killed a farmer.

Immediately, bro.

It immediately, it formed around a farmer.

It let people know it was there.

Then it headed to Annapolis, Missouri, a mining town, unfortunately surrounded by mountains that kept people in the town from spotting what was coming. Oh no. Even if they had, again, there was, you weren't really gonna get very far, but 90% of Annapolis, Missouri's buildings were destroyed. Four people were killed and 1,000 people became homeless.

And then Maryland took their name.

Yeah, the tornado tossed their name all the way to the East Coast.

All the way to Maryland.

Miraculously, a group of children who had huddled around their teacher's desk after coming in from recess survived. And in total, 11 people in Missouri were killed. The tornado then crossed state lines into Murfreesboro, Illinois, where 243 people were killed, 623 were injured, and the city's industries were decimated.

Is that where the term Murphy's Law comes from?

No, I don't think so. According to Betty Maroney, who was seven years old when the storm hit, she told this to the Southern Illinoisan in 2015. She said, after the tornado was over, nobody knew where anybody was. You could be blown forever. Oh my God. Fantastic. What a tragedy.

No, it is a tragedy. If it takes that long, someone's not great at it.

33 students died at her school, including her sister and 19 of the children in the classroom where she cowered during the storm. She lost two other sisters who weren't at the school and her father also eventually died of head injuries he sustained during the tornado. Then the tornado jumped state lines again, this time to Indiana. Owensville, Indiana was hit first. The body of an unidentified infant was found in a creek where it had been hurled by the fury, wrote a local reporter.

Oh wow, that's a sensationalist reporter.

Yeah.

Is it unidentified because you made it up to sell newspapers?

We couldn't find any evidence that this infant was ever thrown anywhere.

No, it was thrown, it was thrown out with the bath water.

After laying waste to much of Princeton, Indiana, the storm finally petered out.

Princeton, Indiana?

Princeton, Indiana, baby.

So it's literally just coming for like less famous versions of famous towns.

Yeah, it's got a grudge.

That's really funny.

It's got a grudge.

It's got to wipe them off the mat so that the East Coast could succeed. This tornado was sent by coastal elites.

Yeah. The day after the tornado, people were still picking through the wreckage. Hospitals were overflowing and nearby cities sent contributions and rescue resources to help with fires and try to recover bodies. Overall, 695 people were killed in the tornado, still considered the most deadly on record. Modern meteorologists believe it was an EF5 on the enhanced Fujita scale. They believe the wind speeds topped 300 miles an hour in some locations. The outbreak it occurred with was also the deadliest known tornado outbreak with a combined death toll of 747 across the rest of the Mississippi River Valley. The only good thing that came out of this tornado was a large increase in public awareness about the dangers of tornadoes. Even though the National Severe Storms Laboratory retained their ban on using the word tornado, it was the beginning of local tornado spotter networks.

Interesting. It's just that's the original, like if this was modern day, it would be like a forum or a blog being like, they're not talking about it, but we know they're real. And the powers that be don't want us to think that funnels can come from the sky.

Well, I don't think the ban on the word tornado was so much that they didn't want people to think that tornadoes were real. I think it was more-

No, they gaslit people nightly, dude.

It was more of like, sort of like, well, this is also a hot button issue. I don't mean this politically, but sort of like, you don't want to use the word pandemic unless you're really sure of what you're talking about because the word is pretty scary. So I think it was more that it was like, well, we don't want to call things tornadoes if they're not because we don't want to freak people out.

But it sounds like these meteorologists were like, but that's what they are. They're tornadoes. And it was like, you shut your mouth.

You don't say that word.

Until those people found out that you can sell, like, some sort of tornado shelter thing. And it was like, oh, well, I started a tornado shelter company. So you better get the fuck out there and make everyone afraid of tornadoes.

You know damn well Mr. Tornado killed my father.

Everyone knows.

You keep his name out of your mouth.

My father walked out on my family. You saw his two giant legs walking from the clouds. You tell me that didn't happen.

The dead man walking.

He walked to get cigarettes in the next state. Yeah, so this has gotten stupid fast.

Well, good because that's the end of the episode. Ed, where do you place twisters on your fear tier?

It's pretty high.

Yeah.

Pretty high. I drive around them, bro.

I place them pretty high.

I add full days to my one life on this planet to not be in the vicinity of them.

Yeah, I place them pretty high, too. I mean, earthquakes in California are much higher, but-

Earthquakes, I don't know. I feel like, fuck, I've lived there for a long time, man. I've felt them. They're around. They always wait. Earthquakes are fucking sneaks, dude. They come at night. They're always at like four in the morning when you wake up and shake in your bed.

That's true.

Where at least a tornado comes out in the middle of the afternoon. It's just like, I'm here.

True.

Deal with me. So I guess you're right. I guess earthquakes should be higher because they're fucking sneaks.

Yeah.

Yeah. Earthquakes are like a coward disaster where-

Earthquakes are a coward's disaster. You heard it here first, folks.

No, no, no. Like it is a coward. You added apostrophe S. They themselves are the cowards. I'm saying earthquakes are the cowards of-

Yes.

Natural disasters because they like come in the middle of the night with no notice and they ruin everything. Where at least, you know, a triumphant twister is just here to fuck things up. It's like, what's up? I'm a twister. I don't know where I'm getting at with that, but I hate earthquakes, but I'm more scared of tornadoes because they like, I don't know, they're just scary. They're just scarier to me.

Okay.

Because it's like, I don't know, an earthquake, it's like, oh, get in the door jam, get in a fucking tub or whatever, get under a table. I never actually confirm what we're supposed to do.

Yeah, I think some of those might be actually bad ideas. So don't listen to this podcast for advice, folks.

But I think a twister is like, do whatever the fuck you want. I'm picking that shit up and throwing it to another state.

Yeah, I think twister is basically get in the basement. I think that's kind of the only thing.

They don't have basements in California.

That's true. Well, I was gonna say, part of the reason twister is now higher on my fear tier is knowing after this episode that they can happen anywhere. I always was like, oh, well, I'm not, the chances that I'm gonna be in Oklahoma ever when a twister hits is pretty slim to none. I don't drive across the country as much as you do. I don't have business in Oklahoma. I've got no reason to be there, but they can happen fucking anywhere.

And we're getting shit that's like first time in a hundred years. We're getting a lot of like, this is the hottest summer in a hundred years. This is the first time we've had a hailstorm like this in a hundred years.

Yeah, this is the first time I've had a sequel to the movie Twister in 25 years.

At least 25 years. So if like, so we are due for one in Connecticut. We're due for one in a bunch of places.

That is not a scientific opinion that is spouting, but I kind of agree from a vibes perspective.

Yeah, the vibes are telling me that people are wrecking their SimCities. They're hitting that fucking natural disaster button.

So yeah, I put Twisters up like, this is low high. This is probably up in like the six or seven range of the fear tier for me. So not a fan, very dangerous. But Ed, with that being said, we've got Glenn Powell. We got Glenn Powell on the mic right now.

Oh my God, Glenn, what's up? Dude, I'm sorry you're late, we're done.

He just got here, Glenn. Oh my God, Glenn. Dude, first of all, great hair, gorgeous smile. No, you can't get on the mic. This is my mic. We had one for you.

But we already collapsed it because we come to an end of the show. You got here too late, Glenn.

It's too bad. He's really handsome in person.

We are an audio medium, so you get nothing from that.

And he's very funny too. But anyway, I'm Chris Cullari.

I'm Ed Voccola and that has not been Glenn Powell.

And this has been Scared All The Time. We will see you next week.

Scared All The Time is co-produced by Chris Cullari. And Ed Voccola.

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Fifle.

Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is a*****.

And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Supercast and get all kinds of cool shit in return. Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes to producer credits, exclusive access and exclusive merch.

So go sign up for our Supercast at scaredallthetimepodcast.com. Don't worry, all scaredy-cats welcome. No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission.

Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions.

Night. We are in this together.

Together.

===TRANSCRIPT END===