Cars, tornadoes, and bad decisions: 2014 edition

   A "storm chaser"--I use the term very loosely, as he seems more like a local attempting suicide--came within a football field or two of getting himself killed in the 4/28/14 Tupelo, MS tornado.  This in itself is not good.  What's ten times worse is posting a dramatic video to Youtube and encouraging other people to follow suit:

Let me be the first of pretty much everyone in the meteorological community to say:

• This guy is incredibly lucky and incredibly stupid.
• At no point was he "in the tornado."  If what he experienced looks scary, realize that he was only getting inflow jets and possibly the outermost fringe of the circulation.  Had he been fully inside the tornado, he would probably have encountered winds twice as strong.  He and a crumpled wad of metal sort of resembling his car would have been found out in that field, if not in two different fields. This, or worse, is what happens to vehicles directly impacted by strong tornadoes:

(photo from NSSL)

• Vehicles are still not safe in tornadoes!  El Reno proved that point, when several died on the roads and none died in structures.  The Arkansas tornado that threw cars off I-40 the day before this storm proved that point again.  Drivers will keep becoming examples until we learn this.  Thousands of people have been pulled alive from homes and businesses directly hit by violent tornadoes in the past few years.  I don't know of very many who survived direct hits in cars, except the fortunate TWC team in their huge SUV.

   As hard as it is to say, I don't think this guy did quite everything wrong.  He could have made one worse mistake by driving straight into the tornado.  Stopping and letting it pass always beats racing it to a crossing point (ask Mike Bettes).  The idea is to stop away from the tornado, not as close as possible to certain death.