| A classic funnel.
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| The small metallic objects toward the bottom of the picture
are grain silos.
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| Same tornado as in the picture above. At this point, it's only about 1/4 mile away. Methinks
those cars are pointed the wrong direction...
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| A waterspout making landfall. Waterspouts (tornadoes over water) are nice & white, never an
ugly dirt color.
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| The same waterspout as in the picture above, taken from a news helicopter. As you can see
to the left in these pictures, sunshine is often visible after a tornado hits. Tornadoes often
form at the tail-end of a "super cell" storm cloud, behind which is often clear blue sky. Some
of the twisters on this page even have sunlight shining on them.
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| Another waterspout.
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| A view from the air.
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| Until a tornado touches down, it's usually a thin, clearly-defined upside-down cone, like
the dark interior funnel (the "core") seen in this photograph. When hits ground, it sucks up debris
(giving the funnel a dark color) and kicks around other debris, so a "debris cloud"
generates at its base.
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| You can see the start of a debris cloud in this photo--the twister just hit a grocery store.
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| A "rope" twister.
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| A twister touching down near a farmhouse.
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| Another touchdown by a farm.
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| A good picture with lightning in the foreground. This twister hasn't touched
down yet. Even though a tornado hasn't "touched down" visibly, things below it
may be getting torn apart. It's not "funnel down" until its intake makes the base visible.
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| Sometimes a tornado looks just like a "drooping" cloud from a distance, like this
squat, fat, white specimen. The debris cloud shows it ain't no normal cloud.
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| Tubular tornadoes seem to be more clearly defined than the conical or "rope" types.
Tubes look more "deadly" to me, more "forceful," for some reason. And some of the best
tornado pics on the 'net happen to be of tubes, so here are my favorites.
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