Everybody pokes fun at "Twisters" but to us chasers, there's parts of that mythos that rings true. We treat tornados as the predators they are and respect them like living things.
We've learned a great deal about them in 30+ years, but there's still things they do where we look at the science we have and go "Why the hell did it do that?" There's still a decent clip of things about them we just don't understand, because the physics involved in a supercell thunderstorm are insanely intricate. And while we understand some mechanics, we still don't understand enough to know when and exactly where they will form. We don't understand how they move sometimes, why they will sometimes occlude and other times don't. Why the tend to sometimes turn fully left even though a supercell's natural inclination is to rotate cyclonically (counter-clockwise).
That motion should spin them SW to NE in most situations. But sometimes, they do strange things and will turn left, causing them often times to go North. Most long track twisters all follow that SW to NE model. But just every so often, they play games and it adds to the mythos of those hauntingly beautiful bastards to turn on you. And that's when you can get killed. Even if you're being careful. And that's partially what happened in El Reno. And as bad as it was it could've been worse. That was only an EF-3. But that rating is misleading. Had it gone through an even more populated area? It was easily and EF-5 without breaking a sweat. That tornado had mini-vortices inside her, kind like Satan's Spirograph. With wind speeds recorded at 296MPH. Any meteorologist will begrudgingly tell you it was an EF-3, but it should've been an EF-5. We need to stop labeling tornadoes by how much they "eat". The only reason we did was because we lacked sufficient technology to gauge their winds; now we don't. But that's just a personal opinion.
El Reno was a dead man walking tornado. So was Joplin. So was Moore.
And for those that don't know what that means, allow me to show you:
That's from the Jarrel, TX EF in 1997. It's a multiple vortex system that looks like a man walking the Earth, just crushing everything beneath it's "feet"
And that is why those of us who are fascinated by them, tell stories about them. And why even though we have much better science now to help us with them, they will always have an air of mystery and mythology.
