A researcher survived the heart of a tornado: “A thousand howling jet engines in the dark”

of the United States Tornadoes will soon move on the prairie, i.e. a lot from the beginning of summer. What kind of the weather at the center of the tornado is?

A meteorologist can tell you about that Perry Samson. He actually ended up in the heart of the tornado – and survived it.

According to Samson, inside a tornado feels like hearing “a thousand howling jet engines”.

On the contrary, Tornado’s center may have been described as serene, like a haven of peace.

The truth is, however, that in the middle of a tornado, the wind spins up to hundreds of kilometers per hour.

A lot of soil, trees and pieces of buildings fly along, Samson describes Scientific American -in leaf.

Samson was doing fieldwork with students in northwestern Kansas when he unexpectedly drove into a tornado.

He and his team studied storms that can usually produce tornadoes.

A team from the University of Michigan was near a thunderstorm where it was so dark that the team had to turn on their headlights in the middle of the day.

It was so dark that the cameras couldn’t even get a decent picture.

Suddenly a tornado came towards. The students were able to escape, but Samson’s car was caught in a cloud of flying debris.

He turned the car into the wind and hoped that the car would stick to the ground.

Shot from afar by his students a video of the same tornado is on YouTube.

In Tornado the pressure changes rapidly. Samson says the ears don’t just “pop”. It also feels like giant hands are squeezing the head.

Inside the vortex, the wind hits the body like a solid body. Samson and his students had just measured the wind speed nearby to be almost 241 kilometers per hour.

Tornadoes move fences, wood, and metal, usually from buildings. He was afraid that the flying pieces would crush him.

The textbook advises to steer a tornado into a ditch, where a person is better protected from flying debris. Samson couldn’t open the car door.

When the storm subsided, the silence was shocking. The car was stuck in the mud. Straw debris was embedded in every seam of the car’s body.

Samson also explains how a tornado is created on the prairie.

Warm and moist air comes from the Gulf of Mexico. It meets the dry air coming from the west.

Advancing hot and dry air is heavier than moist air. This pushes the moist air upwards.

Surface winds come from the south and upper winds from the west. They create a horizontally rotating motion in the atmosphere that rises spirally.

Tornadoes the wind speed can be almost 500 kilometers per hour. They can leave behind a path of destruction that is almost two kilometers wide.

It is difficult to predict the course of a tornado. That’s why access to safety is important. In the United States, 61 people died in tornadoes in 2025.

“Drones and radars are the right way to study these monsters – you shouldn’t study them from the inside yourself,” says Samson.

Originally he was talking about tornadoes In The Conversation magazine. More survivor stories to tell US National Weather Service.

Tornado can be seen in summer in Finland as well. We usually call these small tornadoes thrombi. Or as water statues if they move on water.