A Southern Railroad engineer once found his train racing straight into an Ohio tornado. He decided to risk hurtling through the twister, so he opened the throttle to top speed. Then he crouched down in the cab as the day turned black and the air filled with a loud roar. Tornado winds peeled away the steel roof of the train’s cab, and Shine felt a strong suction pulling him up. He grabbed onto his seat with all his strength. Then the train shot through the twister into daylight.
In 1989, a 100-mile-an-hour tornado hit a New York elementary school, where more than 120 children were eating lunch in the cafeteria. The wind struck the brick and glass building, causing one wall to crash down. Mike Miller, age seven, said, "I heard a whistling sound. Tables were flying. Bricks were flying. There was breaking glass. People were crying."
Forces of Nature: ThinkQuest 2000 (Team #C003603)
http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/tornadoes/survivingthestorm.shtml
Survivors of tornadoes report hearing piercing shrieks, as if thousands of nails were being wrenched from boards. A wind will fill the house, blowing dust and carrying objects into the air. A tornado that hit McKinney, Texas, in June 1951 carried retired army captain Roy S. Hall and his family inside the funnel. Hall reported a huge jolt that almost threw him across the floor. His hat was whipped off his head as objects around him flashed upward. Somehow he noted that the house’s roof was gone. The side of the room crashed in as if hammered inward. He himself was blown 10 feet away and found himself staring up into the interior of the funnel. He claims it looked hollow, with 10-foot-thick walls of spinning clouds rotating at great speed. The column was over a thousand feet high, swaying and bending to the southeast. The Hall family lost their home but retained their lives. The tornado went on to kill and injure 100 people, doing more than $5 million damage.