Tornado up close

I know this picture could fool you (as many other things) gunga,
but to give you a hint: the leaves of the trees next to this oh so powerful
tornado, don't move at all. It's a miracle isn't it?

I think it could be a real photo.

God sure must hate the boy scouts to throw one of those things at them.

I highly suspect it is not real, no ground debris, among other things.

Photoshop is too cool.

This was in my morning paper. It was shot yesterday. I think it is real.

I think why it fools you is perspective. Telephoto lenses flatten perspective and make things look closer together so the tornado isn't a close to those trees and buildings as it appears.

The article in my paper said the tornado didn't actually touch down so that's a further clue that perspective and angle have a lot to do with the image.

Beautiful shot.

I happen to have seen serveral tornadoes in my life. Once, i was working on a store near Lake Street in Peoria, Illinois. That is a major east-west thoroughfare. I happened to look out the front window of the store, and there was a tornado, tooling down Lake Street . . . or so it seemed. I was flabbergasted for just a moment, but then realized the perspective was off (as is the case with that picture above). It was just took small to be real. Additionally, i could see traffic moving along Lake Street normally. In fact, the tornado cut a swathe across the north end of Peoria County, tore up a pole barn, ripped up some corn and bean fields, and didn't hurt anyone. It was several miles north of the city limits, and a mile or more from the last straggling suburbs.

The tee-vee guys jumped all over it--this was an early example of someone capturing a perfect image with their hand-held video camera. For years after that, one local company which sold NOAA weather radios used the image in their ads. It was kind of cool, to see the tornado diddy-bopping along in the background, with the normal, heavy traffic going about their lawful pursuits on Lake Street in the foreground.

Here in the "Dallas Morning News" (page 18)

OK walt, I was wrong.