Originally published at: Young weather geek captures incredible video of tornado forming right above his house | Boing Boing
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Ok, that was impressive.
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“It’s so pretty.”
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Throw every available award at this kid.
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that seems like exactly the place you SHOULDN’T be.
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Wow. As someone from a place that does not have tornados, how much time does one have from seeing that to, you know, being obliterated by the angry finger of god?
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Is the camera aimed straight up, or is the funnel being generated at angle to the ground?
Anyway props to Roland Emmerich-- good to see he’s still getting work.
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I’ve been in a number of tornadoes, though never that close (or maybe once so close I couldn’t even see the funnel). I would say it depends greatly on the energy the system has and the overall weather patterns causing it to form. That spiral could easily have been a mile or more from his location, which is usually fairly safe as it’s the direct path of the funnel that causes the most damage. However, you can see the grass whipping around quite a bit, so even if he’s safe from the funnel itself and has time to get underground, flying debris, falling trees, flash flooding and downed power lines are still a big danger.
ETA: Basically anywhere from seconds to many minutes and anywhere from “wow, that’s amazing” to “holy shit, why is the house moving!?!”
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In Florida?
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I’m surprised at the apparently leisurely pace of the clouds draining into the vortex, as opposed to the windspeeds one expects from a tornado.
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Yeah, well if you live there you’re multiple forms of screwed anyway, so… 
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“… obliterated by the angry finger of god.” 
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This is amazing. Tornado warnings often report that there’s not actually a tornado yet, but rotation was observed, an immediate precursor. I’d seen plenty of tornado videos, but never one showing as clear an example of actual rotation. This should be textbook example material.
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That was a big one, but “funnel clouds” like that are pretty common in Florida and I see them relatively frequently in Texas for completely different weather-related reasons. I’ve never been directly under one that organized or big, and as @cannibalpeas pointed out the distance might be deceiving. Although I’m going by the wind noise at the beginning vs at the end of the video and it seems to me like the camera and mike were pretty close at the start.
If it’s a more direct answer to your question, there was plenty of time in that video to go from “what’s that?” to “where did several city blocks go?”
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