J. Clarke wrote:
That's incorrect. It's true the destruction is limited to the path of the
tornado but it can be much wider than that. We had an F5 go through here in
Ruskin Heights MO in 1957. There are also supercell tornados which are
comprised of clusters of multiple funnels which can be wider than that.
My nephew is a meteorologist at OU who plans and coordinates the activites
of tornado chasers during the season and who creates predictive mathematical
models to determine where to locate chasers. He built his own tornado in a
box in my brother's basement when he was sixteen. And my Dad was a reporter
when the twister hit Ruskin Heights and he took me as a kid to see the
devastation. When it hit, we hid in the basement in our home in Prairie
Village Kansas while the tornado way over in Ruskin did exterior damage in
our neighborhood and blew down structures like towers and fences from a
considerable distance. My mom was freaking out, praying by candlelight like
Hitler at St. Peter's gate. So as a family, we're pretty familiar. I can
assure you, that F5 wasn't any "few hundred feet" across and it rolled for
70 miles.
Here's the Wiki history on that event which was one of the worst tornado
outbreaks on record. You'll see a reference to the F5 being up to a mile
wide at one point. There's plenty more on line if you want to have a look.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1957_Central_Plains_tornado_outbreak
MartyB in KC