Living in west Texas most of my life and traveling all over the central USA, working in bands, I have seen many tornadoes in real life and I have been TOO CLOSE to three of them.
One time I was driving the band bus very early in the morning when we came right up on a small tornado (only a little wider that the width of the four lane Interstate highway). It stopped the huge bus in just a few feet, and spit it out, but there was a white Toyota that was passing me at the time and when it hit the tornado, it turned and went straight up and into the twisting winds.
About forty five minutes later after we had all settled down and began going again, we saw the Toyota sitting upside down in a field about a mile away.
The State Police and a number of ambulances were already on the scene, so I assumed that we would just be in the way if we offered to help, but we could see that they were treating two people who looked to have survived their tornado ride.
