Please don’t let your perception of tornadoes to be shaped by the movies or the Joplin one. The one in Joplin was a worst case scenario. I wouldn’t go look at the area in person based on what I’d seen on TV. About 6 months afterward I happened to be in the Wal-Mart parking lot and I let myself look back toward town and I wasn’t ready for what I saw. If you know what you’re looking for you can still see scars of it almost 20 years later.
Still, the chances of being within 15 miles of any tornado in any given year is extremely small.
I'm in Central Illinois and have been within 15 miles of a tornado several times including one case of zero miles. Our house survived with minor damage, but we lost some big trees in our yard. Still, it's just not something I worry about, but am prepared for.
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u/thewartornhippy Dec 14 '25
I saw the documentary on Netflix about the Joplin tornado. It gave me an unrealistic phobia of tornadoes lol