How to Drive in a Tornado

Driving your car in a tornado is actually almost impossible. This is because tornadoes are extremely unpredictable and can change direction with no warning. The following should be what you do if you are caught driving in a tornado.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Car
• Portable radio with extra batteries
• Building

1. Drive only if the tornado is far away and the traffic you will be driving in is light.
2. Get out of your car as soon as possible and get to safety in a building, basement, cellar, or other safe area near your location.
3. Be prepared with a disaster kit in the car at all times. Take it, if possible, when you leave your car.

Tips & Warnings

• While some people are lucky and do drive through, and out of, a tornado alive it is highly inadvisable to do so.
• If you do have to abandon your car during a tornado, get to a basement of a building. If there is not building nearby, find a ditch or other low-lying area and lay down.
• Being in your car under a bridge is not a safe place. The wind from the tornado may cause the bridge to collapse on top of your car.
• Never try to outrun a tornado in a car. They are unpredictable and can change directions at any time.
• A car can be picked up by a tornado and blown across the street or miles away.
• Many people have been killed while trying to wait out a tornado in a car.
• If your car becomes submerged in water that comes with the floods from a tornado, get out as fast as possible.
• Wind speed from a tornado can blow up to hundreds of miles per hour so it could easily pick up your car with you in it, as if the car weighed as much as straw.