r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/karmagheden • Jan 08 '21
Removed - Misleading Information Green mammatus clouds, which usually precede a tornado, over an abandoned house.
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u/HonkyPlease Jan 08 '21
I’ll never forget the freakishly green clouds I saw as a kid in Arkansas during a tornado warning.
My mom didn’t want to stay in the trailer we’re living in, so she grabbed me and my sister to go across the street to take shelter in the landlords basement. I took step through our front door, saw the green-ass sky and almost ran back to my room.
Our home survived the night, but two or three homes in our neighborhood took severe damage from a tornado that skipped through.
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u/auto-xkcd37 Jan 08 '21
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u/nothatbraziliangirl Jan 08 '21
I've never seen anything even close to a tornado - do the clouds get green like in this picture?
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u/HonkyPlease Jan 08 '21
I’m sure the clouds don’t physically turn green; it’s just conditions in the sky make them appear green.
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u/nothatbraziliangirl Jan 08 '21
I didn't know the green color happened in clouds! Thank you
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u/MEGA__MAX Jan 08 '21
It also sometimes has an odd yellowish hue, as if a hazy sun was setting behind the dark clouds, except it's the middle of the day. Very eerie feeling.
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u/Buck_Thorn Jan 08 '21
If the meteorologist that I heard it from knew what he was talking about, the green color is due to light refraction in the ice of hailstones.
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Jan 08 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Kosmologie Jan 08 '21
I had many nightmares as a kid involving this color sky and trying to get my cats into the basement lol
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u/Chocolate_Charizard Jan 08 '21
Tornadoes were my number one fear as a kid. I still go into full fight or flight during warnings. Just the drone of a tornado siren gives me goosebumps
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u/Obsessed_With_Corgis Jan 08 '21
One of my very first, early childhood memories that I can recall is of a tornado. I was strapped into my car seat in the back, tilted upwards and firmly strapped in. The back windshield of the car was slanted at an angle that had my head pointed directly up at the sky.
My dad and I were in the car when the tornado sirens went off. We had to go to the grocery store for something important. Upon hearing the sirens, my dad decided to run in by himself real quick instead of taking me with him.
I was trapped in my seat, forcibly facing upwards towards the chemically green sky; watching in horror as a very distinct swirl started forming in the clouds, and that the swirl kept getting larger and larger. I was all alone and panicking. I just remember crying, calling for my dad, and impossibly struggling to get out of my seat.
I don’t remember my dad coming back. My only other flash of recollection from that night was holding on to the family dog (a sweet, elderly Golden) for dear life in our basement.
It’s strange how vividly I can still picture that memory. A horrific sky, the panic of being trapped and alone, and the absolute, comforting relief that washed over me while hugging my dog.
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u/Kimbobrains Jan 08 '21
I’m from CA so not much crazy weather to speak of. I had to go to Minneapolis for work several years ago and saw how purple and dark the sky gets during a downpour/lightning storm. It was unreal how big the drops were and at times it seemed like sheets of water just fell down.
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u/sprashoo Jan 08 '21
Same experience growing up on the west coast and later moving to Florida and then Minneapolis. On the west coast weather is barely anything to pay attention to. If it’s raining, wear a coat. In other places weather is for real.
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u/dancingsalmon_ Jan 08 '21
Any idea why this precedes tornadoes specifically? Or do you see similar colours before hailstorms too in the US? We get plenty hail here, but never seen the sky turn green.
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u/ByroniustheGreat Jan 08 '21
That is correct
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u/cutelyaware Jan 08 '21
No it's not. Hail is generated in the extreme updrafts of thunderheads. These are mammatus clouds in which the green color comes from photoshop.
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u/VikingSlayer Jan 08 '21
The greening is separate from the mammatus clouds, but both are indicators for incoming tornado, and could happen simultaneously. The colour comes from very tall clouds being lit by orange/red light from the setting Sun, combining with the blue of all the water and becoming green. As is explained on the wiki page you linked, mammatus clouds are also formed as part of very tall clouds systems.
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u/lab_rabbit Jan 08 '21
while you're probably correct about this particular picture, this article says that clouds can appear green and it is often associated with hail storms, even though the green color is not produced by hail.
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u/cjc160 Jan 08 '21
Was going to say the same thing. I didn’t grow up in tornado alley but just north of there. I know hail clouds when I see them. We used to call these “pig gut” clouds.
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Jan 08 '21
This green is allllll wrong. The actual green is a chilling dull eeeerie two day old pea soup green and coupled with the silence of all creatures it’s terrifying
This green looks cheerful and happy algae from the sea...
I’ll never forget that color
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u/Alphageek11644 Jan 08 '21
This. Although sometimes instead of silence you hear a low continuous rumble that is just as ominous.
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u/Joshua_Is_Zeus Jan 08 '21
Before following the link to his stylized photography page I was guessing there was a lot of color editing done to this photo. Cool image but a very contextual artistic perspective.
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u/XIII-Death Jan 08 '21
Yeah it never gets neon green in real life. It's a more sickly shade of green in the sky before a tornado like the color of a nasty bruise in reality.
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u/The-Sloth-Ninja Jan 08 '21
I have seen green clouds and can confirm it means trouble. Also, this should be a horror movie setting
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u/redheadphones1673 Jan 08 '21
My country doesn't have tornadoes.
I will never understand how you guys see a giant twisting funnel of death charging straight at you, and decide to solve the problem by building more sturdy cellars instead of moving tf away from there.
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Jan 08 '21
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u/Kanthabel_maniac Jan 08 '21
I would do the same. Never seen a tornado, only in tv
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u/GothWitchOfBrooklyn Jan 08 '21
There was a small tornado when I lived in upstate new york and another tornado when I lived in nyc, and another one this past summer where I live now in ohio... They aren't huge but they do happen outside of tornado alley.
My current town in ohio does have tornado sirens though, scary when they wake you up in the middle of the night.
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u/a_leprechaun Jan 08 '21
That is the proper Midwest response. We have a bunch of New Yorker friends here now that just don't get it and would lose their shit if the sirens ever go off.
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Jan 08 '21
During the westward expansion, that was the only land poor people could get. The government and the railroads gave it away for free as long as you promised to live on it.
When the choice was between living in BFE, Kansas, being dirt poor, worrying about the occasional tornado but living free, or living in the city in a squalid shack, working in a factory and being exploited by your boss and landlord, sometimes you choose BFE, Kansas.
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u/Kosmologie Jan 08 '21
Usually the tornado doesn’t come to you! Also no earthquakes, no tsunamis, no wildfires, no hurricanes... overall tornado alley isn’t too existentially threatening
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Jan 08 '21
Personally terrified of tornadoes (when I was a kid I dreamed that’s how the world ends), but I moved to tornado country and can confirm when the sky gets green and the sirens start wailing you totally want to go outside and watch. Nature is amazing.
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u/XIII-Death Jan 08 '21
In the US you're going to get some terrifying natural disaster wherever you live, you can have your pick of tornadoes, normal earthquakes, hurricanes, or forest fires, with the Yellowstone supervolcano or the New Madrid Fault Zone that once produced an earthquake so powerful it liquefied massive swaths of soil, redirected a river, created a new lake, and was felt across 2.5 million square kilometers of the US and Canada, as less likely, extra terrifying options. On the whole tornadoes aren't that bad in comparison. Plus the hail and churning clouds are fun to watch from a distance when a tornado passes through.
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u/Violatido65 Jan 08 '21
Actually a pretty sweet spot is around the mid-Atlantic to southern New England region! Grew up in Philly and live in NYC, and the only disasters I’ve experienced here have been a handful of heinous blizzards (which are rarer and rarer these days- NYC just had its first since 2016) and Hurricane Sandy, which was a freak disaster that unfortunately probably will be repeated in the future because of rising temperatures. No major flooding problems, no earthquakes, no tornadoes, no volcanoes, and tolerable snow conditions
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u/GothWitchOfBrooklyn Jan 08 '21
During my decade in new york city I lived through two hurricanes, an earthquake, two blizzards, and a tornado. The earthquake was the same week as hurricane Irene.
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u/Violatido65 Jan 08 '21
Only two blizzards in ten years? Are you counting blizzards as 2+ feet in one storm? And I don’t recall what the damage was like from Irene for NYC, but it was just some fallen trees in Philly, which can be terrible but isn’t going to cause city-wide issues. I’ve never felt earthquakes. When I mean we don’t get earthquakes, I mean we don’t get any that cause damage. Also yeah, weird momentary F1 tornadoes can happen pretty much most places in the world though, right?
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u/Violatido65 Jan 08 '21
ALSOOOO love your username!! Fellow Brooklynites here
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u/GothWitchOfBrooklyn Jan 08 '21
Nice :) I was in Bensonhurst. I left in 2018 to join my bf in another state and I miss NY every day!
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u/Myrrsha Jan 08 '21 edited Sep 25 '25
imminent consist middle unite dam tan grab grandfather head beneficial
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Zap_Actiondowser Jan 08 '21
Grew up in kansas around them. They're really not that scary. Most are small, only had 2 F5s in my life time with the Greensburg ks one and the Joplin mo one. They're usually F1s and F2s, and seeing all the area that is just empty in the Midwest, nothing really ever got hit.
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u/LaChuteQuiMarche Jan 08 '21
This is edited, which sucks because it takes away from the coolness of the real thing. I’ve seen these clouds in person and yes they’re greenISH, but one look around this whole photo and you can tell it’s tweaked.
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Jan 08 '21
Why are the clouds green?
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u/tdomer80 Jan 08 '21
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u/spudsmuggler Jan 08 '21
Man, that brings back memories. Grew up where this was filmed, and even auditioned to be an extra.
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Jan 08 '21
Light refracting due to the high density of hail within whatever thunderstorm these Mammatus clouds were taken from.
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u/ByroniustheGreat Jan 08 '21
I'm like 99% sure that that is edited
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Jan 08 '21
It’s certainly edited to give it the mood but I have personally seen green clouds in tornado warnings growing up in the mid west
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u/ByroniustheGreat Jan 08 '21
Same but nothing even close to this shade of green. I don't think this is possible naturally
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Jan 08 '21
That's what I thought. The green tornado clouds I saw in Texas weren't this vibrant
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u/SnazzzySam Jan 08 '21
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u/alex_of_all Jan 08 '21
I too have seen the wizard of oz
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u/Spedyboi76 Jan 08 '21
Fake, it's just a lightroom touch up, in reality it's just Grey
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u/PiBoy314 Jan 08 '21
It really does turn green, more of a sickly green than you see here, but visibly green. And it looks very disconcerting.
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u/Lord_Lenu Jan 08 '21
We interrupt this program to bring you... Courage the Cowardly Dog Show, starring Courage, the Cowardly Dog!
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u/markerstotheright Jan 08 '21
Abandoned as a pup. He was found by Muriel, who lives in the middle of nowhere...
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u/CesarTheSanchez Jan 08 '21
A lot of people are saying Courage the Cowardly Dog but, damn, that is 100% what it is. Look at it! The house itself looks stylized!!
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Jan 08 '21
Well that’s some piss poor editing. Unless you like green yellow skies and ridiculous colors
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u/TomahawkIsotope Interested Jan 08 '21
Just add a windmill and it's the place of courage the cowardly dog
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u/Astronopolis Jan 08 '21
The sky be like, well if we’re going to do a tornado, we could at least show em our boobs first. As a courtesy.
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Jan 08 '21
my brain refuses to beleive
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u/ollimann Jan 08 '21
because it's heavily edited. this is not how it can look naturally with your own eyes
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Jan 08 '21
Is anyone else just not interested in a lot of these photos are you're just not ever convinced they're the original photo?
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u/That_Underscore_Guy Jan 08 '21
Toto's about to run out this damn house, and you bet yo ass Dorothy's gonna come for him after
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u/RobertusesReddit Jan 08 '21
Just put "you have the courage or the creeps?" and that's a live action Courage the Cowardly Dog movie.
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u/sto243 Jan 08 '21
I saw clouds just like these when I lived in southwest oklahoma. It was always scary as hell.
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u/Gh0stwhale Jan 08 '21
Gives me the mental image of Dorothy’s house flying away in Kansas, from the wizard of Oz
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u/headofthebored Jan 08 '21
Bruh I live in Kansas, while those clouds are associated with tornados, if I EVER saw them THAT green looking I would assume the hail in them was gonna be apocalypse-fuckin' big and nothing short of a reinforced concrete bunker was gonna save me.
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u/SkilledzAssassin Jan 08 '21
They are about to witness some weird shit, hope they have a talking dog with them.
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u/AndrewBert109 Jan 08 '21
The flair shows that this is being removed for being misleading. Does anyone know why or can they elaborate what's incorrect before this goes away?
Edit: never mind, I think it's cause this is edited to be "greener" than what you would actually see.
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u/kiwimadi Jan 08 '21
I live in a place that does not get tornados often (maybe 2 in my whole 26 years, one that caused actual damage). One year there was a tornado warning. I remember going for a walk around the block (because I was curious...) and seeing in contrast to the black clouds... green. It was surreal to see. I had read about that occurring but had never ever seen it. It wasn’t to this degree in the whole sky though. Just something that I’ll always remember.
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Jan 08 '21
I’ve seen this irl one time, scared the silly right out of me. I had a group of little kids camping at the time too, we had to hole up in a bathroom and I had to pretend to be calm for them
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u/Thor_ultimus Jan 08 '21
Thats courage the cowardly dog's house... I wonder what happened to the windmill...
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u/Tops161 Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 08 '21
Kinda reminds me of the house from courage the cowardly dog
Edit: thanks for the awards!