Um, that’s a very nice argument, but have you ever actually heard a tornado go by?
The weblog pre$$titutes, in the middle of a discussion about how bad poll numbers don't mean the end of the B*sh junta, lunges off into unsupported bullshit land by claiming that the reason that people say that tornados sound like freight trains is because the media has, ahem, "ingrained it in our heads".
The only reason, eh?
I've got another one: Perhaps people say that a tornado sounds like a freight train is because it does? Sure, it also sounds like a fully spooled up jet engine, or G-d's own vacumn cleaner, but there are still a lot of railroads in tornado alley, and not too many people live near the hot end of airports.
"jet engine, rocket, blast-off, thunder, (non-freight)train, fireworks, explosion, roar" ? These are yesbut descriptions; Thunder, fireworks, and explosions sound nothing like a tornado. Saying something is a roar says nothing whatsoever about the type of sound; the roaring of an accelerating automobile engine sounds nothing like the roar of a freight train (or, ahem, a tornado) coming by.
I grew up in the Midwest, so I have some tiny experience with the sound of tornados (I grew up in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, which is at the bottom of the Mississippi River gorge. The one tornado I definitely heard was one that skipped off the top of the bluffs on the Wisconsin side of the gorge and sailed away towards Minnesota. I think it sounded more like a jet, but that's because I'm a trainspotter and freight trains, as a general rule, don't fly by several hundred feet overhead. If it had touched down, I certainly wouldn't have said it sounded like a freight train, because the sound of exploding houses would have cluttered up the soundtrack. But that's a different story that, fortunately, I've never had to live through.)
Listen to a freight train. Listen to a jet angine.
Now listen to a tornado.
Toot, toot!
(via Hullabaloo)