Pardon me for taking so long to reply to the replies.
Thak you for all of the references and links.
Not really an answer to your question MSK, but sort of related - an anecdote about how close you can be and not be affected.
In 1980 a weather system associated with (IIRC) Hurricane Allen herded some weird weather up around Austin, Texas, where I was going to school. One night, or I should say morning after a night of partying, several friends and I pulled into the driveway of my house at ~5:30 and tumbled out of the car onto the driveway. Loaded as we were (and several including myself noted later that our conversation seemed “hushed” in the sense that it is when you’re on an airliner and your ears haven’t popped yet), we noted the odd sky - it was still night, but starting to get light, and rainy, etc., when…
The end apartment of the apartment house that backed up to my backyard - FW-BOOM! - exploded!
Wow!
We were agog.
Or a’ grog.
It would be terribly difficult, and probably impossible, to describe the next minute. I think I had some brief thought about a natural gas accident before we saw some odd lumber and debris fly by and only as it moved away from us were we able to discern the shape of the visiting vandalous weather body and realize that a tornado had just traveled down the next street over (maybe what? 40-50 yards away?).
I have heard crazy stories about this Flint tornado of 53. Here is the story.
http://www.flintjournal.com/20thcentury/1950/1950tornado.html
One woman sick in bed saw the roof of her house collapse and threw her hands over her eyes. The next thing she knew she was in a field 100 yards away, still in bed. A purse lay on the bed beside her.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/1953beecher/storiesHerron.php
Yvonne Herron
On June 8, 1953, I was seventeen and had graduated from Beecher High School the preceding week. I still remember vividly certain images from that day.
My father coming in from the front porch, describing clouds moving, seeming to stop, and reversing direcion, his saying we should go to the basement.
Looking out a west window and seeing the top of a good sized tree bent to the ground.
Coming up the stairs from the basement and there was nothing above ground but debris… no house, no trees, no neighbors’ houses.
Seeing an elderly neighbor still in her bed but her house was gone and the bed was in the middle of the street.
Going with some others into the next door basement to try to help the neighbor trapped by a beam.
In contrast to all those stories of people being carried away by tornadoes and living, I’ve read the opposite: That a tornado would rip your skin off your body before it would pick you up.
Well, at least I think I recall reading something like that about cows: It would rip their skin off before picking them up. But cows are heavier than people of course.
zombie or no
babies fly farther.
Kansas. A girl named Dorothy.
I distinctly remember seeing a documentary or some such thing that showed cows and harvesting machinery being flung about in a twister but the people in the vicinity (someone named Hunt IIRC) were able to survive by hanging on to pieces of a fence.
Matt Suter of Fordland, Missouri on March 12, 2006 was carried one-quarter mile.
A zombie thread was carried 12 years into the future by a tornado discussion! Does that count?
July 10, 1980 my brother was picked up and carried a short distance by a tornado that hit near Unicoi, TN. He was carried about 200 yards and suffered no injuries. Several others who were at the camp that was hit did suffer injuries.
Sounds like a scene from Debbie Does Oklahoma.