[JZoback]

Fortunately Tornado's are very localized. Not so fortunate for the ones in it's path. Hopefully your friend is not near this one(s).

I lived though hurricane Andrew in Florida a few years after I moved from Texas.

If I had to made a choice between the two, Tornado's wins hands down, at least they are over quickly and leave a small path of destruction

[TomGuy]

Nebraska had a tornado over the weekend (IIRC). It measured the largest width of any ever on record, beating former one measured in TX. The Nebraska one measured around 2.25 miles wide. That's quite a path. Luckily it was in a low population density area.

[COEXERJ145]

True, I've lived through enough tornadoes to know how they are but then come the exceptions to the rules. The storm that blew an entire subdivision off the map in Jerrel, Texas and killed 30 people comes to mind. It happened over Memorial Day weekend, 1997. The F-5 was so powerful it actually removed the pavement from the roadway and stripped the hides off of cows.

That day we were watching the Indy 500 on our local NBC affiliate out of Waco which is where the storms developed. They could actually see the tornadoes from the studio and watched as several went tracking by over open country. The storms moved south down I-35 and hit Jerrel and later did damage in Austin.

[El Gato]

Fortunately Tornado's are very localized.

Depends on your idea of "very localized". A tornada a bit over a week ago that leveled the small town of Hallam Nebrask(~25 from my mother's house in Lincoln) was about 2 miles wide as it went through the town, which probably wasn't more than 1/2 mile wide in any direction. It was on the ground, alhtough not that wide the whole distance, for over 50 miles. It lifted just before it would have hit the town, Palmyra, where one of my cousins lives. It went clear across Lancaster county, and touched parts of 3 other counties. One, Gage, just barely got nicked. At it's strongest, as it went over Hallam, it was classifed as an F4 tornado.