Tornadoes, those powerful funnel-shaped windstorms, move along at about 30 miles per hour, carrying winds that may gust up to 200 miles per hour.
Most tornadoes follow a path about a quarter- mile wide and 15 miles long, and last less than 20 minutes. But some especially powerful tornadoes move along at more than 40 miles per hour, traveling a path up to a mile and a half wide and 200 miles long, and may last three hours!
A tornado in 1931 carried an 83-ton railroad car and its 117 passengers a distance of 80 feet, while another tornado carried a refrigerator two miles!
