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Comment by alecst | Hacker News Reader

I think I saw one of these during a meteor shower, ten years ago, in Georgia. It was so fast, and so unexpected, that I question my own recollection of it. When I tell people I saw a fireball, they shrug. They don't know how it's different from a shooting star. But in my memory it looks like a smoky fireball, and I had the impression that it was particularly close to the earth.

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I had an experience a bit like that, but with mini-tornadoes, somewhere along the M11 in the UK (Essex I think, but perhaps the edge of Cambs). I recall looking it up afterwards and it seemed to be 'a thing', though none of the news examples I found from various years before the event were anything like as extreme - tens and tens of them, well-formed.

A truly bizarre 'what is happening' experience for me - before that I would've said flatly 'we don't get tornadoes here'. Never seen anything like it, before or since, nor even heard of it except for having looked into it then.

"the UK gets an average of 30-50 tornadoes a year. That’s more tornadoes per land area than anywhere else in the world (except – weirdly – the Netherlands.)"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3QTh1mRGDNg16cDYHg...

I too would've said we never get them here, apart from remembering one big one in the news I think in or near Birmingham...

While some do damage, I have to wonder if most of these events would be called merely whirlwinds or dust devils in most of the world? I'm also guessing that in an area of often high humidity, a funnel cloud might more easily form in a relatively weak whirlwind, that if it happened elsewhere.

Also, this is south-east England ("Berkshire into London") specifically, and also the Netherlands - some of the more densely populated parts of the globe, so I see a possible correlation to the density of observers here...

Exactly, I think the same, I was just commenting this too. I think it's more a statistical anomaly.

Citation needed. Oklahoma averages over 50 per year and is 2/3rds the land area of the UK.[0]

[0] https://www.weather.gov/oun/tornadodata-ok-monthlyannual

I assume the stat is actually that the UK gets more per unit of area than any other country except the Netherlands.

But also:

> the area from Berkshire into London had the highest likelihood of a tornado - one every 17 years.

What I saw was probably your UK annual 30-50 in a single small area all at once! Not huge, but many.

Yeah I'm from the Netherlands and I've seen several "tornadoes". However they're not the ones you see in the movies. They're real whirlwinds and I've seen them kill tents at campsites but buildings are generally fine. They come and go quickly.

They're high in number but I've never heard of one having a real mass-destructive effect like you see in the tornado areas in the US. I don't think we ever get that kind of thing.

I guess what makes us seem to have so many is not the actual occurrence of these but the high population density so there's always someone around to notice it. As opposed to some whirlwinds just spinning around in the desert.

I saw one maybe 10 years ago, I was outside at night and noticed it get bright. Looked up and there it was, or the last bit of its streak was. They aren't that rare apparently, but the big ones like in this video are rare: https://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/faqf/#2

I also saw one of these ~10 years ago at the end of December. I was in South Florida, and it was up in the sky long enough for me to tell everyone to look up, so five or six other people saw it too.

It seemed much bigger/longer than the one listed here, wonder if I'll be able to find it in the fireball database.

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