17-Foot-Tall Red Tornado

Panama City, Florida

Bay High School's sports teams are the Fighting Tornadoes, and since 1980 the school has had an outdoor tornado sculpture. By 2008 the first one, unflatteringly labeled "the pork chop," was falling apart. It was replaced by a much larger twister, 17 feet tall, weighing nearly a ton. Navy engineer Mike MacDonald from the Air Force research lab at Tyndall designed it using concentric rings with rebar, and Bay art teacher Chris Calohan painted the covering stucco in blues and reds. A plaque names it, "Tornado II."

Much of the school was badly damaged by Hurricane Micheal in 2018, but not the tornado.