Here’s my early mockup for one of the ideas, done in 3DS Max; The tornado on a leash. I thought of the tornado as a huge, eager, but destructive dog. You could sort of control if you really tried, but it would try and get away and chew up your buildings if it could. A badly housetrained tornado.

The Tornado was my most used disaster in the SimCity games…I can’t really explain why…I have a huge fascination of tornados.  I would love to one day go on a Storm Chase to try to view one up close.  🙂

Source:  Ocean Quigley’s (SimCity 4’s art director) blog