I suspect that long neck sauropods could kinda.... loaf? Lay on their heads to protect them? Tuck their heads down?
Also unfortunately I do believe a tornado, which had the power to lift an oil rig weighing 800+ metric tons, could probably lift a 100 ton dinosaur.
Cactus 117 oil drilling rig near El Reno, showing the mangled and overturned rig
Both of these scenarios had never occurred to me before.
Both of these scenarios are going to take up significant portion of my mental capacity today.
I once had an encounter with a tornado that followed me home while I was walking. I had a long way to walk, and felt like something behind me was watching me. I picked up my step. At one point all of the birds in the sky stopped what they were doing, turned into the direction I was going, and flew as fast as they could. It was all of the birds. Hawks pigeons sparrows ravens songbirds, the none of them feared me or the birds of prey and flew straight towards the red tailed hawks to get away from whatever was behind me... but the hawks also bolted, unconcerned with prey. I muttered "fuck* and started running as fast as I could, didn't even look behind me. Didn't have to look, because what else in existence can spook every flying critter with 65billion years of evolution? Whatever that is I don't wanna meet it so yea I ran my ass off.
I could see my driveway when the tornado sirens began. I cut across the back lawn to get inside. The tornado/funnel tore apart trees all down the road I had walked. Branches littered the street and caused road closures. It did not hit my apartment but left debris at the edge of my apartment complex where I had just been walking (and where all the birds bolted from.)
I suspect even hundred ton dinos would be spooked of something that can throw a tree. And that's somewhat evidenced in the bird flight I saw.
I do wonder if prehistoric tornadoes were possibly stronger than out current EF and fujita scales measure. Tornado alley is im the central-ish part of the north American continent, leading me to believe that it's possible that the larger the landmass, the more frequent/stronger the tornadic activity in the center. So who knows how strong a tornado could have been on Pangaea or any other prehistoric continent.
To my knowledge, that’s not why tornadoes form- it has to do with cold dry air meeting warm moist air over a big flat expanse of land, the interaction between the different temperatures of air fuels the storm and then the flat land means that there’s not really anything that can disrupt a tornado’s formation. In the modern day, we only really see the optimal conditions for powerful tornadoes over the Great Plains- tornadoes can happen elsewhere, of course, but they're usually weaker, and even then, they still rely on the collisions between fronts of warm air and cold air to form.
Several of the world's most famous fossil-bearing rock formations preserve what would've been "grass"lands* and deserts, ample flat land- but, crucially, the Earth as a whole was much warmer than it is today (the polar ice caps would've covered one-third of their modern extent, no major glaciers, what're now Antarctica and Alaska would've only seen sparse snowfall in the coldest winters) meaning the cold air-warm-air interactions needed for tornado formation would've been a lot rarer to come by. Therefore, tornadoes in general would've been rare occurrences during the Mesozoic, and ones powerful enough to pose a threat to a large dinosaur would've been even rarer. However, regular storm activity still would've occurred, and the posited "maybe they just laid down/lowered their heads" speculation above is indeed a theory for how sauropods might've avoided getting struck by lightning in such conditions- I strongly doubt they sat on their heads due to how heavy their bodies were**, but they absolutely could lower their heads closer to the ground.
*Grasses only evolved at the very end of the Mesozoic and did not become the primary open groundcover until well into the Cenozoic, the predominant ground cover at this point would've been ferns, horsetails, and small, herblike gymnosperms, depending on aridity **Many large dinosaurs were too heavy to even sit on their eggs- we have fossil evidence that at least some sauropods migrated to volcanic regions to bury their eggs in the ash and let geothermal heat incubate them, while other dinosaurs instead constructed circular nests and sat in the empty middle (we have direct fossil evidence of this for only some species, but it's likely others did it too). The modern Australian brush-turkey exhibits similar behavior, burying it's eggs in leaf litter and using the heat given off by the rotting plant matter as an incubator.
