If you've ever been in or near a tornado?

Question

what was the experience was it fun, scary, interesting, dark, creepy, mysterious or what

Answer 1

Dear Skylon,
About… 8ish? years ago I was attending some refresher classes at Farris University in Michigan. AND working a full time [48+ hrs per week] job. As you may guess, I was almost always exhausted.
I’d dragged myself home one day after work, without paying any attention to the fact that the sky was looking sort of gray and nasty. I’d sort of noticed it looked rainy, on the way out of work to the car. But hadn’t really thought about it. With trig class in an hour and a half, all I wanted was a hot bath and a hotter cup of coffee before heading off to class.
As I was sitting soaking in the tub with a cup of hot Folgers instant, my ears suddenly popped. And of course I wondered what had coursed it. In a smartass moment I thought to myself “Maybe it’s a tornado.” If I’d had a top on I’d have been laughing up the sleeve of it.
For the next half hour or so I soaked and dosed and drank black coffee, until the bath had started getting cold.
Finally I gave up and climbed out of the tub, raped a bath towel around myself and headed of to find something clean in the laundry basket to wear to class. As I passed the living room window I looked out into the parking lot of our apartment complex through the blinds… to find half of the roof setting in the middle of the lot.
As near as anyone could figure, the small tornado had formed almost directly over our building and had only grazed our roof, skipped across the street into the west end of campus, out the north side just blocks from the hospital… and dissipated. All without killing anyone… Just a ton of damage to buildings, cars, trees and lawns. And I dosed in a worm tub. I’d like to be able to say “Sorry the story’s not any better”… No I’m not.
And they say God doesn’t love me?
Hugs,
PennyAnn

Answer 2

It's hard to say how I felt during the experience. It was mysterious/scary but greenish more than dark. Our trees were bent at almost a 90 degree angle. It had touched down across from our fire station a mile from our house. Then it skimmed over our neighborhood until it passed my sister's apartment 2 miles away. Then it came back down and did minor damage. The warning went off 1 minute after it passed. The time a rotation formed over my work building but didn't create a funnel was pure scary. But now I know what to expect and don't panic in front of my kids. When I had to put my daughter in a closet for 30 min. she never even woke up.

I don't live in a tornado alley but have had several close calls.

Answer 3

Hi, I used to live in "Tornado Alley". That's what they called Pekin Illinois. Many times during tornado season the skies will turn greenish dark grey...it gets really quiet...and the sirens blow...sending us to our basements. The wind swirls around...the house shakes, lights go off and on and then off. You hear the whurrrrr of the wind and the creaking of the house...then it gets quiet. The battery operated radios will tell us that it is okay to come upstairs.
For some people it is scary. For long time residents...it's a season we all live through. South Pekin, Illinois was hit two times in the same year. People lost homes and property and started to build again and got hit again. Never believe that a tornado doesn't hit twice in the same spot. This is proof.
Tornado alley is a lifestyle. You pray and live through it. Take caution and be ready. Safety is the concern of everyone. Neighbors help neighbors. It's a community.
I've moved from Pekin Illinois...however...still remember those days when tornados hit down around us. We were lucky, others not so lucky.

Answer 4

Of course!!! I'm from Oklahoma. When the sirens go off at ear piercing levels sometimes you seek shelter - other times you go out on the front porch and visit with neighbors. The worst I can remember was May 3rd, 1999 when the F5 hit Oklahoma City. They say it was actually an F6 but since the Fujita scale only goes to F5 that's what they classified it as. What was scary that night though was there were 80 or more tornadoes and they all started hitting around dusk. That's the scariest thing about a tornado - nighttime. I remember sitting there with my 2 year old and my one month old in the basement of our farm house looking at my husband while we listened to the wind hit our house. Then it would just get quiet. Pretty soon the phone would ring and the one family member or friend who still had electricity would call and say - more are spotted within a mile to your north and then a mile to the east stay in the basement. I believe we thought about getting out of the basement 5 different times before we got a call saying everything was clear. It was a long awful night.

Now we have a drinking game that goes along with Tornado season! LOL! So....if you see a bunch of drunks on TV the next time there's a tornado in Oklahoma they've probably been playing too! hee hee.

Answer 5

I lived through one in the early 90's in rural East Texas. It was the freakiest thing I have ever seen in my life. The storm that had been blowing an going for the better part of the afternoon, seemed to suddenly subside, and the sky went from purple to black and then green. The horses and the dogs vanished into whatever hidey holes they could find, and things got real still. We could hear a rumble and a whistleing sound that you felt as well as heard. The air was heavy, and almost opressive, and even though we knew what was coming, like a bunch of maniacs, we stood in the dining room and stared towards our lower pastures and watched as the tornado landed on the hill above the pool and then moved down towards it in a odd, bouncing/twisting motion as it reached the huge oak tree behind the pool that had stood for hundreds of years, and had grown to such a width that four full-grown men couldnt reach all the way around it, and the tornado simply pulled it out of the ground and threw it roughly a hundred feet uphill from where it used to stand. It was a that point that we came to our senses and decided that it would be best to take our butts to a safer place than the glass bay window. It seemed like the storm lasted forever, but in reality, it was only about 10 minutes or so, and it was over and the sun was out and shining. It made a lasting impression on me and my sis, and around 10 years later when we were driving across West Texas in a storm, we had been resolved to soldier on and continue driving until I looked over and noticed the vehicle next to us had an awful lot of odd lights and screens. We continued driving next to them for a bit, and then it dawned on my sister and I at the same time, we were driving next to a freaking STORMCHASER!, and they were headed the same direction as us!! I think our simultaneous shrieks came close to shattering the glass in my truck. We took the very next exit, found a very solid looking masonary construction hotel, and got our butts off the road. Ahhh, life in Texas, never a dull moment.

Answer 6

I was 12 years old and we were on an island at the lake in Oklahoma. It is a big lake. A tornado was on the other side of the island and we had our boat tied up because we were camping. Anyway water filled the boat to the top and we were actually holding on to it so it would not float away. The waves were unreal and I still remember that experience to this day. We finally left in the same boat but it was truely scary making our way back to shore. To this day I am not afraid of storms they fascinate me for strange reason. I live in MO Tornado alley.

Answer 7

Usually every year we will have a couple warnings, strangely, none this year. I live in a small town in Illinois, I think the experience is all that you listed above, except for creepy, it's only creepy when your out looking for one in a dark storm that looks to give you one. That I know of, we've had a few cause damage in side our town, but no serious injury or death. The closest to my house brought a couple large round metal containers outside my house in the street about 6 meters (20 feet) from where I'm siting right now. On that day I was outside and noticed everything got dark really fast, which of course to me, was really cool. went inside, things flew around outside, like our neighbors tree, then it ended.

Anyway; tornado's, like most of nature, needs respected as well as an amazing thing to witness.

Answer 8

My only tornado was a waterspout, over the Gulf of Mexico. It was one of the most gorgeous things I had ever seen. This long, thin roping thing and this sailboat floated in front of it without its sails up... it just looked magical. Of course, probably not so for the poor sailboat operators.

I have, however, seen plenty of funnel clouds and plenty of rotating wall clouds. One was in Duluth at the bottom of the hill, looking towards the airport. To see this massive rolling cloud coming over the hill was like something from a nightmare.

I also remember a time when there was a tornado in Lakeside. We were at my cousin's confirmation in a church packed with over a thousand people when the tornado sirens went off and the lights went wonky. That was definitely a terrifying moment.

If you want to see a good film on what not to do in a tornado, please see 'Night of the Twisters'. It's underrated and cheesy, but it's definitely good entertainment.

Answer 9

In June of 1992 a tornado near my work picked up an old farm house and turned it 1/4 around and set it down unharmed. Good house movers could have put it back in place. Weird huh?
On April 25 1994 a tornado hit my town,Lancaster,TX. It hit one block over from my house. We had no damage,just a lot of fall out debris, but 250 homes were destroyed and 250 more were damaged along with 75 businesses. Only 3 people died as a result of this storm. Just this afternoon I was in my neighbor's backyard and saw shingles from several blocks away still there in the dirt. That is still a little discomfiting.
Later that summer we were in Ky. at a mall on a stormy day when the public address system came on and a voice said "shoppers may I have your attention please" Mine and my Wife's hearts stopped as we waited for the announcement. We were GREATLY relieved when the voice said " there is a white Buick in the parking lot with it's lights on"
On a more serious note though we did experience "survivor's guilt" for quite some time.
We also knew a little boy whose home was destroyed, who for years after almost being sucked out of his bed by the tornado , slept wearing a football helmet for protection.

Answer 10

It was when I was in Michigan on my honeymoon.
We had A cabin on torch lake around 1 in the afternoon the skys started to get dark and we looked forward to A nice rain,
but then the sky turned green and the winds really picked up ,
we then heard what sounded like A train coming right at us,
there was no basement in the cabin so we opened the windows (so they would not blow out) and got down low in the middle of the room ,it was so loud it sounded like the wind was just going to blow us away ,we heard lots of things breaking and falling outside, but we did not go out untill the next morning to look . We found A line of 100 year old trees
less than 20 feet from the cabin completely destroyed , they had been twisted and just splintered into kindling !
We could not help but think how really close we were to that
tornado and what would have happened of it had hit that little cabin of ours.
I was more scared after we saw those trees the next morning than when it was happening ,, I guess because neither of us had ever been in A tornado we really did'nt realize the danger we were in.

Answer 11

I have had two close scrapes with tornadoes. One especially scary one was when I was graduating from Texas Tech University in 1970. We were spending the weekend in preparation for the graduation exercises the following week. I had the radio on and they came on with a weather alert. I went outside to see a wall cloud coming to us. We ran inside to seek shelter and could hear the roaring above us. Thankfully it passed overhead - all we got was hail. When the cloud passed by, we went out to survey the damage and could see the blackness in the East where the tornado touched down. It was reported that two tornadoes merged at the downtown area. There was quite a bit of damage to the whole area -The Great Plains building was condemned. One of the saddest parts is that a friend of mine who was working in a grocery store at the time went home to find his trailer house gone and his wife with it. There were other deaths as well. I am not particularly scared of the storms, but I respect tornadoes now as well as other weather disasters. My feeling through the whole thing was like a numbness - a very helpless feeling that I could do nothing to stop what was transpiring.