Tornado!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Ah, the joys of living in Kansas. We’re in a Tornado watch, which means it’s humid, windy, and cloudy. It’s been sprinkling all day long and it looks really shitty outside.

I hate this time of year because I don’t have a basement in my house and have no where to go if a tornado hits my town! Storms really scare me for some reason. They always have. I’ll probably end up spending half the night at my brother’s house in the basement while he trys to videotape the storm.

Oh well. Wish me luck. I don’t wanna die until I can see the SDMB Ladies pics!!

2

We lived in the southern part of Ohio when Xenia was wiped out by about 12 tornadoes in one night.

Our house was on a hillock, with no cellar, so I put the kids under a table in the hallway, away from all windows.

The lights went out and we just cowered and listened to the sirens all night and the battery radio reporting death counts.

The kids were afraid of sirens and blackouts for years, and none of us ever went back to Ohio.

3

Last week I returned home to Fort Wayne for my Father in laws’ funeral. We were welcomed back to the Midwest in fine fashion, with 4 tornadoes romping through the city, and loss of power for 2 days.

But it was grand to actually have honest to goodness Weather! Idaho is extremely wimpy in this regard.

4

Ok, this is a little off the subject but it is the only thing I can contribute as a Californian…

Myself, my girlfriend, another couple and a friend were going snowboarding. It was about 5:00am and we were just coming over the crest of some foot hills on an empty freeway. The downhill side of the freeway that we were about to be on is a staight 1 mile 4 lane strech of highway that is at a decent grade, though I don’t know how much. Well it had been raining and that means slick roads. At this point the girl in the front passenger seat of the MiniVan says, “Oh, do a Tornado!” Unknown to us in the back, a “Tornado” is when you jerk the wheel back and forth and make the car ‘wiggle’ and thats about it. Well…

Her boyfriend (the driver) jerks the wheel to the left, then to the right and this is when things got bad. We all felt the back end loose traction and the MiniVan started to spin at 70+ MPH and going downhill. At this point Sara, the girl who started it all, starts to scream in a very high pitched monotone scream that only sheer terror can bring about. My girlfriends hand clenches my inner thigh with supper-human strength, closes her eyes and just seems to concentrate on ripping my leg off. I, am on the right hand side of the MiniVan, and remember it started to spin to the left or counter clockwise. This means that I am on the downhill side of the MiniVan that is now leaning at an unholy angle and trying to flip itself. Now, these weren’t just your quick 360’s these spins were slow and the MiniVan slid more than it slid, this is why I thought it would flip. All I could do was to hold on and look out the window as those little white lane divider bumps go racing by way to close to my face. I honestly thought that the wheels were going to catch and flip the MiniVan onto my face.

Well, the MiniVan spun twice counter clockwise and toward the center dividing wall, then the wheels did catch, but only enough to start us spinning in the other direction. So we started to spin clockwise and were now heading towards the steep hill that is on the other side of the highway. Sara is still screaming that same scream on the same breath, my girlfriend is now uttering words but in no coherient form, and I started to get really nervous.

When the MiniVan finished its last two spins we came to a stop about 3 feet from the hill. We then made sure everyone was ok, and when we figured everything was ok, we all tore into Sara and her boyfriend for doing such a stupid thing. Needless to say, I drove the rest of the way…

This is what I think of when I hear the work tornado. I may not have been a huge mass of air spinnig at high speeds, but damn it, it was scary enough for me. And for those unfortunate souls who fate has forced into buying a MiniVan, we were in a Pontiac Montana. Let me tell ya, those things DO NOT flip! Trust me, I know.

Anyway, that is all. Thank you for letting me borrow your thread for a couple of minutes. :smiley:

5

Thats suppossed to read, slid more than it spun. Sorry.

6

A tornado hit three miles from my house in January. At the time, I was in the bathtub. Lalala. I noticed it getting a bit dark and thundery, and then real weird and windy, so I finally got out of the bathtub.

A friend called up half an hour later to see if I was OK. “Yeah, so why…” A tornado had decimated three houses and a trailer THREE MILES away!

I’m kind of glad I was oblivious though, because tornadoes terrify me, even in recurring dreams. I would have had a heart attack if I’d been listening to the radio and heard the location!

7

Having a ton of relatives in Kansas means I have spent more than one vacation in the basement of a bank while a tornado roared over the nearby countryside. My grampa was chased down the street a couple of years ago by a mini-twister.

Somehow that makes a little bit of rain seem like a wussy weather phenomenon.

8

A few tornados have touched down in the DC area in the last few years. On separate occasions, I inadvertantly drove right in the path of two tornados. It wasn’t until I got to my wife’s office that I found out what I’d done.

9

Sheesh…being a Californian, I have 1 tornado story to relate…

About 2 1/2 years ago, we were having an “off” day in June. It was dark and nasty nad generally sucked. My brother and I worked in 2 separate parts of Sunnyvale. I was having a cigarette outside when it got windy and started to hail…big hail.

At lunch, we drove by a church about 3 miles away from our respective jobs, and…where was it?

The tornado came by and wiped out a whole church, and a few surrounding houses!!

I know it’s not 12 tornadoes in a night, but give me a break, this is California!!

And Fanny, what in blazes is a “Hillock”?

-Sam

10

Mullinator, what part of Kansas are your relatives from? I’m in the Northeast part of the state… about 30 miles west of Topeka. We seem to get more tornados in the rural areas but there have been a few that are close to town. My brother and his family live right by the Kansas River and last summer there was a tornado about 3 miles south of them. I was there at the time and we videotaped the sky and the clouds. You could see the clouds begin to rotate and then they picked up speed. It was very spooky!

It wouldn’t bother me so much if I had a basement in my house but my house is just a slab. It’s gonna be kind of hard for me to pack up my 2 kids and drive 1 mile to my brother’s house every time we’re in a tornado warning! I’ll probably end up throwing the kids in the bathtub or something! Oh well, I guess if it’s my time to go there’s nothing I can do about it.

11

Russell, Eureka, Chanute, Iola, KC, Topeka, but mainly Humboldt. A lot of those are concentrated in the southeast portion. Learae is another poster from Kansas, and I think she was from the Salina area (drawing a bit of a blank on that though.)

I have made the drive from Denver to Humboldt many a time, so I am pretty well acquainted with that state.

12

Hmmm, Eureka… that’s were my ex-husband is from. I bet I know who your relatives are! Kind of a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing goin on!

13

I just wanted to share. So sue me…

When was that Church-killing Tornado anyway? I live in Fremont and would think that if there had been a Tornado in recent history I would have heard about it…

I also remembered another incident I had with a real Tornado. This one was in Virginia.

My father and I had just gotten done watching in a movie at one of the malls out there and we noticed that the clouds looked pretty mean. We turned on the radio to catch the news, but put in a Greatfull Dead CD when the weather report didn’t come on right away. The rain started to pick up and it got pretty dark pretty fast. As we pulled into a Popeyes Chicken drive thru, we commented on the fact that it was now hailing, and getting the hail was getting pretty big. The teenager at the drive through sounded pretty anxious to get our order and when we pulled up to the window he asked us why we weren’t going home. We asked him what he was talking about and he said that two Tornado’s had touched down one town over. My dad and I both looked at eachother, shrugged and asked for extra butter with our biscuts.

This was in 1996, and he lives in Montclair Va. Anyway, sorry if my other post confused people.

14

Gotcha all beat…

Plainfield, Illinois, nuff said.

15

I grew up in Great Bend, so I saw lots of tornados and heard lots of tornado stories. I am truly amazed that there are actually tour groups nowadays that take people on “tornado chases”! I saw an episode on The Discovery Channel or The Learning Channel or some such that showed a bunch of foriegn folks riding in a van following a tornado (F3 I think) and then getting out of the van to take photos of the damn thing as it was coming toward them!?! And they paid big bucks to the tour company to put them in harm’s way!!!

I wonder if insurance companies have figured out it is not a good risk to live in a tornado magnet, oops - I mean a mobile home in Kansas? I worked for Marlette Mobile Homes before I left Kansas, and I … uh, well, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, see … but in the small space behind the built-in stereo … down at the bottom, exactly 13 inches off the floor, there’s this … device, see, it’s actually powered by the earth’s gravitational field, and … ah, heh, it’s this “dynamic rotational circumnutator attractant enhancer” placed there by black whisper helicopters being flown by the international Illuminati Society. I’m not sure what is going on, but my guess is that some evil secret group is trying to de-stabilize our American way of life! I mean, come on! Tele-tubbies, the Britney Spears - Tommy Hilfiger connection, 24 hours in a day / 24 beers in a case, Liberace, Al Gore vs. George Dubya; how much more proof do we need? Wake up America!!! “The Conspiracy Theory” was just a test!!! Uh … dang - sorry about that; I just kinda got carried away there for a moment. Gotta go - someone’s banging on my door and I think I hear a strange buzzing sound outside. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but what if that means th

16

I have nothing to add except to say that my son (age 4) is totally fascinated with “tomatos” as he calls them. :slight_smile:

17

Here’s some more recent SDMB on the subject:

Tornadoes native only to USA?

Has Anyone Here SEEN a Tornado?

Hear about the tornado in Fort Worth? That was in my backyard!!!

What’s on your screen, now, ralf?

ralf?

18

whew … i’m at a friend’s house now, connected via my laptop. my apartment building is toast - some kinda swamp gas ignited and caused some hovering ball lightning or something. anyways, i had to grab my american-made 'puter with the z-chip and take off in my SUV, so there is probably no way ‘they’ can find me. I just stopped in at the 7-eleven to get a book to read 'cause by friend’s cable tv is acting up since i called to see if it was okay for me to stay a while; i picked up a copy of ‘catcher in the rye’ and a ‘guns and ammo’ magazine. so i guess i’m all set for the time being. i have been trying to explain to my friend what i have learned about the secret stuff going on, especially the implants that hospitals have started … uh oh, there’s a guy on a big black harley circling the house … he’s got this big tube mounted to the handlebars that looks sorta like a telescope. what the … the side of the house is glowing sorta greenish! dang! gotta go … my friend is acting kinda spacey on me … i hope she didn’t tell anyone about the strange contraption that we saw over in th

19

well, if this ain’t the dangest thing … the little fellows have assured me that everything is all right and that no one will detect their craft - they’ve got some sort of ‘cloaking device’ that makes it look just like a tornado!!! they say they are here to help the people of earth find the path to global peace … i’m not sure about that, though … every time i look at one of these guys, i see the same look my dog used to get when he looked at a pork chop … and i saw a pamphlet called the internet exploder in one of the little cubicles on this craft. i’m pretty sure they don’t know i am communicating with you folks right now … i told them i have a term paper due next week and that i have to type it and send it to my prof … if you can read this, please contact the blue book project headquarters in pawnee rock - make sure the local agent (with his code number) gets the message: bee aare, (549) “west of the rockies” … the room is starting to kinda vibrate with a funny sort of taste … i hope they didn’t realize i have sent a message to the greatest mind on earth and his followers - surely they can’t track down all you highly intelligent folks who are the planet’s only hope! i am confident that i can hold out and not reveal th