Somewhere over the rainbow...
... or, maybe, somewhere under the overpass...
Tornados are beautiful, awesome, amazing, powerful things. I've always been rather enamored with them - got myself licensed as a storm chaser years ago, even. I don't know what it was - just the raw power, the amazing beauty, the idea that something so simple as a little wind can literally rip you limb from limb and leave the person standing beside you untouched...
I'd never really seen one, though. I'd seen them fly over, from a few miles away, but I'd never seen one on the ground.
Until two hours ago, that is.
I'm driving down the interstate, on my way back from an abortive trip to the Social Security office (they were already closed, I have to drive those 70 miles again first thing in the morning) - it's raining, yeah, and it's windy, and it's really dark up north, but it's a ways off...
And then I look straight ahead, and honestly say out loud, to myself, "What the fuck is that?!"
"That" was a fuckin' tornado, folks! Less than a mile away, at least 1/8 of a mile wide, I swear - black clouds and dust spinning around in a great big circle, not quite connected to the clouds above me, but really close to getting there. I never saw when, or even if, it did meet up, because at that point, the entire world went black.
Literally - it was blacker than midnight at barely 6:00pm. My headlights were useless - I couldn't see five feet in front of my truck. Thank God I know that stretch of road like the back of my hand, and I knew there was an overpass coming up soon. I pulled off onto the shoulder, jumped out, jumped the guardrail, waded through the ditch, and ran like hell up that concrete.
I have never held onto anything as tightly as I held onto those steel girders, and I have never, ever, in my entire life been so absolutely terrified that I was going to die.
The trees were lying down on the ground by this point - trees aren't supposed to do that, yanno... The grass on either side of me was blowing in at least six different directions at the same time. Semis were blowing around on the interstate like paper (why they kept going is so completely beyond my comprehension...). And you know that "wives' tale" about tornados sounding like freight trains? Well, I'm here to tell you that it's no tale - I was a good five miles from the nearest tracks, and I swear to God there was a freight train right above me on that overpass. It was so damned loud up there... but to cover my ears, I'd have had to let go of the girders, and I didn't really want to do that...
So I'm sitting there, holding onto that bridge for dear life (literally), worrying that someone is going to come by and sideswipe my truck, I'm terrified, I'm crying, I'm praying... and the one thing I kept coming back to was, "Thank *God* I'm alone!"
How I ended up there alone, I'm still not really sure, but it's a rare thing for me. I've always got at least one of the kids with me when I go somewhere, usually more than one, more often than not, all four... but today, it was just me. The Hubby had been on his way to get me (the truck decided to die 35 miles from home for some reason... and half an hour later, it decided to start again...), but I called him and told him that I had the truck started and I wanted him to turn around and go home (he'd only just left the house). I told him there were tornados all around me (though they were 10-15 miles away at that point) and I was getting the hell out of there. The tornados were northeast of me at that point, and I was heading southwest... I had no idea just what I was heading in to.
But... I'm okay. I'm still wet, covered in God-knows-what from the water in that ditch that I had to wade through up to my knees, and I'm still shaking, but I'm okay. I'm going to go take a nice long, hot bath and sleep for at least 9 hours.
My brother-in-law asked me, right after I walked in, if I still thought tornados were beautiful, and I told him that I didn't know, to ask me again next week.
Even after all this, I've got this feeling that my answer is going to be "yes".
Tornados are beautiful, awesome, amazing, powerful things. I've always been rather enamored with them - got myself licensed as a storm chaser years ago, even. I don't know what it was - just the raw power, the amazing beauty, the idea that something so simple as a little wind can literally rip you limb from limb and leave the person standing beside you untouched...
I'd never really seen one, though. I'd seen them fly over, from a few miles away, but I'd never seen one on the ground.
Until two hours ago, that is.
I'm driving down the interstate, on my way back from an abortive trip to the Social Security office (they were already closed, I have to drive those 70 miles again first thing in the morning) - it's raining, yeah, and it's windy, and it's really dark up north, but it's a ways off...
And then I look straight ahead, and honestly say out loud, to myself, "What the fuck is that?!"
"That" was a fuckin' tornado, folks! Less than a mile away, at least 1/8 of a mile wide, I swear - black clouds and dust spinning around in a great big circle, not quite connected to the clouds above me, but really close to getting there. I never saw when, or even if, it did meet up, because at that point, the entire world went black.
Literally - it was blacker than midnight at barely 6:00pm. My headlights were useless - I couldn't see five feet in front of my truck. Thank God I know that stretch of road like the back of my hand, and I knew there was an overpass coming up soon. I pulled off onto the shoulder, jumped out, jumped the guardrail, waded through the ditch, and ran like hell up that concrete.
I have never held onto anything as tightly as I held onto those steel girders, and I have never, ever, in my entire life been so absolutely terrified that I was going to die.
The trees were lying down on the ground by this point - trees aren't supposed to do that, yanno... The grass on either side of me was blowing in at least six different directions at the same time. Semis were blowing around on the interstate like paper (why they kept going is so completely beyond my comprehension...). And you know that "wives' tale" about tornados sounding like freight trains? Well, I'm here to tell you that it's no tale - I was a good five miles from the nearest tracks, and I swear to God there was a freight train right above me on that overpass. It was so damned loud up there... but to cover my ears, I'd have had to let go of the girders, and I didn't really want to do that...
So I'm sitting there, holding onto that bridge for dear life (literally), worrying that someone is going to come by and sideswipe my truck, I'm terrified, I'm crying, I'm praying... and the one thing I kept coming back to was, "Thank *God* I'm alone!"
How I ended up there alone, I'm still not really sure, but it's a rare thing for me. I've always got at least one of the kids with me when I go somewhere, usually more than one, more often than not, all four... but today, it was just me. The Hubby had been on his way to get me (the truck decided to die 35 miles from home for some reason... and half an hour later, it decided to start again...), but I called him and told him that I had the truck started and I wanted him to turn around and go home (he'd only just left the house). I told him there were tornados all around me (though they were 10-15 miles away at that point) and I was getting the hell out of there. The tornados were northeast of me at that point, and I was heading southwest... I had no idea just what I was heading in to.
But... I'm okay. I'm still wet, covered in God-knows-what from the water in that ditch that I had to wade through up to my knees, and I'm still shaking, but I'm okay. I'm going to go take a nice long, hot bath and sleep for at least 9 hours.
My brother-in-law asked me, right after I walked in, if I still thought tornados were beautiful, and I told him that I didn't know, to ask me again next week.
Even after all this, I've got this feeling that my answer is going to be "yes".