Narrowly Avoiding Devastation
OK, this is going to be a pretty serious blog. It has to be. And I haven't updated in a while, so you know something big - well, at least unique or somewhat worth writing - must have happened. And something did. Something really crazy!
My family is currently on our annual summer vacation (we usually go somewhere every summer as a fam, for a week most of the time, and different spots each year, usually somewhere in the northeast region). We decided to head out to the Midwest this year, our first time out this way. And that's where we are now. In Indiana. I'm actually writing from our hotel in Indianapolis right now. Anyway...we barely missed an interesting confrontation with Mother Nature today.
So, we're in our third day here (well, second I guess - the first was pretty much just travelling). My mom happens to schedule a little two-and-a-half-hour excursion for us to North Indiana on today of all days (you'll understand in a moment).
We visited the University of Notre Dame, did the whole tour thing - really cool campus, awesome architecture, very spacious, and really breathtaking, especially all the history. we stopped at the South Bend Chocolate Factory and did a tour of that place..got plenty of free samples and a slew of other candy/food on our way out...that was fun. And then..well, then..we started our two-and-a-hour trek back home. I was driving.
We decided long before that we'd go to Fazoli's for dinner..this awesome Italian-chain place with pizza and unlimited breadsticks that we used to love in Buffalo before they closed it..so now we can only eat there went out of town. We punch it in our GPS and find out Indiana is Fazoli-happy, there's like a million of them..one of every 10-15 minutes or so. We choose to go to one halfway to Indy to avoid rush hour traffic, which is coming up too.
So...we dine there, we enjoy it, we go back to our van for the rest of our journey back to Indy. My mom asks to drive, I have no problem with that, so she does (kind of good too, in hindsight).
We see pitch dark black clouds straight ahead of us as we're trekking south on Indiana-Route 31. OoOhh snap. Storm ahead.
We look to our right (southeast of us) and see a bunch of white clouds lined up. My sister sees a HUGE lightning streak pop out of one 'em. Weird. We've never really seen lightning like THAT come out of bright white clouds before.
Welcome to the Midwest, home of Freak Severe Storms, and dare I say it....Tornados.
We had that in our thoughts certainly. Come on, we've seen the movie Twister. It eeriely looked just like scenes in that movie. Only thing was it wasn't windy.. at all.. trees were still. And it had yet to rain on us - key word: YET.
It was the quiet before the storm. Within split seconds, and it came quick, it was pouring on us. You know white-outs due to snow? (sure we all do in Western New York) How about white-outs due to rain in the Good Ol' Severe Weather-Friendly Midwest? Could hardly see a thing. And everything around us was flat as flat can be - plains everywhere, farmland everywhere, Oh Indiana. So it begins to FLOOD a little too. Water everywhere. Splashing everywhere. Trucks were of course the best, splashing into our face (yeah, we've all been there). My mom just goes slow and we try to beat this out, as we watch some scary-electric lightning strikes beat straight down to the ground. At one point, four simultaneous strikes too - all to the ground - from the way we were facing: one to our northeast, one to our northwest, one to our south, and one to our east.
So we all try to get weather reports as all this is going on. Nothing. I call my girlfriend Nicole. Severe storm warning for Indianapolis. No surprise there. We're in the midst of it. And of course, severe storm warnings means the conditions are right for hail and tornadoes to develop.
Honestly, it was really scary. All of us in that van had our eyes wide-open, scanning all around us for signs of a spout, or any possible cyclic activity. And then it got really windy too. So we pulled over. And, oh yeah, btw, I'm not exaggerating with any of this. And it really was scary. And if you were there it'd probably be scary too, if it doesn't sound scary. Just, being in the middle of nowhere, seeing this freak activity all around us, on all sides (multiple storms likely meeting up)...it was indeed frightening.
Goes without saying, we got through it. Yeah, we survived. Got back to Indy.
Then we watch the 11 p.m. local news.
Reports of devastation in the Town of Pendleton, Madison County. Power lines down, house damage, barn destruction (one collapsed), trees broken in half, branches fallen, tractors flipped over, and cars struck hard. Very scary sights indeed.
We watched in awe. Hm, wonder where Pendleton is? We pull up Google Maps. ... Oh, awesome. Madison County is a county over from where we were (Hamilton County) at the exact time of the storm. We were just a few roads over. To be more precise, we were approximately 15 miles from the center of the storm - where it was at its worse - and where a supposed tornado developed and struck a small town. Just missed it.
It was plowing through central Indiana, heading northeast as Nicole told me. "We saw it come from the southwest," cried a victim in Pendleton on the news. "This is just absolutely terrible." Had we left a few minutes earlier, that was us. Had the storm taken a slightly different path, we were there. And heck, I could have been driving in it! We didn't "just miss it" either. We were in it. Just not in the center of it, where it was at it's worse. But don't get me wrong either - we were in this massive storm.
Luck? Someone on our side upstairs? Call it what you will. I'll definitely say an extra prayer tonight. It was fascinating to watch, but extremely scary, being where we were and with the uncertainty. Definitely an exciting moment. Something if I'm offered again, at any point in the future, I'll pass on, gladly.
(BTW, this trip's not even half way through. And oh yeah, we're going to Missouri next. Where tornados are also known to occur...perhaps moreso than here. Yikes!)
And on that interesting note, that's all for now! Glad I could write about something different, and interesting. Only my family, I'll tell ya. Sunday, August 5th, 2007. What a day.
My family is currently on our annual summer vacation (we usually go somewhere every summer as a fam, for a week most of the time, and different spots each year, usually somewhere in the northeast region). We decided to head out to the Midwest this year, our first time out this way. And that's where we are now. In Indiana. I'm actually writing from our hotel in Indianapolis right now. Anyway...we barely missed an interesting confrontation with Mother Nature today.
So, we're in our third day here (well, second I guess - the first was pretty much just travelling). My mom happens to schedule a little two-and-a-half-hour excursion for us to North Indiana on today of all days (you'll understand in a moment).
We visited the University of Notre Dame, did the whole tour thing - really cool campus, awesome architecture, very spacious, and really breathtaking, especially all the history. we stopped at the South Bend Chocolate Factory and did a tour of that place..got plenty of free samples and a slew of other candy/food on our way out...that was fun. And then..well, then..we started our two-and-a-hour trek back home. I was driving.
We decided long before that we'd go to Fazoli's for dinner..this awesome Italian-chain place with pizza and unlimited breadsticks that we used to love in Buffalo before they closed it..so now we can only eat there went out of town. We punch it in our GPS and find out Indiana is Fazoli-happy, there's like a million of them..one of every 10-15 minutes or so. We choose to go to one halfway to Indy to avoid rush hour traffic, which is coming up too.
So...we dine there, we enjoy it, we go back to our van for the rest of our journey back to Indy. My mom asks to drive, I have no problem with that, so she does (kind of good too, in hindsight).
We see pitch dark black clouds straight ahead of us as we're trekking south on Indiana-Route 31. OoOhh snap. Storm ahead.
We look to our right (southeast of us) and see a bunch of white clouds lined up. My sister sees a HUGE lightning streak pop out of one 'em. Weird. We've never really seen lightning like THAT come out of bright white clouds before.
Welcome to the Midwest, home of Freak Severe Storms, and dare I say it....Tornados.
We had that in our thoughts certainly. Come on, we've seen the movie Twister. It eeriely looked just like scenes in that movie. Only thing was it wasn't windy.. at all.. trees were still. And it had yet to rain on us - key word: YET.
It was the quiet before the storm. Within split seconds, and it came quick, it was pouring on us. You know white-outs due to snow? (sure we all do in Western New York) How about white-outs due to rain in the Good Ol' Severe Weather-Friendly Midwest? Could hardly see a thing. And everything around us was flat as flat can be - plains everywhere, farmland everywhere, Oh Indiana. So it begins to FLOOD a little too. Water everywhere. Splashing everywhere. Trucks were of course the best, splashing into our face (yeah, we've all been there). My mom just goes slow and we try to beat this out, as we watch some scary-electric lightning strikes beat straight down to the ground. At one point, four simultaneous strikes too - all to the ground - from the way we were facing: one to our northeast, one to our northwest, one to our south, and one to our east.
So we all try to get weather reports as all this is going on. Nothing. I call my girlfriend Nicole. Severe storm warning for Indianapolis. No surprise there. We're in the midst of it. And of course, severe storm warnings means the conditions are right for hail and tornadoes to develop.
Honestly, it was really scary. All of us in that van had our eyes wide-open, scanning all around us for signs of a spout, or any possible cyclic activity. And then it got really windy too. So we pulled over. And, oh yeah, btw, I'm not exaggerating with any of this. And it really was scary. And if you were there it'd probably be scary too, if it doesn't sound scary. Just, being in the middle of nowhere, seeing this freak activity all around us, on all sides (multiple storms likely meeting up)...it was indeed frightening.
Goes without saying, we got through it. Yeah, we survived. Got back to Indy.
Then we watch the 11 p.m. local news.
Reports of devastation in the Town of Pendleton, Madison County. Power lines down, house damage, barn destruction (one collapsed), trees broken in half, branches fallen, tractors flipped over, and cars struck hard. Very scary sights indeed.
We watched in awe. Hm, wonder where Pendleton is? We pull up Google Maps. ... Oh, awesome. Madison County is a county over from where we were (Hamilton County) at the exact time of the storm. We were just a few roads over. To be more precise, we were approximately 15 miles from the center of the storm - where it was at its worse - and where a supposed tornado developed and struck a small town. Just missed it.
It was plowing through central Indiana, heading northeast as Nicole told me. "We saw it come from the southwest," cried a victim in Pendleton on the news. "This is just absolutely terrible." Had we left a few minutes earlier, that was us. Had the storm taken a slightly different path, we were there. And heck, I could have been driving in it! We didn't "just miss it" either. We were in it. Just not in the center of it, where it was at it's worse. But don't get me wrong either - we were in this massive storm.
Luck? Someone on our side upstairs? Call it what you will. I'll definitely say an extra prayer tonight. It was fascinating to watch, but extremely scary, being where we were and with the uncertainty. Definitely an exciting moment. Something if I'm offered again, at any point in the future, I'll pass on, gladly.
(BTW, this trip's not even half way through. And oh yeah, we're going to Missouri next. Where tornados are also known to occur...perhaps moreso than here. Yikes!)
And on that interesting note, that's all for now! Glad I could write about something different, and interesting. Only my family, I'll tell ya. Sunday, August 5th, 2007. What a day.