Tornado

Mother Nature very nearly destroyed me this morning.

There were tornados about 20 minutes away from where we are.

Here is a story about it on Buzzfeed.

I left to go to the grocery store, and after about ten minutes on the road, people on the radio started talking about this storm coming in and how mobile homes would be entirely destroyed, tornados would touch down, etc.

I consider myself a relatively cautious, intelligent human being. But for awhile, while these dark, scary clouds started rolling in, I actually said to myself "It's mid-November. Tornados don't happen this time of year."

Um...

Yes. Yes they do.

Eventually I turned around to go home. While doing so, something crazy happened. Rain came down to hard that I couldn't see anything, and hail started up a little while later. When I was about five minutes from home, wind gusts pelted the side of my car so severely that my car...sort of...lifted?

Not a lot. But enough that I thought "Ok, this wind just lifted the side of my car. Probably not a good thing to be out in. Let's get home, maybe?"

No such luck. I decided to call Tom in the middle of my panic, and pull over at a gas station. Certainly, a flimsy gas station is the BEST place to go during a tornado, right? Well, better than the car at least.

Water started coming in under the door of the gas station. I knew I had to get home because if the rain kept up like that, I would be driving through floods.

Luckily, the rain stopped abruptly. I considered for a moment that it could just be a lull, and sprinted out to the car to make it home.

Another storm came through after I got home. We were all okay. Unfortunately, areas nearby, towns where coworkers, family and friends live, didn't do so well...

I'm keeping them all in my thoughts, and hoping to hear that my coworkers are OK tomorrow.

Yikes.

Anyone else in the area or in the line of the storms, please stay safe!