Oh yes. Anyone from the Midwest who has lived there for a good five years or so will probably say yes to one nearby. I lived in Chicago and while it was not Tornado Alley, it was hit with them periodically. And during a particularly bad spate of attacks in the 70's, I saw quite a few. I remember the sky turning a green color and everything got so quiet. Then the noise and then the wind and then the effects. I could see it in the sky. It was scary as HELL. And especially because my daughter was living in Oak Park, a suburb about 15 minutes away. I did not know if she was okay. I was okay because I was in a college and we had good protection. But where was she? In a car? In some outside area? I was scared.
It turned out that my mom's best friend's house, which was about a mile away from ours, was demolished. Poor woman. And the weirdness was the house was totaled, but there were knickknacks below a blown-out picture window that were perfectly untouched and standing up.
I missed the most important signal. Everything gets really HOT and still. HOT being the operative word, because all of a sudden at a moment's notice, it gets cold. Like several degrees. Like 20 degrees colder at least.
As much as I admire looking at and being in the beauty of dark stormy weather, I'm glad I've not seen one that close.
And, yes, there comes a (rare-for-me) point when the weather may get TOO dark and stormy, sirens going off - - scary to me -- but, even at that, with sirens, I'm still outside breathing it all in. Must be that Iowa young childhood and my dad taking my siblings and me outside when storms would start coming in - - from seemingly endless miles away we could see the clouds barreling -- "look how beautiful this all is!" he'd say over and over. I've never been afraid of storms, probably in large part to his excitement. (If it got really bad, of course, we'd be inside.)
That's a gorgeous image you've posted. :)
This post was edited by WelbyQuentin at June 9, 2019 8:13 PM MDT
I haven't been that close to one but I watched one from my house a few years ago that was just a few miles away. It was moving away from my house. It seems like we don't get very many tornado warnings where I live in South Dakota but for some reason when I visit Colorado in the summer they're always under a tornado warning. I saw one from my uncle's front porch once. He lives in Brighton CO which is northeast of Denver. My husband proposed to me during a tornado warning. That was in Colorado but we didn't know about it when it happened because it was by Colorado Springs which doesn't have tornado sirens.
When I lived in another state in the south: it was 12 noon and all the street lights came on the sky was a dark green with white clouds and the feeling in the air was one of doom. It was awful. I was at work and called my daughter who was asleep, she was miffed I woke her up and didn't want to hear about a tornado and hung up. I went into a cooler at a nearby 7-11 and waited. Didn't see it but it passed close to my house where my daughter was. That is as close as I got.
Nope. Tornados aren't unheard of where I live, but I've never seen one. And I've never spent much time in any part of the country where they occur regularly.
Tornado, no. Water spout, yes. We were out on a fishing trip and a water spout formed about 100 yards behind the boat. We were moving away from it and it from us, so I wasn't afraid. It was actually pretty cool -- No, it really sucked (but I mean that literally). So it sucked AND it was cool. There are two words you don't often hear in the same sentence.
This post was edited by CallMeIshmael at June 10, 2019 1:42 PM MDT
WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH 