It's a Twister!! It's a Twister!!

We've had another wave of tornadoes come by earlier tonight. Now we are sitting here listening to the rain and hail hit the house. The news just said another wave might be heading our way.

Anyway, like I said, we had a wave of them go by earlier. This time they were between 5 and ten miles away.

So, what do we do? We do what everyone around here seems to do (I think it is the State sport), we hopped in the car and went tornado chasing.

The furthest we went was the county line and that put us between three and five miles from them.

The pics are not the best, and we didn't see one on the ground. We did watch the massive wall clouds go by and were able to watch a few try to form.

Enough of my yammering, here are the pics.

This is the first wall cloud.

In the center of this pic you can see where the clouds are at the ground. This is where the tornadoes started dropping. Unfortunately the tree made it so we couldn't see anything.

Another view. This time you can see, well at least we could, the clouds were starting to rotate.


Here's an interesting pic. The dots are not rain - it's dirt. The wind was really starting to pick up at this point and you could 'feel' it in the air. It definitely makes one feel alive.

This was also the point when the tornado sirens were starting to go off in the town to the north. We have relatives who live up there so we were definitely hoping for the best. We were also hearing confirmation that one was on the ground and moving east.

Another pic of the storm really getting started.

Then the clouds started boiling right in front of us...less than half a mile.

Now the sirens are starting to sound in the two towns to the north east of our location.

See the dirt again? I was needing to press against a building in order to stand still.

By now we have changed locations to a spot about 1/4 mile south. Where we were was just looking a little too 'iffy'. We have been under a tornado when it formed and that is what it felt like and looked like. We have also been around too many of them to want to get close again.

Here is the reason we decided to move.

The tornado didn't fully form and lasted only a few seconds, but it formed right above where we had been.

Then it was gone......

...and then it went black.

It is only 9:00 PM, but it looks like mid night - we decided to high tail it home - just in case.

Well, it's still raining hard, but the hail has stopped.

I guess I'll let you all go for now.

Till next time...

Cheers ~
Larry