Tornados and hail two days in a row

I can joke about it now but in all and total seriousness I've never been that scared in my life!

 

I'm in Missouri the monsoon has set in, man I'm glad I mowed the yard Thursday. I think there's a chance of rain till Tues., then Thurs. more chances. Who said April showers? We have a lot of creeks out around me. Just glad I've never been near a tornado. Hope everyones well, later.

 

One year I was heading down to SW Missouri to do an audit on a client. I was driving down I-44 and I watched a tornado drop out of the sky, rip apart the Tracker Boat factory, hop across the highway and rip apart the French's Mustard factory and then disappear again. I had to stop because there was certainly no driving in that hail so I got to see it very up-close. Interestingly enough, I was headed to Monett, MO which is right next door to Pierce City, MO (most of which was destroyed by a tornado a couple of years later).

I'm fine with the tornados. However, I'm not sure I could get used to hurricanes. I only saw the leeward side of one and I don't think I would ever want to be any closer. I was in Barnwell, SC and I heard over the loudspeaker that I had 5 minutes to pack and get to the front door. I had no idea what was going on. I got up there and they said they already moved the jet away from Barnwell to Columbia, SC and we had to get there quick to beat the hurricane. We would have never made it to Columbia if we were in a normal sized SUV...this was one of those monster ones. The flooding from the rain was amazing, even on the highways. Columbia was flooded out already. When we got to the airport, the pilot said, no laptops, no soda, no beer and we WOULD BE wearing our seatbelts. We were off the ground within 5 minutes of arriving but I've never felt turbulence like that in my life. This jet was small and only held 8 people so I'm sure you can imagine how much we got thrown around. I made a "Life Decision" that day. I will never, ever, EVER try to outrun a hurricane again. I'll ride it out where I'm at and rent a car to get back home after it's over.

 

good morning Curt, I am glad to see you posted this morn....saw more of that footage and was worried that more bad ones would hit all you southeast folks overnight.

My bf lives in columbia and recalls that particular hurricane event quite often - he said it was awful.

anyways - glad to see you up and at it today!

Hopefully no frogs or turtles in your front yard!

 

Everything is fine here. In fact, the storm knocked all of the pollen out of the air. I can breathe, I can breathe!!! LOL

 

Hrm, if we can harness this power, we may have a replacement for Claritin and Allegra on our hands.

 

LOL....well, I was actually hoping for a pretty good storm for this reason. I think I might have hoped a little too hard. I didn't want THAT BIG of a storm. ;D

 

about 4-5 years ago, we had a series of tornados. That year, my car had massive hail damage from one storm, next day roof damage and then the third day we lost power for like 7 days! The only thing I fear when storms come now is loosing power! I have battery pumps but I dont have a generator. During that time I did not have fish, so me and my 2 dogs, my parents and their 2 dogs and my grandmother with her 1 dog all moved into my brother and sister in laws house with their 3 children and 2 dogs. It was during the summer and was like in the upper 90's. Too much family time! LOL

Though that storm I stayed at my parents house for some reason over night. I wake up to this horrid storm...it was like 8 or 9. I come up stairs and go to their bay window, watching the storm. With that I was like mom come here, check it out! Here is Chris's BBQ flying across they yard (now mind you it was from a second story deck and was still flying 2 stories up!) We sat in the window watching golf ball sized hail, BBQ pits etc flying through the sky when we hear this swoosh and house shakes! We still sat there watching. Well come to find out, a tornado touched down in the subdivision behind us, bounced over their house (lifted the roof up and placed it down) and bounced and hit a couple houses in the subdivision. Nobody got hurt, just some chimneys and trees knocked down!

But I grew up in tornado alley....which when I was little it seemed like we had more tornados then we do now. We had a 4x4 go through our house when i was little...shot right through and got stuck half way through the BR, plus our AC got struck by lighting!