It's a Twister

(picture courtesy of WCIA, a local news station- this was the tornado a few minutes before I saw it)

This afternoon, Millie was napping. I was trying to rest, but only able to sleep between rumbles of thunder. I finally gave up and stumbled into the living room, noticing how gloomy it looked outside. I clicked on a weather website, and saw hail hitting the ground as the site loaded.

The weather site was full of bright red flashing notices, announcing a tornado warning. It had been sighted in a town very near to mine. I called my dad, who lives about 1/2 mile down the road and has a basement (we do not). He said he'd be on the way to pick us up. I finally heard the sirens began to wail.

I woke Millie and quickly put her shoes and jacket on, grabbed my keys, and went outside to wait for my dad. The rain and hail had stopped, and there was an eerie calm before the storm, a kind that only happens in the Midwest. The sky usually turns a otherworldly shade of green, but this time it stayed a deep, dark purple.

I noticed a few other people on my street were also outside and looking towards the direction of my backyard. I rounded the corner of our building, and my mouth opened wide. There, looming in the small space between my dad's house and mine, was a white, skinny funnel cloud spinning. Living in Illinois, a girl gets used to the strong storms and even a few rotating clouds that spin down and then back up into a wall cloud, but this was a tornado, and it was right there. It's the closest I'd ever been to one, and it felt like a scene from a movie.

As I watched, I called Sky at work, managing to squeak out, "I am staring at a tornado right now," before the phone went dead. Great, I thought, not the best thing to say before a phone call ends. My dad pulled up and by the time we got to his house, it was already over. Although the tornado did some damage just slightly to the south of us, nothing here was touched. It still made for quite an eventful afternoon.

I realized afterwards how ingrained blogging is in me, though- I kept thinking, "If only I had gotten a good picture!"