Maji's blog: "Life shtuff..."

Sky was black as pitch when leaving the base today, so obviously I knew I need to get to the car as soon as i could as this wasnt your typical afternoon shower.

The vast parking lot there has but one available exit, as its next to the river. I reached the car just as things were getting blustery.

Now this isnt what I'd call twister country, thats more prevalent in the outlying county where there are more open fields for the conditions to culminate.

But as I got in the car, I lost the syline on both sides of me, the right of me being the direction of the exit to the secure lot. In a few moments it became the clouds were tapering down to ground level, and I thought "no way , to be sure not", but then i saw the roofing coming off the Ops Center at the end of the lot, and then the debris field swirling, giving it some definition, and thought, well shit, what now, thats the exit. The funnel cloud to the left of the lot was more listless and not really throwing anything up.

By the time I looked right again, the visibility dropped off and the rain bands  started sweeping and could no longer see it but could hear its turbine-like hum. All in a minute the entire lot was standing in an inch of water, then it what seemed like the next ten seconds the wind bands moved in closer and swept the whole lot clean sending this horizontal spray zipping just above the ground.

I moved my car more to the center of the lot to get away from the power lines that were twirling like a playground jumprope party, and as well as out of the fall length of the poles. Several others obviously put it together why I was moving and followed suit.  A couple bursts of lightening in the adjacent marsh were close enough to both shut down my car engine and froze my phone, rendering some error i had never seen before, and had to pop the battery out to get it to reboot.

The car started right back up, but by that time was rocking and feeling pretty light, so I had it in gear and poised ready to  run around the fenced in lot to do what I could to stay on the outskirts. I was about to break my neck looking all sides to keep an eye on these things. The one on the left moved farther away and kind of lost definition, and to my right  was no visibility, but thats where the wind was coming from now, so focused on that.

By that time the phone had rebooted and I got a little footage as it was disipating, and you can kind of still hear it wizzing a even with the the car shut up tight. Within bout ten minutes it was done and I could see the exit, and the shredded rooflines, and began the hobble home detouring around the trees and debris and of course powerless intersections, many of which by that time were manned with  police directing.

Pretty miniscule taste of what theyve been dealing with in bama and missouri, but sure raised my awareness to their plight and how quick it all goes down. Im more used to hurricanes here where youre waiting days for it to arrive

Alls well around my homestead  btw. Few limbs and what not from the parent storm cell.

Dropped the video in comments, not much to see as it was bout over by that time.