Post your tornado stories. Have you been in or very near a tornado?

[bertha katzenengel]

This was mine, less than two years after I left Southern California for Southern Maryland: The La Plata tornado, April 28, 2002 (PDF) Three people were killed by this tornado. It was an F4. Check out the photo on page eleven.

This tornado passed about 5 1/2 miles south of us. We sat in the basement -- we didn't know it was a tornado until we watched the news later -- and listened to all hell breaking loose above us, not knowing if we'd start hearing our house crashing. Our only damage was done by hail: one of our cars was pinged quite a bit, a window broke, and some of our siding had holes punched in it.

SCARY but we, and lots of other people in the area, were lucky.

What's your tornado story?

[Mutley]

1. Nothing like the LaPlata tornado, though a friend of mine was within a

few miles of that, too. When I lived in VaBeach there was a smaller tornado (F1 or F2) that wrecked the YMCA and some used car lot next door, probaby five or so miles from us. It was eerie. No rain or hail or anything. Just a *lot* of intense lighting.

[Beausoir]

2. Fargo, ND. My aunt and uncle. They headed for the basement...

when the roaring subsided, they came up and opened the cellar door to brilliant blue sky. Nothing was left.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/ndirs/collections/photography/2049404.htm&h=390&w=500&sz=73&hl=en&start=31&tbnid=AO-YDVbxGdbUxM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfargo%2Btornado%26start%3D20%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26rls%3DSUNA,SUNA:2006-07,SUNA:en%26sa%3DN


Once, I was trapped in a log cabin with straight line winds estimated at 120 mph. (Measured in a town 9 miles away)

I've never been so scared in all my life. The trees were shrieking. And so was I.

[KitchenWitch]

3. Straight line winds can be just as destructive

and unfortunately they are less easily predicted!

[uppityperson]

36. They were in Golden Ridge? dang! I was across town

It missed me by 5 houses. Blew out windows, tore up a tree, but the house was ok. Good thing, with mom and 3 little kids huddled in basement. Neighbors across the st said they didn't know it was coming until they saw debris and cars flying above the trees, then they hit their basement fast.

Edited to add, have seen several others, growing up. Funnel clouds are beautiful, dipping up and down, up and down. Scary and I still hate hearing those sirens going off. Gives me the goosebumpy creeps.

[Robeson]

4. Oh, yes. I live in Nashville, aka, tornado alley....

...I've been through 3 here. First one was when I was a kid. It went right by our house. Luckily, we had a cellar. The next one was in 98, and I was working downtown. That one went right through downtown Nashville, which helped to dispell the myth that tornados wouldn't go through the middle of a large city. Last one was this year. It jumped over our house, and hit a subdivision north of us. About 14 people died during that one.

[Nicole]

5. Two of them, both bad

I suffered losses in both of them that I'd rather not post about. So I'll just link to the noaa.gov stories & say it was a living hell in Oklahoma on both those days.

The first was:
The Red River Valley Tornadoes of April 10, 1979

The following text comes from Chapter I of the NOAA Natural Disaster Report 80-1, "The Red River Valley Tornadoes of April 10, 1979."

"To the people of the Red River Valley in Texas and Oklahoma, nothing about the weather appeared unusual during the early hours of April 10, 1979: it was business as usual. But before the day's end, three very large, devastating tornadoes swept across the area leaving scores dead and hundreds injured. Most of the deaths were in Wichita Falls and Vernon, Texas, and Lawton, Oklahoma."


"When the day had ended, the tornadoes had left in their wake a tragically high toll -- 56 dead and 1916 injured. According to the American National Red Cross, 7,759 families suffered losses in the storms


http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/19790410/disaster.php


Then there was this:
The Great Plains Tornado Outbreak of May 3, 1999

On May 3, 1999, multiple supercell thunderstorms produced many large and damaging tornadoes in central Oklahoma during the late afternoon and evening hours. Some of these storms were killers, including the twisters which moved through and/or near Dover, Shawnee, Perry and Bridge Creek, and the Moore and southern Oklahoma City metropolitan areas. Additional tornadoes also hit areas in south central Kansas, eastern Oklahoma and northern Texas, with over 70 tornadoes being observed across the region. The total tornado count makes this tornado outbreak the largest ever recorded in Oklahoma.

Statistics show that 40 people have died in Oklahoma due to the twisters and 675 were injured. Many homes and businesses have been damaged or destroyed throughout the affected areas with a total damage estimate of $1.2 billion. Five deaths, 100 injuries and heavy damage were also incurred in the Wichita, Kansas metro area.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/19990503/

[txwhitedove]

6. There are always tornados with a hurricane. You can hear

them but too busy hiding to see them.

[Langis]

7. About 16 years ago

During a really bad monsoon here in Phoenix I rode a vacuum cleaner over my pool during a tornado. I'm not sure why I was riding it, or how myself and the vacuum didn't fall in. It was kind of like a vacuum jet-ski if that makes sense.

Oh wait, maybe that was a dream.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. Spring of 1965, Twin Cities

I forget the exact day--I think it was in May--but there were seven tornados at once over the Twin Cities.

One of them passed within a couple of miles of our house in the outer western suburbs, but the only effect we received was hail the size of golf balls, which my father went outside to pick up, much to my mother's distress.

Around Lake Minnetonka, a large, amoeba-shaped lake about 15 miles west of Minneapolis (we lived in Mound, near where it says "Lynwood Boulevard"), several communities were hit by the twisters.



The worst damage occurred in Island Park, Spring Park, Navarre, and Minnetonka Beach. One whole side of the Navarre business district was wiped out, and items from the stores, including chairs from the barbershop, were later found in Wisconsin.

We had to drive through Minnetonka Beach to get to Minneapolis, and we always watched for a huge Tudor house that stood right where the road curved. The tornados reduced that house to a pile of kindling.

That night of tornados made headlines all around the world. Local residents who were traveling in Europe opened their International Herald Tribunes to see the Mound fire chief on the front page. We got a worried phone call from relatives in Germany.

The other cluster of tornados was north of St. Paul, in the suburbs of Moundsview and Spring Lake Park.

This caused no end of confusion, especially among out-of-state news reporters. Mound and Moundsview, Spring Park and Spring Lake Park. How was any outsider supposed to know that these places were miles apart?

1965 was a landmark year for weather. We had record blizzards, and we were out of school for three days because some genius had decided to park the snow plows in an open field, where they were thoroughly drifted over. These record blizzards were followed by floods along the Minnesota River south of the Twin Cities. Then came the tornados.

Fortunately, there were no further disasters that year.

[madrchsod]

9. yes straight line wind

that tore the crap out of the trees on the farm. the storm originated in southern Minnesota at mid morning and arrived in northern ill around 3:30 that afternoon. my uncle in minnesota watched his neighbors farm get level that morning. there were at least two different paths of this storm that day and they died out several miles south of where i live. that was a strange day. if i remember it was in 1974 or 75

[RebelOne]

10. Yes, once when I lived in Opa-Locka, FL,

a tornado came very close. Close enough that I could hear the freight train sound. And in Georgia, tornadoes have touched down just blocks away from my house a couple of times.

[Cannikin]

11. I live in Little Rock, Arkansas. I've had three close calls

once I even had small debris showering down in my parking lot as the tornado passed several blocks away.

[Benfea]

12. I've seen them forming all the time....

...but I've never been around when one touched down.

Years ago, I was at a party. Some guys were tripping on hallucinogenics and were in the back yard being impressed by the most stupid things (as hallucinogenics users are wont to do). I mostly ignored them until one of them started yelling like the world was ending. It turns out that he was lying on his back in the back yard, looking up at the sky at the exact moment when a tornado started forming (it touched down a couple miles away from the house) directly above him. Apparently, it cause some sort of really bad interaction with his hallucinogen.

I found that really amusing. I can only imagine what he was seeing.

[NewWaveChick1981]

13. When I was six years old, there was a tornado that touched down less than

a mile from our house. I remember how black the sky was and all the wind and rain. My parents were at work, and my grandmother was there visiting. Granny got a blanket and took us (me and my siblings) to the basement. We had a Coca-Cola party under the blanket, and it was kinda fun. Granny was scared to death, but the kids thought it was great! :eyes:

[eyesroll]

14. I ended up stuck on Amtrak when a March tornado touched down a few

miles away. They held all trains until the weather passed. No injuries, minimal damage.

My SO rode out a tornado a couple of years ago in Madison. Lots of damage in the surrounding area (a bike rack destroyed, the strip mall next door lost power, windows and signs, trees were down, etc.), but his apartment building only lost some roof panels. He was in the basement.

[noonwitch]

15. My dad outdrove one once with us in the car

It was near Temperance, MI, which is just north of Toledo, OH. We were on our way back from a weekend at Harsen's Island, and as my dad crossed over Telegraph, we could see the funnel cloud. My mom kept begging my dad to pull over so we could get in the ditch, but he said we might as well keep going and get home. We did, the tornado went a different way then it looked like it was going, and he did outdrive it.

The tornado that ripped through Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck in the late 90s came very close to where I lived at the time. I lived just north of Highland Park. I had just gotten home from work and was watching the news when they said for everyone near HP to take cover immediately-I couldn't get my animals to go into the basement, so I sat in the hallway with them, where we were away from the windows.

I had looked out the window just before taking cover-I didn't see a funnel cloud, but the clouds were that freaky greenish-brown color they get with tornado weather, and the winds were completely still, which is scary because you know the funnel is near at that point. It passed about 1/2 mile south of me.

[Aiptasia]

16. Several

The first that I recall was riding out a tornado in our family's basement when I was three years old in Fairfax, VA. That was the first time i'd seen my parents scared for their lives, so it's a very vivid memory. In pitch dark, no power, lighting flashes as the storm raged outside.

My second tornado experience was in Oklahoma, driving cross country with the parents, when I was about fifteen. We'd hit a hailstorm on the highway and had to pull off the side of the road under an underpass, and watched as a tornado did it's thing off in the distance for about ten minutes. No one was hurt.

My third tornado experience was during hurricane Hugo in 1991. My family had settled along the coast in South Carolina and I was in college at the time, and we'd evacuated to Fayetteville, NC along with my aunt and uncle. They stayed in a v-winged three story hampton inn, we stayed in a one story holiday inn. Hugo made landfall at night and we all rode out the storm as best we could. In the morning, the power was out everywhere. Plenty of damage done with trees down and debris everywhere. We decided to drive over to my aunt and uncle's hotel, and when we got there, a tornado had ripped the roof off of the left half of the hotel. The roof had smashed every car in that side's parking lot, and all we could think was, I hope their room wasn't on that side. People were camped out on cots and mattresses in the lobby and conference room. A few people were injured and ambulances were on the scene. My aunt and uncle slept through the whole thing and had no clue half of their hotel was destroyed.

My fourth tornado experience started off as a waterspout that came onshore in 1995 when I lived in a townhouse near the beach. It whisked right over my townhouse complex and you could hear all of the roofing tiles pop up and a whooshing noise. Wasn't strong enough to do any real damage but not fun to be woken up to at 3:40 in the morning.

My fifth tornado experience was during hurricane Fran, which we'd decided to ride out as it was only a level one hurricane. We stayed at my aunt and uncle's house as out of all the relatives homes, it's on the highest ground with the best drainage. It's near a communal airport, and what I thought wsa the sound of a prop plane buzzing around in the hurricane was actually a tornado coming down the street. I spotted it just in time before the windows blew out and it ripped off the top of a 24 foot maple and slammed it into their front yard, missing the roof by inches.

My sixth tornado was possibly multiple tornados, when Myrtle Beach got hit in the late 90's. My folks were actually flying home from Atlanta that day and i'd driven by their house to drop off some fresh milk and other sundries when the sky turned pea soup green. One of several tornados must have missed me in the car by just a few minutes, as when I got to their house, reports were coming in about a tornado ripping up a local restaurant i'd just ridden past, and it was in-tact when I drove past it. Another tornado ripped up downtown near the pavillion and hit the bar harbor motel on the south strand beaches, where it proceeded to the local airport and ripped up an empty field next to the one and only runway. The same runway my parents were due to land on. Their plane was already in the air and the first to land after the tornado dissipated.

My last tornado was just the other day, when a small tornado took out some trees and power lines next to my house about two blocks away during a bad hailstorm (this was about a week ago). The power went out for five hours while fire/rescue crews went about cutting up trees with chainsaws.

My next tornado is likely soon. :) Maybe as soon as tonight/tomorrow when TS alberto gets over us.

[huskerlaw]

17. I grew up in Nebraska...so, yes

I have many tornado stories.

A couple of the "best"...

1. When I was about 8 years old, a tornado hit about 3 miles south of my house. We were in the basement, and it was so loud and scary that my parents actually made us crawl under a table and cover up with blankets. The tornado ripped apart many farms, including one belonging to a classmate of my sister. I remember going to her farm for a field trip that fall (about 5 months later) and seeing huge tractors tossed into farm ponds and individual pieces of hay stuck through wooden light poles.

2. A few years ago, a tornado hit the town just south of where I was living. It was the first day of summer vacation, in the afternoon, and it completely destroyed the town's school. If it had happened a day earlier...oy. As it was, it flattened 2 towns, almost completely.

3. Also a few years ago...the town my grandparents live in was hit. The tornado went through their backyard, and killed their next door neighbor. My grandparents' house was one of only a very small handful in their part of town that wasn't completely destroyed.

[TheMightyFavog]

18. My Story

Last year, I worked for a group of radio stations near where I live. My job, along with teching NASCAR races, assisting with a local community radio auction, and driving the sation van in local parades was to haul araound a Harley Davidson that was the grand prize in their big summer contest. At the end of a week of hauling the bike around the listening area, due to some problems at the transmitter for the oldies station, I had to drive the bike to a rendevous site in central Wisconsin so that the people from the Wausau stations. (the original plan was to have my boss drive the bike down, but he had to help the Chief Engineer fix the transmitter that day) While I was heading west, I saw that the sky was getting pretty dark. By the time I hit a town called Mosinee, It started to rain. By the time I got on the western edge of the town, The rain had gotten to the point where I had no choice but to pull in to a Piggly Wiggly and wait for the rain to die down. As I was about to turn the van off, I noticed in between sweep of my wipers that there was a guy standing in the doorway of the store, frantically waving his arms, motioning for me to come in. I raced my way into the store, where the manager informed me that there was a tornado warning, and escorted me to the employee break room in the back of the store, a room about the size of a standard college dorm room, which was packed with about twenty-five people. I stayed there for about 25 minutes before the all clear sounded. It turned out there were several small short-lived F0 and F1 twisters that had spun up about a mile noth of where I was taking cover.

[Corgigal]

19. It was on Mothers day a few years ago

The clouds had a silver tint to them. We heard about a possible tornado spotted about 10 miles from our home so hubby and I were monitoring the living room windows. Hubby told me I don't like the look of that. I came to his window and I actually had to rock my head back and forth to see it. Damn thing was almost invisible. We screamed kids get into our closet. Left the dogs and cats just sitting in the living room. Hubby did grab the cell phone in case we got trapped.

House was rocking. My daughter aged 8 at the time was screaming because her back was up against the wall. Every living thing survived in our home. Our roof was pulled up so we could see sky but it wasn't completely gone. Trees fallen everywhere and our windows to the vehicles were knocked out. Our fence was completely down everywhere. One lady died and two more were badly injured when they jumped in the car and tried to out run it. One house had 3 teen aged boys who lived because they went into the bathroom. It was the only room left.

Still not okay during storms. Have a weather radio and get stomach pains. It was only a F3 but we were 3 houses from it's strike zone.

info from another site:

Berkeley (F2) The tornado that briefly touched down earlier in Dorchester County crossed Interstate 26 into Berkeley County, touching down in the Ladson and Goose reek areas. There were 442 homes damaged: 17 were destroyed, 113 sustained major damage, and the remainder had minor damage. A 90 year old female was injured severely when her mobile home was flipped and thrown more than 40 feet. She died several hours later. Several eye witnesses reported seeing vortices rotating around the main funnel. This fact was proven by the damage pattern in several areas. Damages totaled $5 million

[fishwax]

20. The May 3rd tornado (F5 in Oklahoma, 1999)

I wasn't actually in its line or anything, but I remember the night well. My best friend from high school had died the week before, and I was making my way back to Oklahoma from the funeral. My wife had finals, so she wasn't able to go with me, and she was home alone in Norman. We lived on the second floor of a cheap apartment and she went to our downstairs neighbor's. Then as it looked even worse (the most prominent of the local meteorologists said: if you are not underground you will not survive) they walked to the university library, which has several floors below ground. But the storm veered north, as tornados heading for norman always do, and hit the town of moore instead.

I was on a bus from the Texas panhandle to Norman, and we followed the storm system most of the way as it drifted up to meet us. I remember when we stopped for a quick bite at a McDonald's a little more than an hour outside of OKC. I ran into the hotel next door, and they were glued to the storm coverage of the TV. It must have been not long before the F5 tornado hit. By the time we got to the bus station everything was chaos. The road between OKC and Norman was closed, of course, as the tornado had passed right over it, and I was stuck in OKC until about four in the morning when the road was clear and Beth came to pick me up.

So many people lost homes and lives and loved ones in that storm. The devastation was unreal and the cleanup took months. It sucked being apart during those first several hours, not sure if the other was okay, but we were fortunate that we both were.

We've had other tornadoes get pretty close to us, both in Oklahoma and now here in Illinois, and some have been much closer to us than that one was. But none has been as devastating or as memorable.

[bertha katzenengel]

33. Holy. Shit.

:yoiks:
Mrs. V. has a friend who broke her ankle while running down into her basement that day. :scared:

[gollygee]

21. I was riding home from school when a tornado hit our town

and our bus passed very close to it. My mom was at the busstop and grabbed us and yanked us into the house and into the basement.

Our house was fine but a lot of houses were destroyed. My grandparents' garage was destoryed but their (attached) house was OK. It was an F-4 tornado.

I was also camping one time when a small tornado hit the campground. We waited in the restrooms but we saw the funnel cloud overhead. It tossed over a few campers but didn't do much damage.

[AngryAmish]

22. Small tornado in Oak Brook, Il in the early 80s

Sounded like a freight train.

[Crazy Dave]

23. Very near, my own front yard two weeks ago

Here's Mrs. DTW next to what used to be a nice shade tree and home to squirrels.

Another

We didn't actually see it but it did some damage through our neighborhood and power was out for about eight hours.

[EstimatedProphet]

24. Saw one form over my head when I was a kid

We were living in a trailer at the time (very reassuring) and the storms were bad that day. I looked out the window, and I saw a funnel coming down right overhead. The clouds were moving fast though, so it didn't touch down for a few miles yet. Still, it scared the pants off me.

[LSK]

25. when i was a kid, we camped in a travel trailer

In the 70s we were in Springfield, IL and a tornado clipped the campground. It missed us but some campers got ripped up.

[YankeyMCC]

26. Story that isn't full of danger but

shows how terrified I am of Tornadoes and what a crazy Texan who was apparently completely inned to the threats.

I was stationed near St Louis, it was 1994, and the area was being hit by swarms of funnels. Sitting in the office - which by the way was in a condemned building (they painted over the big red 'X's when they needed room for us - and hearing the reports on the radio and through phone calls and hearing that some funnels had beens spotted in a nearby town several of us stepped outside for a look.

I can not tell you how shocked I was when I stepped outside and saw that sky. No funnels in sight but the color and nature of the clouds, that created a solid ceiling that appeared not much higher than the roof of the 1 story building we were in, was something I had never seen - and never wish to see again - before. I can't describe it but I'm sure other tornado witnesses know what I'm talking about. There was orange, green, black, the sky was threatening in a (to this native New Englander - I had lived through some fairly sever hurricanes) very unfamiliar way.

I uttered something like "Crap! Ok what do we do now? Where do we go and hide!"

Meanwhile the Lt from Texas standing next to me says something like "Wow, let's get up on the roof and get a better look!"

We got through just fine, the funnels never got within eyesight of us and the storm passed by late afternoon. But it shook this wimp up. I know it's a big illogical but I find tornadoes much more terrifying than hurricanes, perhaps it's just because I 'grew up' with the threat and have successfully dealt with hurricanes and not tornadoes.

But I always remembered what that Lt from Texas said and from then on regarded him as dangerously insane. :)

[tigersumtin]

27. F-5 Tornado

Hit Jarrell Texas, on the afternoon of May 27 1997, This tornado killed 30 people. IH-35 splits the town in half I live on the East side and the tornado hit the West. That day you could feel the static electric ty in the air, the air was green prior to the tornado, you could almost cut it with a knife. This tornado was a mile wide and stayed on the ground for about 30 min. Afterwords It looked as if a giant flat shovel carved a path through the country side. Nothing but slabs where houses stood, no trees no grass, an no asphalt nothing left. It was very bad. I will never forget.

[Pithlet]

37. I watched a show about that one.

That tornado will go down in the history books, and they'll be talking about it for years. Entire families wiped out. So sad.

[Pithlet]

38. We had one come within a mile of our house this spring.

It was small, and did no major damage anywhere, but man, did it sound scary. I was huddled in the closet with my kids expecting the house to come down around me at any second because we didn't know it was small. We just heard the sirens and the reports of where the tornado was and what direction it was heading, which was right towards us. Very scary.

I saw one in Carroll County, Maryland in '96. I was standing out in the mall parking lot with a bunch of other people watching it go by. It was about a quarter of a mile to half a mile away. The air was absolutely still. That one did destroy a few houses, but I don't think anyone was killed.

One passed our house when I was a kid, but we were huddled in the basement and didn't see or hear anything but a loud, windy thunderstorm. It moved a house one block away from us off its foundation and moved it a few yards before putting it back down in one piece.

[Radical Activist]

28. A number of times.

I've lived most of my life in Tornado prone zones. The last one earlier this year caused millions of dollars of damage in my town and passed within 1/2 mile of my house. I wasn't too worried since I have a basement. The bad part was being without power for days afterwards. From a distance, I like tornadoes.

[WoodyTobiasJr]

29. Pine Lake, Alberta - July 2000

I was camping about 45km from where this tornado struck. We had some pretty wicked weather where we were but we just figured it was a bad thunderstorm. It wasn't until the next day we heard about what had happened.

http://www.ontariostorms.com/2000/jul/14/

We went to Pine Lake last year to camp. There isn't any evidence left of the tornado. Green Acres campground is up and running again. But you still get this real creepy, ominous feeling inside of you.
We even had a real big scare that weekend. The one day started out absolutely hot and sunny. Then around supper time it got real dark and real cold and real windy in an instant. It was raining so hard and the winds were so furious we couldn't see the picnic table that was 20 feet from the tent. Then it started hailing. We were sure that there would be tornado touching down somewhere close.
While we were huddled in the tent, my wife made a very astute observation, she said "at what point do you decide to leave?". But really - when do you??

We stuck it out and the storm passed, thankfully with no tornadic(?) activity but it sure was scary as hell.

On a positive note, the tent came through unscathed. No rips or leaks or any kind of damage. I would highly recommend the tent we got to anyone. And once I find out the name I'll let you know :P

[ironflange]

30. I flew around that storm

We were on our way to London that day. The plane had to detour around that storm; it went up much higher than we were. When we got there, we found out what had happened. It was a really big scary mother of a storm, that one.

[bertha katzenengel]

31. TO EVERYONE

This is a great thread and I am digging all the responses. :hi:

[mvd]

32. An F3 tornado came near us - Limerick, PA

It was in 1994. Came at night and killed a family that was sleeping. We just got a bad storm here.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

34. A week before I was due to give birth to SonOfGoG the younger,

I was on my way to a wedding gig near Leesburg, VA, with a couple of friends. They'd brought gifts for me to open; and I joked with them that I had my emergency labor instructions along, in case anything happened...I really did bring them with me.

We were about 5 miles from our destination when the rain and wind suddenly became so intense that we had to pull off Route 7. There was a lot of rain; but through the window, I could just barely make out a few small trees nearby that were close to being snapped in two. So I opened the presents and hoped we wouldn't have to use the labor instructions.

The storm let up after about 10 minutes. When we arrived at the wedding location, there was no power, and limbs were down all over the property. We learned that a small tornado had touched down about a mile from the place where we'd pulled over.

The same day of your LaPlata tornado, there was a touchdown in College Park, less than a mile as the crow flies from where we live. 2 sisters were killed when their car was picked up and tossed by the whirlwind. I had a rehearsal that night, so I left extra early, because I was afraid the trip would take longer than the usual 30-40 minutes, since the tornado's path had crossed the Beltway. It took me 2.5 hours to get there! I was an hour late. The principal cellist was even later...He'd been in the Fine Arts building on the U of M campus when the tornado touched down...He was watching out the window when it did!

Here's hoping LaPlata doesn't get hit again! :toast:

[SteppingRazor]

35. Lost just about everything to a tornado in Missouri...

back in Nov. 1998. That sucked.

On edit: I did manage to save my guitar. So I had that going for me.