For those of us who have experienced tornadoes or weather capable of producing tornadoes, what is/are your story/stories?
I have had multiple experiences with tornadic weather in my life that I felt like sharing (strap in folks, I have a lot for a non storm chaser):
1. Around May-June 2010, I saw my first ever cloud rotation while on a Girl Scouts picnic. I remember it as a hole in the cloud where you could see cloud wisps dancing about in a circle. I was well into tornadoes at that point and was flipping out in excitement as the circulation passed over us. Intense rain hit us only a minute or two later and I remember running through the deluge to the safety of a car.
2. Literally a month or two later, I survived an unwarned EF2 tornado while on vacation with my grandparents in New York. Crossed the lake we were staying at and did the most intense damage only 100 yards from my location. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but it made me reconsider my dream of being a storm chaser.
3. Two years later, I was at a sleepover with friends during an incredibly nasty storm. Woke up the next morning to find out an EF1 tornado passed less than a mile from my house and not far from where I was staying. At the time, I didn’t know if it had hit my house or not and the power was still out, so I couldn’t contact my parents. Had a panic attack thinking they might have died in the tornado. Thankfully, nobody was hurt in this one either.
4. In 2019, I was celebrating my grandfather’s birthday when we got an alert on our phones of a tornado warning. Went outside to watch the storm and saw circulation in the clouds for the first time since 2010. Understandably panicked. As we were driving home, saw some weird clouds and I snapped a picture of one that I thought could potentially be a funnel. Looking back at that photo, I’m 99.9% sure it was. Same storm did drop a tornado that day several miles away (I think it was EF1 but I don’t remember.)
5. Not 100% sure about this one but I still wanted to add it. This year, was driving home from the last performance of a musical I was in when I encountered severe weather. There was a bowl-like cloud that I was very concerned about that seemed to vanish after a minute or two. I did not see any discernible rotation, so it was likely an SLC, but the rain that hit soon after I passed the cloud reminded me too much of that first tornadic weather encounter. Pulled over because lateral wind was nearly forcing me into oncoming traffic. Looked at RadarOmega and was able to confirm that there was rotation present in that storm. (Don’t know if there was a tornado watch tacked on it but it wouldn’t surprise me)
6. This last one came out of nowhere. One night this year there was a seemingly normal rainstorm. The next day, my Mom found out from Facebook that a completely unexpected EF0 tornado touched down a few miles from home. Knocked down a small wooden structure and made crop patterns that are unmistakably from a tornado.
What are your experiences with this kind of weather?