tornado story

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

There's something wrong with the Beav...

This world has some wide open spaces that would amaze you to the smallness of man and the glory of God.  I don't say this lightly or without cause.  I have a fascination that borders on reverence when it comes to big wind.  I was driving across South Dakota with my friend Jona.  We were on our way back to her house in MN from going to the movies in Sioux City, South Dakota.  A severe thunder storm had kept us at the theatre long after the movie but the storm had moved off to the East and it was safe to make the drive.  We actually caught up the storm and I noticed to the right of the highway was this huge beaver tail cloud formation.  The beaver tail was big and smooth and jutted out of the storm some 10 to 15 miles as far as I could reckon.  The fact that it was so smooth indicated to me that there was a heck of a lot of intake and at a pretty good clip that the cloud looked so well defined.   This was a big storm.   

Jona looked over at me as she had seen my surprise.  "What's the matter?"  I looked straight ahead, "Keep your eyes peeled.  I'm a little concerned." "Why?" She asked.  I pointed to the cloud formation, "That thing is called a beaver tail.  It shows the intake of the storm that we're driving right into the back of right now."  " --And that's bad?"  "Well, yeah it is -- particularly since the clouds are now turning green.  Keep your eyes peeled."  Not a second later as if on cue, a barrage of red brake lights went off like a ripple down the freeway toward us.  Every single car was slamming on the brakes.  Just as I looked above the roofs of the cars and toward the horizon a white finger-like cloud swept across the highway from right to left across eight lanes of traffic and exploded into a field to my left not more than a quarter mile from us.  Jona slammed on the brakes.  Tornado.  and a big one too.  As it picked up dirt in the field it became more and more defined.  An easy F3.  No question.  Jona screamed I yelled out 'Cool!' or something and got smacked in the arm pretty quickly.  "What do we do?!!"  Jona screamed.  The tornado was moving off to the North/Northeast fairly quickly. "Nothing.  It won't come this way -- look it's moving away...AWESOME!"  Another hit to my arm.