One hell of a scary night!!!!

BIGREDIOWAN

BIGREDIOWAN

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Iowa got slammed yesterday with severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. We had a tornado hit a town in the NE part of the state and level part of the town with I believe 13 people being killed unfortunately. My wife and I were watching the news last night at 10:00pm when Des Moines got slammed by a storm with 80+ mph gusts. Next thing we know the power is starting to flicker and it started sounding really funny outside. I looked out the front window and a funnel cloud was forming right across the street and was being lit up by lightning. I don't have a basement so I just ran downstairs with the wife and dogs and went into the bathroom underneath the stairs. Scary damn thing to see form across the street!

 
Went thru the big one that hit Omaha in the 70ies. Very scary stuff. After it happened the wife and I spent several nights in a cubby hole under the stairs in the basement with our two dogs.

T_O_B

 
Man!

I used to chase those on my motorcycle back in my Teen Years with an umbrella..(Thought I'd be able to fly if I opened it in the eye of the thing).

The closest I got were a few hail stones..(They sting on a mc).

I didn't see my 1st funnel until I moved out here and Mesa, AZ got one.

Do they still recomend gettin' in a Bathtub?

 
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T_O_Bull said:
Went thru the big one that hit Omaha in the 70ies. Very scary stuff. After it happened the wife and I spent several nights in a cubby hole under the stairs in the basement with our two dogs.

T_O_B
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May 1975! I'll never forget that. I think a total of 12 tornadoes touched down that day. We lived in South Omaha, so no damage, but West Omaha was pretty much leveled. I remember trying to call a guy I was dating at the time, but the phone just kept ringing. I thought he must be OK, but found out later that his house had been blown away just as he made it to the basement. We spent many times down in the basement when I was growing up. "There's no place like home"! I'm amazed at storms and tornadoes and would love to storm chase some time!

 
Man BRI I'm glad you and your family are OK. I live in south Texas so in the 23 years of my life I think I've seen about 3.....funnel clouds. Its the Hurricanes we have to worry about here.

 
Shoot I want to say that about 5-6 years ago there was a funnel cloud in South Sioux City that never touched......thats the closest that I've ever been to a tornado

 
I work for the city of Norwalk as a police officer as most of you know. Well one of my FTO's told me that last year when Norwalk got hit by a large tornado he was watching the storm come into the west side of town. He realized it was going to be worse than he thought so he started to head back to the police station. He had a rider with him in the passenger side of the car who was absolutely freaking out because the storm was getting so bad. He freaked out and jumped out of the car at an intersection and ran off into the trees. My FTO said screw it and drove on to the police station. As he got out of his car behind the station a tornado touched down in the parking lot of the police station and chased him to the back door. It ripped the back door off of the station just as he was getting past it. Then it went back up a little and hit the top of the fire station which is right next door to us. Thankfully the tornado only touched down for second, but it did hover just far enough off of the ground to destroy a ton of trees and knock power out and then destroy a home that sits on a few acres of ground on the east edge of town. They said if this tornado would've touched down it would've destroyed the city.

 
The closest I've come to a twister is back in early May of 93. My supervisor and I were working up stairs in the hangar (brick hangar) and a storm was barrelling down on the base. You could hear the winds howling outside. Then all of a sudden it got dealthly quiet and calm and you could feel the pressure build in your ears. The first time we looked at each other and just sort of shrugged it off, but a few minutes later it did it again so we locked up the shop and headed down stairs. Found out later that evening the unofficial report was a small twister or funnel clould formed over the base.

This year my wife and I bought a weather radio. Last night it went off twice....before I shut the damn thing off cuz it kept waking me up <_<

 
We have ours in the bedroom. During the day, the local weatherman are all over the storms if they're serious. They'll break into normal programming for however long (sometimes for hours on end) if they need to track the storms. It's at night when we're asleep that always bothered me.

My wife and I talked about getting one every year since we moved back to Oklahoma but never did. Then, like I said, we bought one from Walmart. You can program in just your county and/or surrounding counties so you're not getting warnings from some place 200 miles away. For us, I have our county and the county west of us since most storms in OK come from the west/southwest. I think you can even program whether you want it to go off for watches and warning or just warnings but I can't remember exactly.

 
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I am glad you are alright....it is always scary when tornadoes come around. There were a couple up here in MN. The city of Hugo got hit really hard....a 2-year-old was killed and a lot of homes were destroyed. One of my students' family lives close to the town that was leveled.

 
It is very nice to hear you and your family are ok. I grew up in that area and have seen several serious storms. Infact I actually saw the one that hit Port Neal, when it hit. The power plant in Sioux city. That was unreal. I now live on the west coast and poeple don't pay any attention to the sky or the clowds or any of that. We've been out here about 10 years and I still find myself looking up. LOL

 
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