the tornado

Add onto my favorite hobbies storm-siren-chasing (not to be confused with storm chasing). The last week or so has been filled with tornado warnings and tornado sirens, and sitting on the front porch listening to them, I realized there were actually sirens in three different locations. I made a decision to find all three. I paid attention to the weather over the next week, and Wednesday night a massive storm cell moved through. I watched the storm roll in while sitting on the swings at North Park; the storm-clouds moved over the trees in front of me and then the sirens went off. People started running for their cars and I stood, stretched, lit a cigarette, and walked to my car. The next twenty minutes were rather uneventful, just the sirens wailing and the sky growing darker. No rain, no bad wind, nothing. I was on Route 48 turning onto Spring Valley to drive by work when the wind hit. We're talking sixty, seventy-mile per hour winds. The rain came down in slashing sheets, wholly obscuring my vision as I drove down Spring Valley into the storm. Cars shrieked past me, heading the opposite direction; they kept flashing their lights in warning. Three cars ahead of me remained resolute, at least until the furthest one dove into a subdivision, followed by the other two. I couldn't see anything, the wind was growing stronger, and that's when the hail started. Massive hail, the size of golf balls and even tennis balls, careening from the sky with such force that when they hit the road they leapt ten, fifteen feet into the air before slamming down onto my car (now covered with dents; thank God the windshield and windows didn't break). I drove through the subdivision and tried to navigate my way out of it, flinching with each piece of hail hitting the windshield right in front of me. By this time there were no cars anywhere, and all I could hear were the sirens barely above the racket of the wind and rain and hail. I pulled out of the neighborhood onto Route 48, now a ghost town. I drove north, thinking I was heading in the opposite direction; but the winds grew stronger and then the rain around my car began moving in circular motions, radiating out from a fixed point far ahead of me, hidden in the rain. This amazed me, spiking my curiosity; and then the trees on either side of the road ahead of me started bending over backwards, limbs breaking off and flying through the air past my car like missiles. "Oh my God, there's missiles!" Terrified, I did a U-turn in the middle of Route 48 and nearly fishtailed into a ditch. I gunned it the opposite direction and then the rain slackened and the hail stopped and the sun was shining. My heart pounded in my chest and I looked back behind me to see nothing but inky, green blackness behind me. I later learned that there had indeed been an F1 tornado in that specific area, not causing any injuries, just damaging structures and roofs and knocking down power lines and trees. 

And I was wearing sunglasses the whole time so everything was sepia. 

How artistic and awesome.