Fun With Weather

Ok. So yesterday Stormy & I are driving back from St. Louis on Hwy. 55 going North. It was a beautiful day in St. Louis...82 and sunny. We had gone for a walk, were wearing shorts...awesome. We left around noon for the roughly five hour drive back to the Madison area, going up 55 all the way through Illinois (which, pardon me for saying, is the flattest, dullest drive in America..though I've never been to Kansas or Nebraska).

We had the windows down, the radio up, and our spirits were high...until we got around Normal, Il. The weather turns cold, the skies cloud over...and then turn green. Pea-fucking-soup green.

Now Stormy is from the East coast and has never seen the sky turn this color. I had told her before that if she ever sees the sky that color to "seek shelter immediately". So she asks "Is that the color green you were talking about?"

Oh shit. Yes. Yes it is. We turn the music off and try to find a station with a weather report. This is what we heard:

"...tornado warning until 3pm..and we're getting reports of a tornado touching down at the WalMart on Hwy 9. We can't confirm or deny this report...blah blah blah".

We didn't hear the rest. I looked up to see an exit for Hwy 9. I looked to the left and saw no WalMart....

But I did see a huge fucking tornado. Maybe 300 yards away. That's when the hail started..bigger than golf balls..it sounded like someone was banging on the car with a hammer. We got under an overpass but were directly in the path of the tornado. There were a couple of guys outside their cars..of course..and one of them comes running up screaming "The tornado's coming! The tornado's coming!" and everyone takes off as fast as they can drive. Zero visibility. Hail. Driving rain. 55 mph. Scary.

In retrospect we should've stayed where we were and gone up into the crook of the overpass. But we didn't. We managed to survive anyway.


M. PotPie