Twister!

Once upon a time Mim and I got a call from Kwiddens, who had been involved in a drug bust at church camp, and the other girls were being evil and mean to her, so she wanted to come home. Mim and I checked the weather report, and there were lots of tornadoes that night (it ended up being 63 in the county over the duration of the storm), but it looked like the storm was moving in the opposite direction we would need to drive, so we started driving to go get her. Unfortunately, I've never gotten the hang of north, south, east, west...I can find them easily here in Utah Valley because the mountains are always east, and always visible, so no problem. South Dakota, however, is quite flat, and mostly made of cornfields, so Mim and I got our directions wrong and when we started driving, we were driving into the storm, not away from it. Oops.

The storm was getting increasingly violent as we drove, and at one point, we were like, "Wow, I think that is a tornado!" and it was heading straight for us. We had to stop driving, because the car was starting to get lifted off the road a bit. We pulled over and waited and watched. Mim and I LOVE storms. When we lived in Oklahoma we got them all the time and the siren would be wailing and we would still be out on our front porch going "Oooooooooooh!" until the very very last minute, then make a mad dash for the bathroom, which was the only room in the house with no windows.

Needless to say, we were quite aware of the danger we were in, but we were also really excited about getting to see a storm like this up close! As we were pulled over we saw a huge funnel approaching us from the left. There was a semi parked on the other side of the interstate, and when it hit the semi it TIPPED IT OVER. Kaboom. So we looked at each other, and we were like, "We are so going to die! But what an awesome way to go!" because we're idiots. The funnel kept coming toward us, and finally encased us in our car. You would not believe the noise. It was deafening, and there was absolutely no visibility inside the funnel; it was pitch black. We, of course, were still having a blast...the car was rocking back and forth and almost tipped, but we had pulled down a little deeper into the ditch at the side of the road, so we were a bit more sheltered than the semi had been.

Then, the eye. The eye was the complete opposite of the rest of the funnel. You wouldn't believe how noisy it was out there, but you also wouldn't believe the dead silence in the eye of the storm. It was still pretty dark, but there was the most amazing lightning. Inside the funnel, the lightning looked neon green, and was in these pulsing balls...it's so hard to describe, but it was the coolest thing I have ever seen ever.

The rest of the funnel came and went, and we just sat there, totally amazed by what had just happened to us. We couldn't believe we were even alive. We decided we should probably go home and Kwiddens would have to stay at camp another day.

Conclusion: we have guardian angels. Or something. Because DUDE, it tipped over a semi, and not us. We win!