not what I expected from my evening

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Josh and I had to run over to his parents last night so we ate supper with them and then left early. I had tons of work to do so I wanted to spend the evening processing pictures. On our way home from my in-laws we noticed we were driving into some crazy huge lightning. This was some of the longest and largest lightning I have ever seen. And then the really loud thunder kicked in...

My mom stopped by and Josh was called into work (power outages are not good for him). Soon after the town siren starting going off. I called my dad because he usually is Mr. Weatherman. "Uh, Dad should Mom and I be downstairs?". "Nah", he said. "Okay, but there are some swirly clouds over the Northwest of town".

As we watched, the swirly clouds started to form into a bit of a cone so my mom and I headed out to the front porch to get a better look. Lucky for me, my mom had the good sense to suggest I bring the camera. I was too surprised to even think of it.

The first tornado formed probably about four miles out of town but I had a perfect shot of it. We watched the clouds go back up and drop down a couple times. It was so incredible!

Soon after that tornado had completely disappeared another one formed to the East. This one was long and skinny but I don't know that it ever actually touched down. It was just so bizarre to see a tornado in real life!

After things died down, I emailed the pictures to my dad. My dad called to say that he sent them on to our local news meteorologist. Sure enough, there they were on the 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock news, even giving me credit for them. Here's the clip of a couple of my pictures on the news.

I got absolutely no work done but I did get my name and pictures on TV. I'd say it was a productive night afterall.

Labels: randomness