Extreme Weather

I love extreme weather. Wind, rain, thunder, hail, dark clouds – Awesome! Being a storm chaser would be a blast. Unfortunately, I have never been able to see perhaps the most extreme and most commonly thought of severe weather of the Midwest. A tornado.

My underlying goal in life is to see a tornado. Yes, I know they kill people and do thousands of dollars in damage to homes, crops and whatever else gets in their path, so I’ve devised the following criteria by which I want to see one.
1. Must not be near any people accept myself (and whoever is stupid enough to go with me)
2. Must not be near any homes, buildings or other property.
3. Must not be near any crops, livestock or other commodity.

Essentially I want to see a tornado ripping through uninhabited C.R.P land (for those of you who aren’t from farm land, click here)

My dream almost came true as I was driving up from Missouri. Torrential rains - people pulling off it was so bad. Then as the rain broke I saw across the fields this incredibly dark cloud with fingers coming down out of it. I watched them swirl up and down for about 10 minutes. Finally as I topped this hill and had a great view of the cloud I saw this finger reach down almost touching the ground. Maybe 50 feet off the ground at most. It was dark grey with a white streak running down the middle of it. I slowed down to watch when Deann reminded me that we aren’t going storm chasing with the boys and the baby sitter in the minivan. Doh! Pressed resume on the cruise and never found out if it turned into a tornado or just another finger that disappeared into the clouds again.

The voice of reason is always right, but not always what you want to hear, is it?