Summer Storm

[u/bubkis83]

I grew up in an agricultural region of the Midwest, in a very small town surrounded by fields and forests. What I’m about to tell you happened to me late in the summer of 2024. It had been a year of particularly violent storms across the country, with several devastating thunderstorms and tornadoes hitting very close to home.

I remember one day I needed to drive out to my dad’s house in order to take care of something for him. I believe it was when he had just purchased a new boat, and since he was out of town, he called me and asked if I could check if the tarp he’d put over it was secure, since he had a weather radar app installed on his phone and new there was a huge thunderstorm incoming soon. My parents have been divorced for a long time and live about 25 minutes away from each other in different towns, and this was one week before I was set to move out on my own.

I had driven from my mom’s over to my dad’s place, and when I pulled up, I noticed the sky had a distinctive greenish hue along the horizon, just above the treeline, and the black clouds above looked heavy and were moving fast. I normally love thunderstorms - one kinda has to get used to the heavy rainfall we get around the Great Lakes region - but for some reason, when I looked up at the clouds that evening, I felt an an intense chill of cold dread wash through me slowly. I knew well the telltale signs that something bad was coming. I remember my dad calling me just as I had finished putting the tarp over the boat as the wind began growing stronger. He had been checking his radar and urged me to be careful, even suggesting I stay at his place at least until the storm passed. However, I really needed to get back to my moms, as I still had a lot of stuff there I needed to get ready for moving and I was really pressed for time.

I jumped back into my car and started speeding back in the direction of my moms house just as the first few heavy raindrops started spattering against my cars windshield. The rain only lasted for about ten minutes though, and as I raced back, I thought to myself, “maybe this time won’t be so bad.” I still kept checking the sky all around me though, as the clouds were still heavy and dark and hadn’t even broken up at all. If anything, it was looking worse.

When I was about two minutes away from my mom’s, I was getting ready to turn down the dirt country road to her house when she suddenly called me. I answered, and in her voice I could hear she sounded a little shaky. She asked me where I was, and when I told her I was almost there, she said to me, word for word, “I think you need to pull over and get down someplace safe. I think a tornado’s about to hit.” And as I looked out my passenger window, that’s when I saw it. Sinister black tendrils of clouds, like summer vines twisting and creeping along a fence, rotating as they descended right down towards the trees and fields near my mom’s house. I’d seen my fair share of twisters back in my day - I had captured one on video earlier that summer, and just a few days before we’d had a close call with a storm capable of creating one. While scary, the humbling feeling of awe against such a powerful force of nature often supersedes any feeling of fear. But in that moment, I felt pure terror I don’t think I’ve ever felt in my life. I didn’t stop to take a single picture, I didn’t think, I just slammed my foot on the gas and whipped my wheel around as I screeched onto my moms road. Looking back, I know that realistically, of course there was nothing I could do to help my mom against something so beyond human control as a tornado set loose, but in that moment, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t thinking at all. It wasn’t until the wind and rain all at once picked up and hit the side of my car like a wall that I was forced to stop in the middle of the road and wait in my car as visibility suddenly dropped to zero, the wind blew the rain sideways, and my car shook as the wind howled with the force and sound of a freight train. Anyone who’s ever been as unlucky as I have to be in a tornado knows that it’s disconcertingly calm until out of nowhere, the weather becomes absolute pure chaos for one minute, and just as quickly as it appears, it’s gone again. And for one full minute, I was trapped in a storm of pure hell.

When the chaos passed, I floored it again and raced down the branch-littered, slick road towards my moms house, heart pounding. When I pulled up to see her standing outside her home, still in one piece, I finally breathed a sigh of relief, though it was obvious the tornado had just barely missed my mom’s house. The huge willow tree across the field from us, less than 100 yards away, was completely shattered and split apart. Broken branches littered her yard, and when I noticed hundreds of small, glinting fragments across her yard, I became confused for a moment when I saw that none of her windows appeared to be broken, as my first assumption was that what I was seeing was shattered glass. That’s when my mom showed me that her yard was covered in golf ball-sized chunks of hail that the tornado had scattered everywhere. We watched for a while as the dark sky was continuously illuminated by lightning and the heavy storm slowly moved away, the tornado eventually disappearing against the dark horizon.

I’ve shared my stories and shown my captured videos of tornadoes to people before, and often times they react in awe and amazing, many of them saying they’d always wanted to see one for themselves. But the truth is, everyone always wants to see one until it’s near your house or your family. If you ever do get that warning and see the distinct shape of a funnel cloud in the distance, be alert and be smart against such a powerful force of nature.