work and tornadoes=not fun

[Rine]

Wow, it's been one hell of a bad weather day. Drove into work at eight AM; streets flooded very badly and my car stalled out several times but for some stupid reason, I kept going. Finally get to work at the mall and start working. About an hour and a half later, some customer comes in screaming about a tornado down the road and people start freaking. We went outside for a look; police cars were zipping around the mall with their sirens blaring. Lots of people were getting out of their cars and coming into the store for safety.

Thankfully, it was just a funnel cloud that passed over and nothing touched down. Kicked up loads of debris flying through the air.

However, at the other, bigger mall, which is about two and a half miles away, they received bad damage from an actual tornado touchdown. My sister was shopping in that mall--I found out about this when she made a frantic call to me to say that they were being evacuated to safety--really freaked me out.

I was surprised at how many people came in to shop despite the dangerous weather. I guess some people just don't know when to stay home. About half the employees called in, so we were very short staffed but thankfully not busy; just more customers than I would expect.

Here's a story about it with pics of the damage at the other mall.

Good news was that they closed the university for the day! So, yay, no class! I'm so happy to be home even though it was a rough, dangerous commute home.

[LizaMarie]

Yikes, that's alarming. I'm glad I don't live in a part of the country that gets tornadoes, they are way too unpredictable for me. Snowstorms though, we get plenty of, and I have always been amazed at the number of people trekking out in horrible weather to stock up on bread and milk so they can survive the blizzardly fallout.

[Gurndigarn]

I was on my way to a town once and got this strange phone call from my boss. "GURNDIGARN! ARE YOU OK?"

"Uh, yeah.... Why?"

"Well, there was a tornado that struck NearbyTown!"

"Ohhhhhh... that's why there was a nice breeze last night." (And there was, until it went from brisk, cool breeze to dead, stuffy calm in about 1.5 seconds. The wife and I were rather dissappointed. And as it turns out, I was about three minutes away from my destination: the shopping plaza that got hit by the tornado.)

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Time for my tornado story! This happened about 12 or 13 years ago, I'd guess.

My dad is big into open-wheel sprint car racing and one night we went to a race in Beaver Dam, WI. On the way to the track, we had to pull over for a thunderstorm with rain so heavy so could not see the road in front of you.

At this point we were confronted with a choice: Assume the races were cancelled and turn around and go back home, or keep going to the track hoping conditions were better there. Dad chose the latter option.

We got into Beaver Dam, and the sky was blackish-green. Also the clouds seemed to have little fingers extending down from them, but not approaching the ground. As we got into town, the local radio station said the races were cancelled. Great, now you tell us.

We stopped at a gas station to use the restroom or something and the tornado sirens were going off. The clerk offered to have us pull our car under the canopy and take shelter there, but dad decided instead we were going to hop back in the car and head east as fast as we could safely go. Meanwhile the radio is reporting flooding and trees and power lines down in Beaver Dam.

We kept going until we hit the interstate to go back home, and then stopped at a truck stop for a bite to eat as it started to pour again.

After we left the truck stop, a bolt of lightning hit the road right in front of the car, and my mom almost had a heart attack.