Tornado

It was a bit of an extraordinary day.

First, I was up before the sun even thought about rising, studying with all my remaining energy for the hardest final of my college life--incidentally, also the last final of my undergraduate career. I was so busy cramming I missed breakfast, which always makes for a grumpy girl at ten in the morning. And I was even late (and wet) for the final, because my trash can fell over by the road and I had to pick it up. But the test went well.

It was a beautiful day, at first. Lots of fast-moving clouds, sun breaking through. My kind of gloriously windy day. The unusual thing about it was that we had five tornado sirens in the next two hours, with sheets of rain coming and going. We went into school for one or two of them, and stayed put until almost five--but that got old.

I finished my last paper and went home. Tina Kyle was sleeping on our couch, Mandy was watching a movie, and I started cleaning. Big weekend, this one is--can't have a smelly trash can when family comes! Nothing extraordinary there!

My little brother called me about half past six. Said there was a bad bit of storm showing up on the radar, coming our way, and we should go into school. I (frankly) scoffed and said we were wasting time, running from phantasms. It was a little stormy, but nothing terribly threatening. So we stayed.

Ten minutes later, we get a frantic call from Ryan, Tina's boyfriend. I can even hear him over the speaker--"Where are you? How do I get there? There's a tornado forming over the duckpond, and it's coming your way!"

We all just stop, for a moment--I'm thinking, no, it's so unlikely--but he says that he's just ahead of it, and it's following him. I know there's no way out of our valley (just Talent Road), and I can't see leaving it. I thought he was crazy and shouldn't come, but there's no rational involved when you're afraid for someone you love, is there? Not unless you're a certain kind of person. But I digress.

We're watching out the front door of our mobile home, which faces the valley. The clouds are whipping past, really low, and I know that if there's something coming, it'll be from the left and ahead of us. The wind is rising so fast, in the moment that it takes for Amanda to try and explain where in Grindstone we live. I'm just making aimless movements, not sure of what we can do, watching, watching...

All of a sudden, as Mandy peers out the front door, she suddenly says, "Oh God, the clouds are moving the other way!" I dash over next to her, and it's true--the sky is suddenly, sickly green--I remember thinking, I always thought they made that part up--and the clouds on our left are headed right, but the clouds on the right are being sucked into ragged long lines as they race left, right in front of us--not like they're being driven by the wind, but compelled by it. I was so bewildered because it just looked wrong, like nothing I'd ever seen.

All of those storm clouds racing right and the dark tendrils being sucked to the left converged, in those few seconds, into one black tangle that just felt evil. I know that it's not, that the wind is dispassionate and has no anger or hatred, but it was purely menace, and I was suddenly and completely aware of where I was, and how flimsy it was, and how stupid I was and that if anything happened to the girls with me, I would never forgive myself because I had chosen to stay.

 I stared straight ahead, out of the door, and suddenly, it was right there, in the dark in front of us, perhaps a quarter mile away. Dark, rotating mass that was like nothing I'd ever seen. At first I couldn't make myself believe it was there, but it got bigger so fast I can't even describe it. One moment it wasn't, and the next it was.

We ran for the bedroom, for the far side of Alex's bed. Al and I had made this plan, in the unlikely event we were ever in trouble--crouch between the desk and bed, pull the top mattress over. Not that that would help much, us being in a mobile home, but as futile as it was, we knew exactly what to do.

Tina was freaking out, as much for Ryan as for us. We shoved her against the bed, with Mandy and me on either side. The wind started howling, and the noise just kept doubling. I heard things hitting the trailer, and things cracking all around us.

I've been hyperaware of certain sounds, during all these storms we've had this spring. You know, always wondering if that long, low peal of thunder is something else. You remember. But when I heard this--there's no mistaking that noise. And it doesn't sound like a "freight train"--that's entirely too wussy of a description. It's more like...like all the sound in the world is being ripped from its source and sucked into one place, like into a vacuum, and spit out at once--or if a giant groaned in pain and never stopped.

Actually, the closest noise I can think of is in the end of Zorro, when they slow the sound of the explosion down--it just sounds like a vortex pulling huge amounts of wind into it. Which, I guess, is exactly what it is. I had Alex on the phone at this point, and I was trying to tell him what was going on. I don't think he understood--or maybe he did, because one minute he's asking what's going on, and then the next he's all loud and cheerful, like "It's probably nothing, you'll be fine." I told him, "Al. I can see it. I can hear it. It's here." And he got quiet. I told him I'd call him back, and I hung up.

It got louder. The only thing I could think was to wonder if I'd blown out the candles in the living room, and if all of my plants were knocked off the porch. I was also hyperaware of the trailer floor under my hands, expecting it to start shaking--when it did, I was just like, Crap. We're really in trouble now.

The entire house started shaking, and I thought, There is literally nothing I can do. I should have listened to Alex. I had one hand on Amanda, and one on Tina...and then, you just stop thinking, because thinking doesn't do any good. You simply wait, and react.

It came closer and got louder--and then it didn't. It's like a pressure on your ears, when you think it will always be there, but suddenly, your ears pop and you realize it's gone. Just like that. I was so surprised that it was gone, all that noise, gradual until you wondered if you had dreamed it. The house quieted down and stopped moving, and I remembered to breathe again. I looked down and was surprised that my hands were shaking, along with my voice. I was a little ashamed of that, later. We looked out the front door, and trees were down everywhere. But the sky was clear and the rain was the only sound.

You guys have seen pictures by now, I'm sure. The tornado that ripped through our valley, just below our park didn't take any lives, although the one that passed behind a little over an hour later did, and devastated Apison. We left and by the time it hit, were safely hidden across the highway, in a sturdy house in a valley where we should have been in the first place.

I heard someone got a picture of the tornado over us. If I find it, I'll share. There were seven in the Chattanooga area altogether; this is the one that hit Apison.