Family Reunion + Tornado = Typical Iowa

A lot of these people I haven't seen in 13 + Years. My favorite cousin Krissy and I remarked on how we saw each other twice in one year and before that hadn't seen each other in 12 years. They visited us, now we saw them and it's their turn to come back here. Some of my cousin's children I hadn't met before or I had but they were so tiny that it didn't matter because they didn't know me. Like my cousin Amanda's daughter M'Kayla. I used to change her diaper and now she's a teenager! Somehow we ended up with me giving her "the Talk" because she said her mom didn't think it was the right time since she didn't have a boyfriend. Yeah, that shit does not fly with me sober or drunk. Anyways, my camera got passed around. I know this because there are a lot of pictures of people's feet and half their face or some weird shit.

Someone liked the fire...

My cousin Krissy, her boyfriend Tony and my Grams

My Grams kids, minus one

My grams with my cousin Amanda's family.

My grams with my Uncle Rick and my cousin Chad's family

My mom and my cousin Amanda's daughter Kayla who was named after my mom

GIZMO!

This has to be my favorite photo... for obvious reasons.

My grams, her cousin Charles and his wife Elaine

Sleepy Gizmo

Normally I wouldn't have put this photo or any of me on here but I am through hating my body. If you don't like the way I look don't look at me. I am working hard to be healthier and these are perfect motivation to get there. This can be my "before" picture.

It's 5 o'clock somewhere... this was probably at noon.

My mom made salad in a god damn pan and I couldn't stop laughing.

My mom and I look nothing alike.... except when we smile.

My cousin Amanda, who stole my camera and took some pictures at one point.

My cousin Angie and her beautiful baby boy Austin

What a heartbreaker!

Also, it wouldn't be fitting for my mother and I to travel somewhere without extreme weather fighting us. We had a tornado. Nothing like Oklahoma, which is a blessing and I truly feel for those people who were effected by it. I actually like tornadoes. I have fond memories of chasing them as a little girl with my dad. I've never actually seen one. The stupid wall cloud was always in the way. They are definitely scary but they are also majestic  I cannot explain it. They are so powerful and all they are is warm and cold air mixed together with some wind. The debris is what makes them deadly.

Casualties

I took video but it wasn't of anything grand. By the time "the show" got there I was booking it up a hill. You see I have a phobia of being trapped and/or burried alive. I refuse to go in basements but will go in a cellar. For anyone who isn't from the mid-west or doesn't know; basement is under the house and a cellar you have to actually leave your home to go into. Essentially a cellar is a hole in the ground that you've cemented and added a door and some stairs to. They are safer to me because someone doesn't usually have to dig a whole house off of you before they can get to you. The house can cave in on a basement and it will take someone days to dig you out, if anyone even knows you are down there.

My mom and my Gram were in the RV with my Gram's dog Gizmo who the poor girl was petrified the whole time. She hates wind and storms and anything loud. She probably won't think anything of California weather after this! Anyways, I went down by the lake with my mom's husband, a few of my cousins and one of my uncles spread out in different spaces between the lake and our camp site to watch what I like to call "The Show."

Basically, "The Show" is watching the Wall Cloud, which is where Tornado's form. The clouds hang low and two weather fronts meet; warm and cold. Once those two fronts collide they start to swirl and that forms the tornado. There is usually no wind just before this happens. It's dead still and then it picks up slowly. There is usually some rain and hail. Then it gets crazy and it does so pretty fast. Sometimes you'll see one dip down and shoot back up, sometimes you'll see the funnel just hang out and then it pounds down and the storm just races toward you. Or hopefully if you're chasing it you're nowhere near it. Tornado's typically move in the direction that the storm it is formed from moves. A few of gone against this but it is rare because they typically start out in the same direction and then shift. Those are the scary ones because just when you think "yeah, I'm alright it's going the other way" and then it shifts towards you and you're like "oh hot damn" but that's all part of The Show.

This one was eerie. I had two skinny, tiny funnels dip down and shoot back up and then jump the lake. Watching that storm glide across the water was so creepy. It was like a mist or a fog and it came at me faster than I thought it would. I was so enchanted by the show that I completely forgot I had family. Since my dad died I never feared death. I only thought of the peace it could bring and nothing I've experienced has ever changed my mind but as I sat on the edge of the water a mile away from my closest and dearest family  I actually feared it and not for me; I'll never fear it for me. I was scared for them. So when I realized those two funnels weren't going back up because conditions were wrong; they went up because tornadoes rarely stay on water (the water is too cold) and that it was moving at a good pace towards my unsuspecting family and would eventually touch back down I didn't want it to be anywhere near them. So I took off like a bat out of hell. My mom saw me out the kitchen window running from the lake and told my Grams if I was running it was time to go. My mom and my Gram got in the car and got to the bathroom/storm shelter just as I did on foot. I forced them into one of the shower stalls because it had a seat and it was the farthest from the windows and told them to stay down and protect their head and then I left. I wasn't staying in that sardine can with all those people, plus it was too hot.

These are tornado sirens... they save lives.

My cousin is a first responder so he had his gear in case anyone got hurt, plus he had the radio and my mom's husband was out there with me because he wanted to watch the show. Once the heavy ran hit I didn't see the funnel or anything but lots of rain, wind, pea-sized hail and debris. I would have liked to have watched the actual tornado blow through but we were too close. Those two dipping funnels were all I get I guess and maybe that's a good thing. I wanted to see one and now I have. I do feel truly terrible for kind of taunting Mother Nature as those people in Oklahoma are suffering pretty bad and that it could have been worse than a nice little scare and a couple of down trees. I know I'm not responsible and that if I hadn't been repeatedly going "C'mon Iowa, show me what you've got" it wouldn't have made a difference but I still feel for them. Even if it had been worse in the area we were in it wouldn't have effected me. It would have effected my uncles and my cousins.

All in all I made it out unscathed, everyone else is ok and this basically just prompted to talk about all the other times we chased or out ran tornadoes  I now have a few more stories to tell the kids whenever they come around. About that one time I took my Grams back to Iowa and we all got chased off by a tornado and hid in a shower stall and how my family never believed I was one of them until they watched me out run a tornado uphill with asthma (everyone of my uncles ran track - two of them got college scholarships for it) and I look nothing like any of them.

Have you ever seen a tornado?

What would you do if you did see one?