Home Alone and Look What Happens

The day was beautiful summer day -- warm, blue skies, and a light breeze. Not unusually, the weather forecast called for a chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Jerry and Mary had gone out to dinner, with the promise to bring me back a take-out dinner. I am exactly three weeks into my healing and still using a walker, so when I am alone I try to stay in one place to minimize the chance that I will fall or otherwise need help.

I had just started talking on the phone to my friend, John (who will be here tomorrow), when Jerry's weather radio went off. I couldn't hear the alarm itself, but the local TV channel broke into their regular programming to report that a tornado warning had just been issued for this county. From my vantage point on the bed, I could only see blue sky and light clouds to the north-west, but there was a hint of dark sky to my right, the north-east, that was just on the edge of my field of view. So I shifted so I could see out the right side of the window, and saw.... a tornado!

I could only see the top of the tornado, the bottom being hidden by the house across the street. John, still on the phone, pulled up the radar image on his computer, and told me the tornado was moving away from me -- luckily, because otherwise I'd have to hobble down two flights of stairs to the basement! Not what I'd like to do by myself! Just then, the local TV station showed a live photo of the tornado, taken from their weather helicopter on the far side of the tornado. The house had blocked my view of the bottom of the tornado -- until then, I hadn't known that it had touched down. They also verified that the tornado was not heading my way.

Soon it began to rain in earnest and then changed to hail. I watched the tornado, still over the house, for about 10 minutes until it faded into the dark gray clouds. The neighbors in both houses across the street came out to watch the storm (see one in photo below - the black horizontal bar is part of my window) -- could they both have missed the fact that a tornado was hanging just outside their back window? I'd sure be looking towards that tornado if I knew it was there!