I've seen them loads of times driving throughout the southwest, but I've never seen such a huge one as I saw Wednesday. It was absolutely eerie, this column of red dirt funneling up into the nearly cloudless sky. I know it wasn't a tornado, but it looked so much like one that it was mesmerising. ANd yes, I've seen a tornado in person, and that is absolutely chilling. This has only the vestigal effects of that chill, but there is a definite chill. Like the unlikely, spindly, clockwork-like moving of a spider, a dust devil or tornado is something which draws the eye, pulls focus like nothing else. In temperatures topping 100 degrees F, an ice dagger plummeted through my heart.
6 comments:
That is mesmerizing and more than a little terrifying. I kept wanting to yell at those people to get away from there.
Seen 'em.
That one is particularly impressive.
Growing up in KS, I saw them too but that one is HUGE. *shivers* they still make me wanna hide even tho I know what they're NOT.
I've seen them, but never that huge. That's impressive...and a little scary. (I have friends in Alabama who were very lucky that they didn't sustain any damage, but knew lots of people who did.)
A tornado ripped through my husband's hometown in 1985, and you can still see its path through the town. Lots with stoops that go nowhere, shorter trees, sidewalks that border corner lots with nothing but grass. The worst part was that this tiny little burg was a railroad town...one gentleman whose house was torn apart in "downtown" worked for the railroad, and he said it sounded like an approaching train for all the world. Needless to say, trains blew their whistles from MILES outside of town for months after that.
As an idiot Brit brought up on westerns I bailed out of the car and chased a small one on myfirst visit to Nevada. I caught it....rather like being in the path of a hot a very abrasive hair dryer
I once saw a small one (maybe 30 feet high?) at an interstate construction site. Thought it was the dust plume from a dump truck until I drove past it. True story.
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