December 22, 2013

Dream of driving down a rural road between towns with my young daughter. She is about 4 or 5 years old. Something about the sky catches my eye and looking up at it, I see a swirling ceiling of dark clouds, stretching from both directions as far as the eye can see, above the clear golden horizon. A point forms in the middle of my field of vision, and as the point pulls down further towards the earth, I realize I am witnessing the formation of a tornado. In all the pictures and videos I’ve seen growing up, I’ve never seen such a massive tornado; the entire storm system is being funneled down into this one funnel, forming a black upside down triangle against the bright yellow sky. I feel the ominosity and urgency to get to shelter immediately, and within moments of driving south we reach the edge of a small town. My dad appears and leads us to good hiding places. He goes into one, but it isn’t big enough for us. Holding my daughter’s hand, I pull her into a concrete spiral stairwell across the road from where my dad is. We sit there and wait, listening. There isn’t much to hear, just a feeling of heavy motion pressing down on us. Then all feels light again. I look at my phone, and on the screen I have a radar map; it shows a dot where the point of the cyclone is touching the earth, and I see that it has moved just past us. I know we’re safe to come out now.