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My tornado survival story 1
Nebraska,
United States, a place of extreme weather, where the summers are hot and humid and the winters
bitter cold and the springs are dangerously stormy. Nebraska is in tornado alley.
On
May 22, 2004, approximately at 12:30 in the afternoon, my mother-in-law Martha,
my brother-in-law Nelson Jr., his girlfriend Katie, my wife Griselda and I,
Hardy, were on our way to Omaha in my mother-in-law’s 1999 Honda Odyssey.
We were to be there at
3:00 p.m. or shortly thereafter to pick up my father-in-law Nelson Sr. and my
other brother-in-law Amauris who were arriving from Brooklyn, NY to be here for
Nelson Jr.’s graduation from the Lexington Nebraska High School.
Before leaving I checked
the weather on the Weather Channel website and noticed that “Violent Storms”
were predicted for that evening in our area. You see, I love the weather
and think I missed my calling as I’m always checking the weather, get pretty
excited when I see storms building up and yet work as a translator.
As we were leaving
Lexington and driving on Hwy 283 South to take Interstate 80, I quickly scanned
the horizon from the Southwest to the Northwest. I could see this massive
line of white clouds headed our direction. I told everyone in the car,
“It’s going to get ugly today. We’re going to get caught in a bad storm
on the way back.”
Something that has
happened to me before, which I no longer believe is just something coincidental
is that throughout the day in which violent storms are predicted it seems as if
my cars run hotter than normal. That was the case with the Honda Odyssey
minivan that we were driving that day. This normally does not happen to
this van on a regular day. I think the warmth and humidity had much to do
with the hotter running temperature.
Nonetheless, we kept
moving forward, stopped once at a rest area, and arrived at Eppley Airfield in
Omaha, about 25 to 30 minutes after my in-laws had landed. Having lived
in New York City most of their lives, they have not experienced the “Violent
Storms” of Midwest.
After picking them up
and loading their luggage in the van we decided to take advantage of the day
and go to a few shopping places in Omaha. Nelson Sr. wanted to see what
the prices were on a certain model of BMWs and Amauris wanted to look at
Acuras. Therefore, I took them to both dealerships in Omaha. After
that we became hungry. Since we were already in the most western part of
Omaha, we decided to continue West into Lincoln to eat at the Olive Garden
restaurant.
By the time we made it
to Lincoln at around 6:45or so, it was pretty obvious that something nasty was
coming from the West. When we started eating, it got very, very dark in
Lincoln. Shortly thereafter it started lightning and thundering loudly,
but it wasn’t raining, yet.
When we finished eating
we all got in the van and headed for home. Normally there is still plenty
of daylight left at that time of the day, but it was pretty dark. We were
driving west on O street to take the ramp to I-80. As we were leaving
Lincoln, it started to rain and I remember saying, “we’re going right into the
mouth of it.” The rain was very gentle but after every mile for the next
10 miles or so, the rain was slowly increasing its intensity. All
the while, for about 8 to 10 miles, things had not gotten too bad.
We had the radio on and could hear that there were tornado and thunderstorms
warnings all over the place.
As it got darker I kept
telling everyone that perhaps it would be better if we stayed somewhere
safe. I had been in storms like these before and they could be pretty
scary. Katie, Nelson Jr.’s girlfriend, who was born and raised in
Nebraska was also recommending that we get off the Interstate and seek shelter
somewhere. Nelson Sr. kept asking me what I though and the rest were
pushing the drive on.
I knew better than to
drive on, but kept going. The danger of doing that is that you reach a
point of no return. That’s what happened to us.
As we moved forward, I
could see a cloud that was very low and different from the rest of the clouds
above or in the background. This cloud was pitch black, very long and
about 2 miles wide. It extended as far as I could see to the South and as
far as I could see to the North. The cloud was about 1 or 2 miles
away. But it wasn’t until I was closer to it that I could see what it was
doing. The cloud was rotating from east to west in an upwardly fashion
and moving south at the same time. Meanwhile, approximately ¼ to ½ mile
away to the north a triangular shape black cloud was coming down from the same
black cloud. That was when we were at a point of no return and I started
freaking out. That cloud was moving directly into the direction that we
were heading in a North to South fashion.
About that time my
father-in-law noticed that I was freaking out. I was going about 85 miles
per hour and pushed it to about 90 in order to try to beat the cloud that was
forming and moving south. However, the faster I went, the more it looked
as if I wasn’t going to make it. I just kept thinking that if I had
momentum my chances would be better than staying on the road.
Fearing that we might
hydroplane, I didn’t dare increase the speed any more than that.
Suddenly, we were hit by a strong wind draft and rain on the passenger side. I
remember telling everyone, “You wanted me to keep going? Now look at
what’s happening”. Then everybody started saying things like, “Go, go,
go, go”, “Oh my god”, “Go fast”, “Go slower”, “Let’s go
back”. I was thinking, “Help me God, Help me God, Help me God.”
In my mind I had to keep
going and get away from under that cloud. When we reached the other side
of the cloud, we got hit by another draft of strong wind and rain, this time on
the driver’s side of the van.
After we passed that
cloud, there was somewhat of a relief, however things were still pretty bad
ahead. About that time, we were listening on the radio that two massive
storms were colliding with each around Crete. That’s exactly where we were.
I decided to stop at the
next overpass crossing, but my wife said that we should keep going because if
what we left behind was a tornado it might come up behind us. Then I
remembered watching on TV that it’s not safe to be under an overpass as the
winds of a tornado can actually intensify or become worse under there. So
I moved on.
Thankfully, although
there were moments of strong rain, it was obvious that we were out of danger
and the rest of the way home wasn’t too bad.
After some time, we
couldn’t help but to start laughing at each and every one of our reactions
during the moment of truth. We also laughed about the fact that Nebraska
gave my in-laws a rude welcome.
Unfortunately, we found out next morning that a tornado had destroyed the small town of Hallam, Nebraska that night. Hallam is very near to the area where we got caught in the storm.
The funny thing is that
exactly one week later on May 29th, we were caught in another very bad storm
after dropping my in-laws off at the airport. Only this time we were
wiser.
After having reached Gretna,
we returned back to Omaha and stayed at a nice comfortable hotel. I’m
glad we did. That night all of Nebraska was under severe weather warnings
and watches, and a very powerful thunderstorm hit Omaha at night.
I've included some pictures of the tornado damage in Hallam, Nebraska.







Comments
The pictures are incredible. I also did not know that Nebraska was in Tornado Alley. What an amazing story. I laughed too when I read the part were everyone was saying go, go, go, no stop etc. I was a bit surprised that you freaked out considering you stated that you really like following the weather. I thought for sure you would be a Tornado Chaser. Now as for when the 2nd storm hit, sorry but May 29th is my Birthday so no matter what the day will be good. Now I am from Boston and you are from New York. How in the world did you end up in Nebraska?