"DUCK!

Peggy and I went to the basement Sunday.

In my 35 years as a journalist I think I've covered well over two hundred wind stories.  I may have chased that many storms in the helicopter and news car.

In Kansas I saw a 300 foot high microwave tower designed to withstand a small nuclear blast, twisted into a pretzel by wind. 

In that same town I saw the impact of a one hundred mile an hour gust of wind on  a construction site at Seward County Community college. That northbound gust wiped out the fly area of a new theatre building. I watched it be rebuilt? It took six months? And irony again? (This is the truth.) As the last few bricks were set in place to refinish the project? A south bound wind gust of 110 miles per hour blew it back the other way.

Here in Colorado I was once the first reporter on the scene of a town wiped out by a tornado.

I've profiled numerous people whose lives have been upended by tornadoes.

I've been to church services in small prairie towns where everyone is gathered looking for hope following major wind events.

I did a story in my own neighborhood where a small tornado yanked two hundred 80 foot high pine trees out of the ground like a turnip harvest.

I've seen and reported on two fantastic water spouts.

I once saw incredible devastation where literally millions of trees were downed by a super wind that came from a direction it had never come from before.

I spent two days in a New Mexico mountain town heavily damaged by a tornado. (Tornados don't generally show up in mountain towns.)

So what's my point?

Well after all those years of paying attention to the wind, THIS

 

 

IS THE FIRST TORNADO I'VE EVER ACTUALLY SEEN WITH MY OWN TWO EYES.

SO WHAT WERE DOING IN THE BASEMENT?  Just went down there to clean up an old mess. The SECOND we heard the TV warnings...we grabbed our cameras and headed for high ground.

OH, YEAH. THAT'S THE INSTRUCTION FOR FLOODING, RIGHT?

POST SCRIPT: My memory lied. I just remembered.  I did see that tornado that yanked the trees up, but just for about five seconds before it lifted up.