So, I was gonna take advantage of today to post some stuff here. My half-brother's half siblings all went shopping, and his dad took him someplace else. I had the house to myself, which I knew I'd enjoy (and I did). However, nature had different plans for me today. 

I don't know what it is this year. Wherever I go, bad stuff follows. At least my dirtbike runs well and I haven't crashed it again this week, and I really enjoy my half-brother's half-siblings (who, like my half brother, I consider my real siblings), but the weather... Just... I don't even know where to begin. I guess it gives me stories to share, which y'all can enjoy without having to experience the drama in real life. 

I was in the process of my second attempt at writing and posting a compilation of stories from myself and my family. The first time I tried, as I explained in the second posting, we had another storm that knocked out the power and freaked everyone out. Today, however, I was alone for most of the day, and the storm that came this afternoon was much worse. 

I had horse duty, and saved my blog mid-sentence. It was getting cloudy, and I assumed it would rain, but I didn't think it would storm or come up as suddenly as it did. My job really just involved making sure the horses had food and water (which they did), and checking to make sure the electric fence was still on (which I shock myself on all the time!). As I walked around the perimeter of the fence, I noticed the horses were getting increasingly nervous. Melody and Artimus were cantering around the pen, pinning their ears, and kicking at nothing, and Summer had taken shelter in the horse shed and cornered herself away from the door. Then, the wind came. 

I turned my back to avoid getting blasted in the face with dust, but then looked up and saw almost the same thing as the picture above shows, only it was a couple miles further away. Sheets of rain were headed right for me as well as the tornado, and I was a good 400 feet from the house. I needed to take shelter inside right then and there!

With one hand on my hat and the other shoved in my hoodie with my phone, I rushed back to the house, slipped on some oil in the garage but caught myself, grabbed my dirtbike helmet off the back of my dirtbike, and skidded inside. I was about to go right to the basement, but remembered I left my laptop on the kitchen, so I grabbed that. I noticed large hail was falling along with the extremely heavy rain. The trees were bent down towards the approaching storm, but not to where I worried they'd break. The power flickered, then went dark, but I only knew this because the one light that was on turned off. 

I sat on my bed in the basement in my helmet, with my laptop and phone in my lap. I had a view to the outside through the basement walkout, but all I could see was rain and hail. Interestingly enough, I wasn't getting any warnings. (It could've been because the power went out for about 5 minutes and it takes a long time for the wifi to recover, but even when it came back on, there were no warnings posted.) I started to think that perhaps I just "imagined" the funnel cloud, or mistook it for something else. My curiosity got the better of me, and I was back upstairs staring out every window and door I could, trying to figure out what was going on. At some point, I thought it was a good idea to start filming stuff, which I did, and later on, when it was just rain and small hail, I ran out to the back porch to retrieve my mini grill I had left out there. I wasn't even outside for ten seconds, and I came back in soaked to the bone. Funnily enough, I accidentally left my phone recording against my laptop on the table as I ran back outside to get my grill, and caught this:

(That waffle-maker-for-meat has been a lifesaver, especially when I'm sick and need to cook steak the way I like it, versus let my mom cook it well-done. So, I'm crazy enough to run out and get it in situations like that. It was just raining, at least I thought it was.)

Still, I had no warnings, and began to relax. I walked out onto the front porch, which is protected by two sides of the house and a roof, and stayed there for a little bit. I could hear what sounded like a faint roaring, but I assumed it was just the wind in the trees that I couldn't see, since it was raining so hard. But then, the wind suddenly shifted directions, and I was met with another cold (and wet) blast of air, and larger hail started falling from the sky again. I dashed back into the house, and then into the basement when I heard a loud boom come from somewhere out in the storm (which was actually one of the horses kicking the side of their shed, which put another hole in the shed door.), and stayed in the basement bathroom, totally convinced that I was about to hear the roof get torn off our house.

Nothing very notable happened, until my half-brother's dad came home and started calling my name. I came upstairs to an intact and undamaged house, and Clarke staring at me in my helmet. 

"Oh, shit. Was it that bad?" Clarke asked. 

"Uhm... Yeah? Maybe?" I replied, unsure. 

"Did you get any warnings?" Clarke asked. 

"I didn't. Did you?" 

"No." Clarke shook his head, "But there were three large tornadoes nearby. Did you see it? There's some downed trees around here. Did it come close?"

"Uh, did it?" I asked, "It was raining too hard to tell. I went down when I heard something hit something else. But I did see something that looked suspiciously like a funnel."

Clarke's eyes widened, and then he said, "Good thing you went into the basement. I see you wore your helmet. Smart!" 

I was pretty confused until I looked up our local news, and read about the tornadoes on the front page. For some reason, they weren't warned, even though they should've. The storms tore a roof off a house, flattened trees, and picked up a UPS truck with the driver in it, but the driver didn't suffer any major injuries. 

At this point, I'm hardly phased by events like these. After what happened last night, what the North Dakota storms did last month, and what my dad recalled about his childhood on the Minnesota farm, I'm not really scared or surprised by these scary surprise storms. I've just learned that I ought to take shelter, even if a bad-looking storm isn't warned. You can't put all your faith and trust in radars and storm spotters. There's no way they could've easily spotted the funnels with the rain. 

Speaking of storm spotting, I took several pictures of the storm while I stood on the front porch. In one of the pictures, there's something that looks very suspiciously like a nearby tornado that was documented by others. It's extremely hard to see, and I didn't notice it until I was messing around with editing tools on the pictures out of boredom. I'm not entire sure it is the tornado, but I'm not denying it either. 

Original picture from my front porch facing northwest. 

Edited version that is focused in on the possible tornado. 

Picture of that same storm off the news, probably of the western side. 

When I noticed this, I didn't think too much of it until I saw the pictures from the news coming in. At that point I realized (again) just how close I was to disaster. I'm just glad that the tornado stayed a relatively safe distance away from me, because while it would've made for a very good story, it wouldn't have been worth the trouble of a damaged house and injured horses, or even worse; the trouble of me being injured. Plus, I really don't want to ride one of those things out alone. As much as I like my space and alone time, and am very brave and confident in tough situations, I'd never want to survive a tornado alone. I was shaking in the basement bathroom, and was worried sick about the rest of my family who were out and about. If what I got on phone is the tornado that was very close to Elizabeth, and even closer to me, I'll just say I'm glad it stayed north of me, and didn't go along with the southbound storm. If it did, it would've hit me. 

And yes, I'll definitely finish the blog I started almost three days ago, even if it kills me. While events like these seem to only happen to me, they don't. I have close family that have gone through a lot worse than I have, as far as weather and accidents go, and have some amazing (and terrifying) stories they share with everyone who asks.