My First Close Encounter with a Tornado!

Yesterday I was in a meeting about 4p or so, my last of the day and right before it was time to head off to the hotel for the shuttle to the airport, when it started getting really dark outside.  I was looking at the weather radar on my iPhone, and saw a very nasty storm moving in.

Scott, my coworker, was asking if there were tornado warnings issued, and at that time there weren’t, just some flooding and severe weather warnings.  We went back to our desks on the other side of the building and started to hear the tornado warning sirens… they sound just like air raid sirens, and it was very eerie.  Everyone was standing up in their cubes looking around and on the phone calling loved ones to check in and tell them to find shelter.

Everyone had live weather radar and streaming from the local Television stations up on their computers.  There were at least 2 tornadoes that were being tracked by the local TV stations and on radar when I left work.  One was near downtown Memphis headed north, and there was another heading south around the airport on its way to the suburbs.  Both of them were within a couple of miles of my office.  Within minutes, they started having everyone at work go into the stairwells to take shelter.  A number of other people decided to head on out to get home.

I got a ride down the street with a co worker and went back to the hotel because I needed to take the shuttle to the airport… The manager there had them call me a cab, he didn’t want them to have to go out and drive me.  The cab driver was good, and he didn’t seem to mind much, although the rain was coming down so hard at times he only had 20 or 30 feet viability in front of him.  I was a little surprised to see the highways were packed just like any typical rush hour… lots of people trying to get home to family I guess.

On the entire ride you could continuously hear the sirens no matter where you were.  When we finally got to the airport, there were no planes taking off or landing of course.  They also had sirens on as well, along with all kinds of special blue emergency lights flashing all over the air fields.  When I got inside, they weren’t letting anyone in through security.  I found out later that airport personal were evacuated into an underground shelter for about 10-15 minutes shortly before I got there.

Overall it was an experience!  I think that’s the closest I’ve ever been to a tornado before.  At least I was able to get to the airport, and my flight was only slightly delayed.

Here are some links to the news coverage:

WREG Tornado Damage Update
WREG Tornado Damage
Local Pictures
USA Today Coverage
Eyewitness News Updated story