331. Ground Zero

Last Thursday my computer crashed. Cyber-CPR got it going again  but all my music project files were gone. After a second reboot they reappeared and I realized I’d better save everything on a separate drive ASAP, so Friday my wife Lori and son Thomas and I headed for Grand Island to get a backup drive.

As we left Grand Island we noticed a big cloud to the north and wondered if we were getting some rain back home (we needed rain, but Tommy’s car windows were open so we were a bit torn about the prospect). But since rains usually seem to go around us, we headed home without giving it much more thought.

It gradually got darker and darker and as we approached the Boone County line we could see clouds of dust rising nearly straight up from the county roads – there were strong updrafts ahead. Above us was a wall cloud and just to the east, above Plum Creek, there was some rotation. I mentioned that tornadoes tend to form from wall clouds at the south end of thunderstorms and we chuckled that we might be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But we’ve seen a lot of wall clouds that didn’t produce tornadoes and driven through a lot of storms so we weren’t concerned. A dry wind hit us a mile later and then the rain struck. It came in torrents, and the car in front of us pulled over. We kept going, figuring it was a squall and would pass soon. The next car pulled over and I was wondering if we should too. The rain was as hard as I could remember ever driving through, but I figured it couldn’t get any worse so, since we could still see the road, we kept going.

Big mistake. It was soon raining so hard that it looked like we were in a car wash. The wind was shaking the van and though the radio said nothing about severe weather, Tommy’s iPhone said there was a tornado near our location. There was no good place to pull over so we crept forward at about five miles an hour. We strained to see if there was a funnel cloud approaching but the rain was so heavy that we could only see a few yards in any direction.

What to do? We would never see a tornado in time to take cover. Should we abandon the van and cower in a flooded ditch? After what seemed an eternity we reached a county road and pulled over. By then the radio was reporting a tornado southeast of St. Edward – we had to be very near ground zero.

In time the storm let up enough for us to make it home. Thomas headed straight to his car — not only were there three inches of rain in it, the seats were covered with hail – I’m not sure it will ever dry out. Our garden took quite a hit, and there was water in our basement. But all in all, we came out okay.

As I write this my music computer is about three hours into a 14-hour back up (yes, that’s how many music projects I have). It will be good to have this done, but as important as the information computers contain is to our lives today, the threats we face extend far beyond the cyber sphere — something Mother Nature was all too happy to remind us of last Friday.

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