I'm going to preface this by saying that, to my knowledge, everyone we know is safe and relatively damage-free.

Sunday evening at about 5:25 PM a tornado struck Fairview Heights and O'Fallon, IL. At the time we were at Big Gram's house celebrating her 75th birthday, or rather, we were just about to sit down to the dinner that was to begin the evening. We were outside watching the clouds roll in as we hauled Gram's present, a bird bath, to the back of the house. The sky grew dark quickly, clouds swirled, and to the west, somewhere just beyond where I approximated the Mall to be, I saw dirt flying straight up...

I've seen funnel clouds before... I've driven along side of one along I-270 just north of Granite City. I've stood in the middle of Scott Air Force Base's flight line and watched funnels form, lower they rise back up into the clouds. I've never before seen dirt fly straight up in the way it did that evening. At the close end of the next block to the west, what I am assuming was the sheet metal roof of a shed or some similar shelter flew into a tree, the lowest point of the shed was easily fifteen feet from the ground.

And as worrisome as the sights were, the sound was what caused me to start shuffling everyone inside as quickly as possible and get everyone in the house moving toward the basement. I have always heard that a tornado sounds like a train approaching. Having heard that as a child I always imagined the sound to be of a whistle, because, when I heard a train approaching, I always had heard the whistle announce it's arrival. I made the logical connection that perhaps the high winds when pressed through the tress would bring about a sound similar to a whistle. What I heard was, what I can only imagine would be, the sound one might hear when you lie your head on a train track as it came barreling down a mountain. It was a roar that you could feel as much as hear.

We were lucky. A multitude of buildings in Faiview Heights and O'Fallon were destroyed or severely impacted. Had the tornados stayed on the ground during the entire incident, it's likely that we would have been much more seriously impacted.

Stay safe,
Have a plan,
Love,
Tony

- posted by Tony @ 7:58 PM