I hate tornadoes !!

We had a stressful, terrifying day of dodging tornadoes, but we made it safely to Kansas City, MO.

It all started when we were cruising down I-70 when the very dark skies started to worry me, and I thought... oh yeah Tornadoes exist....and the worst tornado season in about 100 years is now... and we are just on the outskirts of tornado alley !!!!

So I installed nifty App on my smart-phone: FOX StormWARN. It overlays National Weather Service severe weather polygons (flood watch, tornado warnings, etc ) and RADAR over your current location and gives you Weather-Alerts for wherever you are.

The App then alerted me that basically all of MO, IN, and IL were under a Tornado WARNING. We stopped for gas, and a police officer advised us to NOT continue west on I-70, as a tornado had touched down about 15 miles west of us and was headed north-east towards I-70 and us! We decided to get back on the road and go back East, very fast.

As we were fleeing one tornado, we noticed a very ominous cloud barreling up from the South. It was very difficult to see what direction it was moving and therefore also difficult to guess which way to run, so we decided to stop and call someone for help looking at the RADAR (my phone lost internet signal).

I called my brother Jacob and he told us that tornadoes were basically all around up and down I-70. By this time, the tornado siren starts going off, and we freaked out, grabbed the dog and ran into the Target (whose parking lot we had stopped in), to join the shoppers in the center of the store to wait out the storm (or our impending death).

We survived! Although the tornadoes touched down at several points all along I-70, they apparently didn't touch down too close to us, although we did learn later that the crazy churning cloud right above us, which seemed to be following-us, was in fact a funnel cloud that could have easily developed into a tornado. Whew....

What did we learn....? Tornadoes are terrifying, gigantic, incredibly fast moving, unpredictable, make-you-feel-completely-insignificant, unforgiving bastards.

Once we got the all clear we finished the trip to Kansas City to visit our friends Andi and Brian and their 2 kids, 2 cats, dog and lovely house. Which is where we will be tonight and tomorrow! AND they have a basement: a novel, reassuring thing to have in these parts, which Target stores lack....

Best pun of the day goes to our friend Mike, who when he found out we were seeking shelter in a Target responded, "Don't get blown away,........ by the savings!"