Scary Night!

[scrapperjade]

We had a pretty scary night here last night... well really, it was an all day thing, but got worse in the evening! Pretty much all of Saskatchewan was under severe tornado watch, something that is not common at all. I mean, we *sometimes* get a tornado warning, but I've never seen a "watch" before. And the fact that tornado hunters from all over the US were coming up to SK to get footage/data was pretty freaky! Those guys know what they are talking about!

It was hot, and 97% humidity, something that rarely happens here. I've never felt it so muggy here before. In the afternoon, we got a huge thunderstorm, rain, some areas close to me reported large hailstones. There were those big, freaky bubbly clouds for part of the afternoon. Then it cleared up, and we had supper like normal.

Just as I was cleaning up my supper dishes, it started getting dark, and I asked DH to take some stuff to our yucky basement (it's mostly dirt, some cement, completely gross). He set up a blanket & cushions to sit on, our emergency kit, the kids favorite blankies & stuffies, dry clothes & shoes. I went outside a couple times, watching the clouds. I saw this:



Not sure if you can tell, but the darker gray cloud in the center is actually a bit of a whirl. I stood out on the street and watched it for a minute, but the lightning was getting so fast & furious, I was scared of being struck by lightning, so I ran inside, lol. I uploaded my photo to FB, and within 1 minute of me coming inside, it was SO dark outside - almost like night! DH started calling me to come into my DD's bedroom (which faces the street I was just standing on & took the swirl picture). He pointed and said "What does that look like to you?", so I looked and saw a HUGE funnel cloud, black as could be, and the sky was a hideous green/brown color!

We live 4 houses from the edge of our town, and the funnel was not that far into the field - it was very close! The wind was going wild, and it started pouring rain. We grabbed the girls, our cell phones, & I grabbed our phone, and made 3 panicked phone calls, 1 to my parents, 1 to my sister, and 1 to my best friend, yelling to get the heck into the basement!!!

When it was safe to come up, the sky was clearing up (amazing how that happens). I went on FB to see if anyone had got a picture, or to see if it touched down. A neighbor snapped this picture:



Everything was okay though. It just skirted past town, and never touched down. It was very scary though. Normally we don't get tornadoes. Like I said earlier, we sometimes get a warning, maybe once a summer, but this was the first time we ever saw something, and had to get into the basement! The girls thought it was a grand adventure, sitting in the basement room (that is our storage room, and they were a bunch of toys)... Avalynne wanted to stay down there, even when it was safe to come up, lol!!

All in all, a very scary night! Thankfully, the storm cells have seemed to pass. Today we are having violent winds (90 kph / 56 mph), but no more threat of tornadoes or funnel clouds!!