I remember being a little kid, over on the east side visiting my Aunt & Uncle, they lived behind the old Sun Ray shopping center, might have been around 1965 or 1967...anyway, we heard reports of brewing storms and my father decided to pack us up in the station wagon and head back home. We drove west up the hill and got to the corner by a crossroad that could shoot us onto I94. I still vividly recall the big metal Standard Oil sign of the corner gas station swaying violently back and forth, wind and rain blowing like crazy and my father trying to keep everyone quiet while he listened to the radio and looked around. Suddenly he said "we're going back" and we shot back down the road and into their basement piled into a corner with mattresses thrown over us. It was howling outside. I had to come out because I had to pee and while I'm doing my thing down a drain I am looking out the little window wells seeing crap flying around all over. We came up later and there was debris everywhere, and that area was just outside the edge of the tornado whipping through. Been through many rough storms, at home, in tents. Had our neighbors chimney blown off and a tree land on my fathers new car back in the late 70's when a really bad lightning storm rolled through.
Didn't see a tornado with my own eyes until this one in 1987.
Fridley Minnesota TornadoI was at work and when I was in the parking lot that day (I was wrapping up my bachelors and working 35 hrs/week as a security guard for a local high-tech company on the north side) lowering the flag and I kept staring at this guy behind me with a weird look on his face staring north. I walk over to him and ask him what's up and he points in the distance and says "I'm trying to figure out what that is?". I look and I tell him that would be a tornado, "get in your car and go or get inside" (I was very conciencious of company liability!)
I go inside, flick on the weather alert band and hear the warnings and get on the intercom and tell people to head low and center and away from windows. I then get a report on the walkie talkie that one of my co-workers and facility guys are outside on the roof of our tallest building. Judas Priest! I go up there and chase those morons down and I look up and there are clouds swirling around, a fricken 'nother tornado could drop down anytime...idiots!
Had a trip down south with my B-I-L, had to hole up under the contractor awning at a Home Depot in Amarillo as a bad storm rolled through and my B-I-L didn't want his new truck dinged by mongo hail. Storm moved north and was west of us and we drove up I35 a bit and all on that western horizon was one wicked light show. We got as far as the Oklahoma line and then the troopers shut all the roads down because the storm drifted east and tore stuff up. We were lucky to find any room to spend the night, truckers and others scrambling for rooms out in the middle of God knows where. The news reports were filled with hail, tornado hits and lightning damage. First time I ever experienced a massive road closure like that. Cops at every ramp.
Did ride the edge of a typhoon in the pacific once when I was in the Navy, didn't think a carrier could list and shudder that much!
