Cool Pictures of Storm Clouds

Kent at Trolling in Shallow Water doesn't know where these pictures came from, but he's posting them anyway.

This is what storm chasers live for. Typically, I don't mind severe thunderstorms. In fact, I think they're pretty cool to watch through the big picture window in the living room. But when the wind picks up, I head for the basement. Tornados are one of my recurring nightmares. I've never seen one, but when I was a kid one touched down in our tiny town. If you'd traced the path of the damage, it appeared that it might have touched down a half a block to the SW of our house, and then again a half a block to the NE of our house, and then again about another block NNE, where it must have stayed down, doing lots of damage in a two-block area. One person was killed by downed power lines. I was a bit freaked out, to put it mildly.

I'd still like to see an actual tornado someday, out on the prairie where you can watch 'em from a distance.

Knowing that I'm a big baby about tornados, I don't know why I went to see Twister when it came out in the summer of '96. But I did. And it just so happened that a big windstorm hit Our Fair City later that evening. At the time I lived in a second-floor apartment, and I spent most of the night in the stairwell.

I should have known better.

Welcome to tornado season. I'll be in the basement until September.