It was the most awesome thing I've ever seen...
(Inspired by the tornado warnings today, changing a comment to an OP)
I'm on Lansing's northside. Spent the afternoon in the basement, due to the tornado warnings-- which was really no change as I made my main living space down here after moving in last fall, until remodeling upstairs is completed. I am a mostly lifelong resident of Lansing, except for some brief periods living in Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona. (The rainless lightning-storms out there are an interesting phenom, but I digress..)
When I was a child, I remember well being herded to the basement, whenever the tornado sirens (as I thought of them) would go off and there was a "tornado warning" , except for every first Saturday of the month at 1pm when they are tested...
(Little did I understand at the time that the sirens were initially intended for use in case of nuclear war.... Once I had learned the facts about that and the possibilities for nuclear war, and the fact that Lansing was designated as a "tertiary target" because of being the state capitol , the civil defense sirens often gave me a little shiver when they would go off. I remember one time I was driving by Sparrow hospital where one of the horns was located, at the time of the monthly test, and it nearly blew me out of the car, lol. They were not terribly loud at my current location today.)
Anyway, my family was quite religious about taking cover when hearing the sirens, or radio alerts of a tornado warning...and staying there until the 'all clear' was issued. In those days, our AM radio played all day long. This only changed in one instance...
It was sometime around 1970, when a tornado struck which did damage to the Lansing airport on the city's northwest edge, which was about 5 miles away from our family home on the south side. (I tried to google this event, but as it long predated the internet, I could not find anything. Perhaps more skilled searchers could find something.) We must have been in the basement initially... but my parents, who clearly must have been informed about the tornado's actual location, said 'come on upstairs, and we will take a look'
We went upstairs and on out onto the front porch... There was no rain in this instance, at least not where we were. The air was deathly still.
To the north and slightly to the west, we could see the tornado coming down from the sky. In those days, the trees were very small and did not block the view, as that residential section was only about 10 years old at the time...
It was huge.... and it did not appear to be moving. It stretched from the clouds down to the lower limit of the horizon. The perspective made it seem as if it were only a quarter-mile away or less, but it was 5 miles. Unlike all the real or "computer generated" tornados I have since seen on film, it was an amazing shade of blue, maybe a dark aqua, almost like a waterspout.
We stayed out there looking at it, for about 5 minutes or more. Other neighbors were out on their front porches doing the same thing. We just stood and stared, in awe.
It was the most beautiful thing that I ever saw.
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