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I was about ten, on Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota (outside Minneapolis). For years I thought it was two tornadoes because it was big enough that one wall went over us, the sound died down, and then the other wall went over. It basically hit the lake bank in front of our house and "hopped," landing in a housing development behind us, leaving us unscathed, though I think twelve people in all died that night.
Here's what I recall:
Watching Johnny Quest while the light outside went all greenish yellow and strange. My older brother and sister outside, picking up the big hailstones that were falling. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon, maybe later, but my dad was still at work. My mom came running around--somehow she'd heard tornadoes were on the ground and we had to go to the basement. So down we went. After a while, my mom sent my older brother up to get blankets; he later described to me what he saw through the three big picture windows overlooking the lake. Across the lake, about 2.5 miles away, it looked like the whole end of the cloud had come down onto the ground. A huge black wall, and houses and trees disappeared into it, then came flying out in pieces.
The lightning was continuous, strikes coming down within yards of our house, yet the noise that came swallowed up the thunder so you couldn't hear anything but that roar. The house itself I suppose you'd call a mansion--big H-shaped thing (we were very well off at the time), of brick and stucco with foundation walls about three fit thick. It was vibrating, like paper in the wind. My little brother and sister were toddlers at the time. My mother was holding them both in her arms and I remember looking up and seeing her as the lights went out. She was screaming the Lord's Prayer at the top of her lungs and when the noise came it swallowed her words too--just her mouth moving, the roar, continuous lightning, the horrible vibration and the lights going out. Then it faded, only to start again what seemed like minutes later.
It's only in adult life that I realized how utterly terrified my mom was.
At ten, I thought it was the coolest thing that had ever happened to me.
After it passed, we waited, and when it seemed like we were going to be okay my mom sent my older sister and me up to listen to the car radio and see if there was any news. We listened to a farmer calling in to report the tornado that was heading toward his house. I can still hear his dry, unimpressed voice calmly saying "Now it's coming across the field. Now it's heading for the barn. Barn's gone. Now it's heading this way. Looks like it's coming right up the drive...." and all the while the announcer saying "That's fine, you'd better hang up now, better go to your basment, guy, come on now...."
The next morning, our yard was covered with household refuse, and the lake--Lake Minnetonka is a big lake, several miles across in the bay we lived on--you couldn't see any water. It was completely covered with household junk--clothes, wood siding, furniture, you name it--with this snakey s-shaped trail where these guys in a boat were putting along, picking up stuff and looking at it. We found a checkbook on our front lawn that belonged to a friend of my parents across the lake. We were able to return it to him.
We came out of it unhurt and largely undamaged, except for the boat platform in front of our house, which had been yanked out and tossed a quarter mile or so down the lakefront. It was fixed in the bottom with six big concrete pilings sunk six feet deep into the bottom. The tornado had not pulled the deck off of the pilings as you might expect. It had sucked those pilings right out of the ground and tossed the whole thing down the beach like a piece of kleenex.
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