This was one of the most terrifying things I have ever been through.

It was Monday evening, and Greg and I were planning to go to Target. We dropped Mom off first. Seeing the dark skies to the north, we called to to inquire about the weather. He said that there was much lightning in Titusville. Greg and I lingered on side streets, trying to decide whether or not we should head to Target. After a few minutes Dad called back and said, "Stay put. There is now a severe thunderstorm warning." Thinking he understood that we were in Port St. John, we turned to go home.

Right as he called, the rain picked up. We turned on to Grissom Rd. The rain began coming down in sheets. We passed through a block which was prepped for construction with orange cones lining the street. Right after the construction, we suddenly hit the wind. It became difficult to control the car. Medium-sized branches were flying around us, and pine cones were hitting the car. The debris seemed to be generally making circular motions and we could sense that we were in the center of something. The rain was no longer pelting the windshield, but flying with the debris. The wind seemed confused, and it was all very loud.

Greg exclaimed calmly, "We are in a tornado." We wondered what to do and for the moment decided to keep going. Things raced through my mind. "Will the car get picked up by the wind? Should we get out and lie in a ditch? No one ever says to keep driving through a tornado, but it seems more dangerous to get into a ditch!" Just then we looked to our right and beheld a tree, falling towards us. It was not merely bending, because it was already at a 45 degree angle to the ground. We were unable to tell either how tall it was or how far it would land. Instinct and adrenaline took over, and I floored the gas. (An hour later, we toured the damage and found that this tree had landed within inches of the road. Had it broken off a foot further down on its trunk, it would have fallen right where we were. In that case, my speeding up would have gotten us just barely out of its reach.)

So shaken up by the tree, we decided to pull off the road. I started to pull off next to another pine tree until Greg pointed it out. Instead, I pulled into someone's driveway. The wind was still so bad that my first instinct was to run up to their house and pound on the door for them to let us in. We noticed that it looked clearer only a few houses down. I asked Greg, "Should we outrun it?" and he said, "Yes!" There was a distinct and sudden end to the wind. As soon as we got out, the rain was back to coming down in sheets.

When we got to the light, Greg called Dad and told him that we had just been through a tornado, but that we were okay. Then he called Mom and left a message on her phone that we had been through "some bad weather," but we were okay. On the way home, my foot was shaking so badly that I could hardly keep it on the pedal!

On Fay Blvd., branches were down all over. One large oak was split in half, and several basket ball hoops had fallen over on cars. We parked the car in driveway, ran inside, and proceeded to tell our story to Dad fifteen times over.

An hour later, when we picked Mom up, we toured the spot where we had been and the surrounding streets. We could definitely see a path, a narrow swath where trees were down and twisted, and fences had fallen over. For many blocks, the damage intersected every street, like this:

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We suspect that this was a tornado that we drove through. It would be an F0 according to the Fujita scale, although maybe not according to the new scale.

Fujita Scale

Enhanced Fujita Scale

This is the area we drove through. The last two pictures are the tree that almost fell on us.