It's a little after four in the afternoon.  I'm sitting in my office at the Duck U Bookstore, having just gotten off a conference call with twenty-some-odd other managers.  It's warm and kinda humid, but I've got a fan close at hand to keep me from boiling away like liquid nitrogen in a fireplace.  And then my Assistant Manager comes in, saying "the tornado sirens just went off.  Everybody's heading to the basement."

You might see the white cross next to the word "Rockford" up there... that's roughly where Duck U is located... and that big red splotch directly on top of it is roughly where the multiple funnel clouds were seen.  No reports of damage other than branches and flooding yet, but it did get somewhat tense.  Okay, a lot tense.  "Hand me my brown trousers" tense.  We sat in the basement for about a half-hour or so, half the people staring at their smartphones, the other half staring at the people staring at their smartphones.  Some gallows humor floated about: "we're all down here so it'll be easier to find the bodies when the building collapses," that sort of thing.

Obviously, we survived.  There's more storms coming through... in fact, there's a tornado on the ground as I type this, near Sterling (headed south-east, though)... but the bad stuff is supposedly over for the night.  We can only hope.

UPDATE: There was, apparently, another tornado in the same place later.  We're not talking Oklahoma-scale things here, mind you, but the National Weather Service is sending out investigators in the morning.  Looks like worst is over, but if you're in the way of this storm line, hunker down!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:27 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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