I Don't Think I'm in Kansas Anymore

Well, now I can say that I've been in floods, hurricanes and...a tornado!

Hilly upstate New York is not really conducive to that whirling funnel cloud that bore Dorothy and Toto away, but we had a small one touch down for a quarter of a mile near my home on Saturday, as seen forming nearby that afternoon above.

It didn't last long, and I never saw it coming--I was too busy running around the house closing windows and unplugging electronics to even have the brains to go down in the basement, even if I'd heard about it coming beforehand.

All I noticed was the strange yellow light, glowering clouds (which have been a constant lately), followed by the darkness and then a huge ka-boom of lightning and thunder followed by torrential sheets of rain (think of those water effects they had in The Hurricane and The Rains Came and you'll get my drift). It was all over in about 10 minutes. Lots of trees were twisted into pretzels, people lost parts of their roof, roads were flooded, two local greenhouses were blasted to smithereens, yet only one person was slightly hurt--a poor carnival worker who fell about 20 feet onto his head into the soft, muddy ground while trying to shut down a ride at a local fireman's fair.

It's been the coldest July here on record, with daily rains, some humidity and now this as a cherry on the sundae of summer. I think August should be interesting, to put it mildly.

Just in case you can't get enough of this sort of thing, here's a few moments documenting "It's a twister...it's a twister!"