Tornado 8-19-09

Ok so I'm a couple days late, but I felt the need to blog about my tornado experience it was an F0 tornado, but still very scary, but here's my account. I was sitting at my desk just working away when the lights flickered for a second and I said "hmm that's not good" then all of the sudden still typing away working I notice what I thought were birds flying erratically outside the "HUGE GLASS WINDOWS!" I was sitting 5 feet away from then I realized that those aren't birds they're tree branches and leaves. people went to the window to look it got real dark and we could no longer see downtown and the trees were spinning (as if it were a tornado!) my ears popped and people were saying get away from the window I grabbed my purse (which in hindsight I obviously shouldn't have worried about) at the same time my ears popped the windows pulsated in and out a few times and it was loud, but before anyone could really go anywhere it was past us it was so fast. it blew out some windows in the skywalks to the adjoining buildings and cars and trees where damaged and unfortunately a bunch of houses in the neighborhood to. I heard after that people on the other side of my floor saw a car bumper fly by (5 stories up) and bang into the windows fortunately didn't break it though I guess people screamed when that happened, but I didn't hear them from where I was. the funniest part if there is a funny part is that about 20 minutes after the tornado past they came over the loud speaker and said "Severe weather has been spotted in the are please seek shelter" Um Duh!! so they made us go to a windowless conference room and we stayed there for about 20 minutes before getting the all clear. nothing happened in those 20 minutes fortunately I'm very glad that this tornado was only an F0 I can only imagine how much more damage it would have done at a higher grade considering it was completely out of the blue and all the people and buildings and trees in that area. below is a pic of an uprooted tree I snapped in my car(which was in the parking garage and fortunately was AOK after the storm) on my way home that afternoon. my second tornado sighting in my life 2 in 28 years I think that's enough.it took my hours afterwards to calm myself down my heart was racing and my hands shook for at least the rest of the work day. well anyway I have some more positive things to post about an I'll do that again soon.