This past Wednesday afternoon, my boyfriend, Alec, and I decided to head to the local Starbucks to do some reading and writing. The sky was pretty dark—but that’s typical of a June in Virginia—hot and humid in the morning, thunderstorm in the afternoon.

We had gone a few miles when giant raindrops began to pelt our windshield accompanied by increasingly strong winds. Branches and leaves blew past the windows, traffic lights swung violently, and our poor little Saturn coupe began to shutter in the face of the growing gale. Pulling up to an intersection we noticed a diagonal dark cloud directly above us lit up by a strange pink glow.

I turned to Alec; the word scarcely needed saying—Tornado.

Wordlessly, he swung the car around and we headed back. The storm quickly overtook us, flooding the windshield and reducing visibility to zero. We finally made it back and ran from the car to the house where Alec’s brother and mom hugged us in relief. But it was short-lived, the phone rang (the last call before we lost all service)—it was Alec’s little sister. Her afternoon activities had been canceled and she had been walking home when the storm hit. All around us large branches littered the sidewalk and street—and the storm was only getting worse. Read More »