Tornado outbreak!

I was doing notes about this all night.

Saturday. 3:30pm. A Reed Timmer livestream starts. The first thing I see is Dorothy.

Reed’s process involves doing a lot of thinking on where he’ll target, driving around for a few hours and then waiting for the first severe thunderstorm warning to be issued. As I was watching the live stream, he was near the supercell, and I saw a northward exit that would take him right to it. I almost pulled the hair out of my head; Reed, take the exit up north, then turn east. He did, and then I took a video of that supercell.

Then the tornado warning was issued. I was so happy that I moonwalked—a task only to be done in the privacy of my own room—but forgot I still had headphones in and almost ripped my ears off. It then got dark so I switched livestreams to Max Velocity because he doesn’t chase and thus I could see what the maps he was using. It looked like the outbreak was slowing down, so I went to bed.

Six hours later…. “Beep! Beep! Beep!” goes my weather radio. (I have a weather emergency alert radio in my room. It’s loud.) “The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Expect 60 mph gusts of wind. Tornadoes are possible.” I grabbed my laptop and opened the RadarScope app. I saw rotation near where I live, and I thought, “I bet they issue a tornado warning.”

The next thing I hear: “Beep! Beep! Beep! The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning. Take shelter in a basement or interior room on the lowest floor of a building.” I again looked at my radar. The tornado warning was just south of where I was. I had dodged a bullet. My weather radio was going off about tornado warnings about 30-60 minutes away from where I lived. (It eventually got annoying.)

As of about 15 minutes before press time, the tornado watch has expired. When that tornado watch was issued, at 5:30 a.m. this morning, it woke me up at the perfect time. There was a MASSIVE lightning strike. I didn’t care what the radio was saying—I like lightning. I looked out my window, which is always open for that very reason, and finally saw cloud-to-ground lightning. (See How Lightning Reaches the Ground) It was a good one. If only I had my camera running.

There were no confirmed tornadoes, but I think there was one near McKennie, Tennessee, because damage reports were coming in. It is not confirmed, I just tried to research it, and didn’t find anything about it.

Contact me in the comments, or by responding to this email. Stay safe. And make sure the volume isn’t too high on your weather emergency alert radios.)