Looking For Me

The Tale of the Twisters from Trinidad.

6/6/14
70 year anniversary of D-Day.
8 year anniversary of my marriage to the wonderful Robert.
The day I saw my first tornado.
The day I saw my second tornado.
The day I saw a funnel cloud form not far from a volcano.
It was an amazing day.

(Note: These are my own photos, you may take them for wallpapers or background pictures, but please do not take them to sell or to claim as your own. Thank you.)

Just outside of Trinidad, Colorado ( which is an adorable town nestled between to beautiful mountain ridge lines and I would love to visit it proper one day) we sat and watched a beautiful storm pull itself together and start rotating. A nice mesocyclone formed and a wall cloud started to form. It attempted this wall cloud a couple of times. Then we saw a tiny point coming out of the lowering when I noticed there was dust being blown around on the ground underneath it. It was indeed a tornado.

It started to pick up more dirt from the ground and lifting up its column.

(I apologize for blurriness, I’m still figuring out my camera, and these are all raw un-doctored photos.)

Then it became this beauty.

This tornado was on the ground for 34 minutes.
I thought I would be scared like I get during tornado warnings back at home, but I didn’t. I was too struck with the beauty and the fact this was actually happening before my eyes.
I think I will be less scared back home now. Not to say I will be any less prepared of course.

So we watched it as best we could until it dissipated. It was difficult for a time because the rain and hail core settled in on us. Hail was about dime size with random 1″ pieces. Once that tornado died we moved on to see if it would produce again or head to another storm. Then Charles (owner of Cloud 9 Tours) noticed another funnel had of us. We stopped again to take a look. This time with us between the storm and the sunlight it looked white and perfect.

At this point it seemed every single person from the local sheriff’s office drove by towards the tornado. We decided to get a little closer to the tornado as it was going away from us. Then we wee stopped by a police officer yelling at us to turn around, she didn’t seem to care that Charles is a trained spotter as he explained. She escorted us back to the spot we were before and said we could stay there but go no further. Unfortunately during that time of traveling back to our previous spot was when the tornado looked solid from sky to ground and we didn’t get pictures of it. It started roping out when we got out of the van. It was of course still beautiful. It was on the ground about 8 minutes.

So after some dithering with some police road block issues (the last tornado we saw tore apart a power pole and broke power lines and it was laying in the road. It also tore apart some of the barbed wire fences along the road and scoured the ground), and dirt-turning-into-mud-into-a-creek-bed road, we headed south. The delay saw this storm die down and we headed to New Mexico to catch another storm that was promising. By the time we got there it started to bring down a funnel but it did not produce. I got a decent photo of it near a volcano. The funnel is hard to see on the left, and I think you can figure out the volcano. (It’s a photo from my phone, though.)

We celebrated with a steak dinner as is tradition for the group. I thank Charles for picking the best storm for us.

I also thank Robert, for this trip, for my fun electronic gadgets that are helping me out, for everything always.
Happy Anniversary.