I am the Tornado

So, I think, while I was in my car yesterday, a tornado either went directly over me, or I was right on the edge of it. The experience was so bizarre and out of the ordinary, I’m going to post my recollection of it here while it is still vivid.

I left work half an hour early because my phone was blowing up with notifications that there were going to be negative happenings, atmospherically, by our house. I was hoping to be able to beat it home. Once I got on the highway my folly was obvious–very dark and horizon-filling clouds directly in the way of the road, but still I thought, I might beat it, and if things get rough, I’ll just pull over and let it pass.

Most of the trip home (my afternoon commute is Harrisburg to Boiling Springs via 81) was ominous but harmless–wind blowing the leaves from tress, occasional drops of rain–but once I neared Carlisle the rain and wind started in earnest, nearly blowing me into the other lane of traffic. I got off at the first exit I could (Carlisle Pike) and set about taking the longer but more cautious way home via back roads.

Most of the way into Boiling Springs was very slow-going but not disastrous. Extremely heavy winds and rain–probably top five for ferocity for what I’ve driven in in my lifetime–but still just a really crazy storm. But somewhere around Karns (for those from the area, this is Forge Road) things became otherworldly. Suddenly the wind came so hard you could SEE it. That is the only way I can describe it–it was the only way I perceived it– it seemed to not be the rain that was visible, but the wind itself. Air. My car was no longer blowing laterally across the road but was lifting, dipping at the driver’s side and rising on the passenger’s side. Limbs from trees blew across the road in front of me, detached from their homes, like twigs. What I at first thought were scores of tiny sofas (?!) were overturned trash cans, which had been set out for trash day, hurtling across the road. Luckily, this onslaught lasted only two or three minutes. It let up quickly, and I was close to home. I thought I was in the clear.

Now on Park Drive (slightly past the Duck Pond and aimed toward Mount Holly) I suddenly became engulfed in a pocket of air that seemed to posses a malign intelligence; the way I keep thinking of it was like a swirling white curtain. The rain was not hitting my windshield, as it was coming completely sideways; all the rain pelted my passenger windows. Out my windshield all I could see was the air, moving. The sound inside the car became like a loud hum, somewhere between television static and a plane taking off. I became aware that I was stopped in a line of traffic now, but I only knew this vaguely from the ideas of multiple brake lights in front of me. I could not make out details through the swirling air. Now the car started to lift again, dipping on my side and rising on the passenger side. It’s hard to say how much it did this dipping. It felt like a lot, but I suspect in that situation, a little is a lot. That’s when the hail started.

They were not huge (like you hear on the news, “golf ball” or “lemon sized” hail). They looked like the size of BBs, but the sound they made was dreadful: it sounded like gunshots hitting my car. Part of me was still worried about the monetary aspects of hail damage, even though I was in a swirling netherworld, the fact was that I JUST got my car back from the shop after a whole month. Another part of me was somehow suddenly aware that all of these weather factors together were not good–that in fact I was probably experiencing something very, very dangerous.

You cannot imagine how alarmingly loud it was.

That’s when I noticed I was just a few yards from the Dickinson College Farm. I won’t bother explaining what this is if you don’t know, but what you need to know is, from this spot on the road, it is a large farmhouse very close to the road. With an overhang.

Why none of the cars in front of me thought of this, I don’t know, but I immediately pulled my car into their parking lot and under the overhang. Sweet relief! The driver’s side of my car wasn’t covered and was still being pelted, but removing half of the noise and worry was a great relief. That’s when it got really dreamlike, though: I looked up and saw, standing under the overhang, talking on a cell phone, an old friend of mine. A friend of mine who I haven’t been in contact with for four or five years, but last I knew, he had no connection to Boiling Springs or Dickinson Farm. Seeing him standing there, under that overhang, amidst the boiling air, was no more strange than if he’d popped out of my belly button and asked for a seltzer. I was transfixed. I turned my ignition off and sat there staring at him. Finally he did look at me: he did not recognize me. I can only imagine he was having a strange day, too.

It was then I saw what he must have been on the phone about, and why the traffic had totally stopped: an entire tree was down and blocking all of Park Road.

Things stayed this way for at least five minutes. The air just a cauldron, tiny hail hitting everything like tiny bullets, my old friend just feet away from me in the middle of it all, and him never knowing it, and me never knowing how or why he got there, and eventually having a realization that maybe being under the overhang was more dangerous than being out in the wind. The air was full of flying things: one couldn’t tell what they were, but probably mostly sticks. Even now, after typing all this out, it is not possible to convey the true other-worldiness of it. It was terrifying (mayhaps even traumatizing) but I can’t remember ever having such a sudden experience where I was so thoroughly removed from the standard plane of existence.

Finally it all seemed to stop at once. Old friend went inside the barn and all of us who were stopped at the tree did 8-point turns and took the long way home, to discover power out and a new set of decidedly modern problems.