A close call.

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My friend (and commenter on this blog) Alaina lives in Eastern New Mexico, where the prairie meets the desert. Severe storms and tornadoes are a common occurrence in her part of the country in the spring. She sent me these unbelievable pictures on Twitter. I am including her words in the captions of this incredible moment. I would have been so scared I doubt I could have held the camera steady, or even had the presence of mind to take photos at all!

While driving in eastern NM last week we saw this storm tracker beside the road watching the sky…..

storm1

…We drove to a nearby truck stop. I got out of the car and took pictures of the storm cloud…

storm2

Suddenly a wall of dust and debris was whirling all around us!

storm3

We were standing directly under a supercell, inside the vortex of a weak mesocyclone approx. 200′ wide!

storm4

It looked & sounded scarier than my pics show. Wish I’d switched to video~dramatic high plains weather!

storm5

I would say Alaina was very lucky! But what a fantastic opportunity to take some amazing photos.

48 thoughts on “A close call.”

      • I can’t tell if my life is crazier than normal or not, because this is how my life has always been, even before we moved to this stormy area five years ago. My very first clearly defined memory in my life is of a 6.9 earthquake in California when I was a toddler. That seemed to set the theme for everything that has happened to me and my family ever since.

        My dad honestly believed that our family was cursed because his dad was heavy into witchcraft. But I don’t know… according to the news, even worse things are happening to people all over the world, every day. But maybe most of those people have just one or two big things, and that’s it? Anyway, I am glad I now have a cellphone that can take decent pictures, so when these crazy things happen people can see I am not being a drama queen and making this stuff up!

        I am also very grateful that so far, I have survived all these crazy things, and most of my loved ones have survived, too.

        Liked by 2 people

        • Alaina,
          ‘My dad honestly believed that our family was cursed because his dad was heavy into witchcraft’ !!!
          COOL! Maybe you make a post about it?!!!

          Liked by 2 people

          • Well… hmmmm….the story is a bit long and includes how my paternal grandfather made me the sole heir to his small estate…. including heir to his black powers. Did you know practitioners of witchcraft did that? Designated an heir for their witchcraft? I didn’t know and boy was I surprised. I was 13, sitting in one of my 7th grade classes, I had no idea that my 60 year old grandad was about to die, and suddenly I KNEW he was dead. And that’s when my hell really began.

            I’m writing a book about it but it is slow going. So emotional to write. Which is why I keep reading Lucky’s blog instead…

            I have since renounced my witchcraft powers, by the way. Because it clashed with my Christianity. Which is an understatement and a half.

            Liked by 3 people

          • Oh my goodness… I just put two different samples from the memoir I am writing in the “I Write Like” writing style analyzer located on the bottom of Lucky’s blog… the first analysis said I write like H.P. Lovecraft and the second sample said I write like Stephen King. I looked up Lovecraft because I had never heard of him. This is what I found on Amazon:
            H. P. Lovecraft, born in 1890, was the author of “Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre…”

            Yikes. Why couldn’t it have said that I write like Janet Evanovich? I love her Stephanie Plum bounty hunter novels.

            Liked by 2 people

            • LOL, I take that test after almost every blog post now and I haven’t gotten Stephen King yet. If you really do write like Stephen King then you will have a bestselling book!

              Liked by 2 people

            • Well… you know how I told you that I was afraid to check my blog stats when I had my blog public? The thought of a lot of people reading my blog, or my book, scares me! I am such a wuss when it comes to public scrutiny. Supercells I can handle.

              In the 1980s I lived in Maine for about four years. (My ex was career military so I lived a lot of places.) For six months I lived in easy walking distance of Stephen King’s house in Bangor. His house was a big rambling mauve colored Victorian with a black iron fence topped with iron gargoyles that kids kept stealing. I never did see King or his wife Tabitha, though.

              Funny thing, I don’t care for most of his writings. Too much horror for my PTSD. However, the one novel I wrote and published 15 years ago was loosely inspired by reading King’s BAG OF BONES. 🙂

              Liked by 1 person

            • Alaina,
              You saw King’s house?!!! I used to read his books. My favorite is The Stand.
              Then I got bored with him and moved on to Koonz. My favorite is The Watchers.
              Remember when King got run over? The driver killed himself!
              Heres the link. I feel so sorry for the dude. I feel him I so totally feel him.
              He said,” I’d hate to go through another winter dragging my way up and down the highway in the snow”
              http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1357044/Driver-who-hit-Stephen-King-is-found-dead.html

              Liked by 2 people

            • The Stand is my favorite Stephen King book, but The Shining is pretty close, and is probably one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time too. I’ve watched it so many times and still never get tired of it. “HERE’S JOHNNY!”

              Thanks for the link too.

              Liked by 1 person

            • Said they were concerned with the contents on one of the blogs so they shut it down.
              At first I thought it was because I called Lewis Carroll a child molester.
              WP said they made a mistake.
              **********************************
              Daisy – WordPress.com
              8:10 AM (7 minutes ago) to me
              Hi there,Thanks for getting in touch.
              Our apologies for the trouble. That warning message should not have been added to your WordPress.com dashboard.

              We have removed the warning and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused.

              Daisy
              Community Guardian | WordPress.com

              Liked by 1 person

            • Yes, I remember when King got run over but I didn’t know the guy who did it killed himself. Wow. Sad. I read somewhere that King bought the vehicle that hit him and then he beat and bashed it all to pieces.

              Liked by 1 person

            • He did? Never knew that! I’ll be back. Going to go find a link about this dude who killed himself. When that dude ran King over, I didn’t care much for his attitude saying what’s the big deal. Then when I read about the reason for him killing himself, it hit me very hard.

              Liked by 1 person

            • It’s all so messed up, isn’t it?

              Back when I lived in Maine, which was several years before that awful accident, there was a guy who drove a van around Bangor that was covered with painted on messages saying that King was evil. He would leave the van parked alongside the road in the middle of town. I don’t know if SK is evil or not, but the sight of that angry looking van always gave me the creeps.

              Liked by 2 people

            • King isn’t evil. That guy sounds a little eccentric to say the least. It’s kind of funny in a way though. King does have a strange kind of scary look about him and he writes dark stories but he isn’t evil. At least I don’t think he is.

              Liked by 1 person

            • I never met him and I haven’t read enough of his writing to judge, but I never got the feeling that he is evil. However, one of my kid’s high school English teachers said he went to college with King, long before he was famous, and he said he knew for a fact that King’s earliest horror stories were based on his personal experiences with the occult. But who knows if that is true or not. Even if it is true, with my experiences in that realm, I know that having supernatural experiences happen in your life doesn’t mean you are evil. Sometimes the opposite is what makes a person a target. Evil wants to corrupt and destroy goodness and innocence. Like malignant narcissists do.

              Liked by 2 people

            • That’s interesting. I never knew that about King but perhaps it is true. It still doesn’t mean he’s evil, just that he was a normal kid who experimented with dangerous things, like most kids do. Maybe the occult was his “drugs.” And I agree, that having experiences with the occult could even mean you have been the target of evil, not looking for it. I
              definitely believe there’s a spiritual component to malignant narcissism too. I do not think KIng is one.

              Like

        • Obviously you have a guardian angel looking after you! As crazy as my life has been, it’s downright BORING compared to yours. I wouldn’t write a book about it because it would probably put everyone to sleep. Blog posts are good enough. I’ll write a book about something else–not sure what yet. Or maybe fiction.

          Either you have the most active imagination in the world or your life really has been insane! But those photos are all the proof I need that you have a crazy life. I’m impressed with how seemingly calm you were. I would have freaked. But I suppose living in that part of the country you would be used to this kind of weather.

          My father lives in Texas, near the Oklahoma border, and the only tornado warning they ever had since he moved there was when I visited there in 2004. It was the height of tornado season, and I remember the sky turned green-black and the Weather channel started beeping and I saw that red screen. I was scared to death! I took the kids who and we all hid in the bathroom (there was no basement). Nothing happened, except when we came out, we saw broken glass and golfball sized hailstones all over the coffee table and leather sofa. The hailstones had broken through the skylight in the living room and landed int he living room. I cut one open; it was pretty cool. It looked just like an onion or a piece of agate. Later he said I must have brought the bad weather with me on the plane since he had been lucky and they never had a storm like that in their area until that evening we arrived.

          As for the witchcraft thing, I agree that could have been it. I don’t like the occult, I think it’s very dangerous and I believe it is possible to curse someone using the occult. So the curse could have been real.

          Liked by 2 people

          • One of my biggest worries about writing my memoir is that people will think I am making it a lot of it up. That bothers me so bad, I am thinking of leaving the more unbelievable stuff out.

            I don’t want to believe in evil spirits or demons or whatever you want to call them. That sounds so ignorant and superstitious. But the truth is… yes. They are real. After my grandfather died he apparently realized that leaving me his witchcraft powers was a very bad thing, and he tried to warn me. But the evil spirits wouldn’t let my grandfather speak… I woke up a few nights after he died and there was a terrible spiritual war going on in my room. Then a friend at school offered me the use of her Ouija board to try to contact my grandfather… and another friend at school gave me a book with instructions on contacting the dead. BIG mistake.

            Liked by 3 people

            • Oh, god. Ouija boards terrify me. I wouldn’t let my daughter bring one into the house when her friend gave her one. When i was in high school, I had one and spent some time playing with it by myself. One time, the plastic thing started to MOVE BY ITSELF– I was barely touching it. They say it’s really the nerve endings in your fingers and your subconscious “tells” it where to go. That’s the logical explanation, but that was just too freaky and I threw it in the trash after that– OUTSIDE.

              Liked by 3 people

            • Well, I would believe you. You probably wouldn’t want to do this, but you could always fictionalize it and use all those events and no one would question it. But fictionalizing it would defeat what you are trying to do, so maybe leave the witchcraft stuff out. It probably doesn’t have much to do with the message you are trying to get across anyway.

              Liked by 2 people

            • I have thought of fictionalizing my story but… you are right, it would not serve my purpose. Also, unfortunately, the witchcraft stuff probably needs to be in there because that was what led to me being diagnosed with schizophrenia… along with a 15-year-old boy from my school who also used the Ouija and seances to try to contact his deceased mother. Suddenly we were both “hearing voices” and having visual hallucinations. So we were both put in the state insane asylum, at the same time, for the same reasons. I have tried to find him online but couldn’t. H

              Liked by 2 people

            • Go ahead and write everything exactly the way it happened then. It might be more believable then you think. A skilled writer can make almost anything believable as long as they are honest.

              Liked by 2 people

            • I am putting everything just the way I remember it happening, in the first draft. My therapist thinks that is therapeutic, if nothing else. Then as I edit my manuscript I will take things out if I think it would be better left out. I don’t want my book to be too wordy, anyway, that gets boring fast.

              You are such an excellent writer, and I am struggling so bad trying to get this thing written, I have thought of asking if you would want to be my co-author. Or editor. Or something. I don’t know. It would be a big job and you would need to be financially compensated. Since most books don’t make much money, not even those that are traditionally published, there is no guarantee of getting very much out of book sales. Anyway, it’s just an idea…

              Liked by 2 people

            • Well, I do have some editorial background, and I used to write book reviews and a column in a medical journal. How about if I act as your editor. I wouldn’t take anything out without your permission, just help you tighten things up, if any tightening up is even needed. I’m honored you asked. I wouldn’t want to cowrite though, because it’s your story.

              Liked by 2 people

  4. I also have a screenshot that I took last month of our AccuWeather forecast for Monday, May 4. The forecast said we were going to have flash floods, large hail, damaging winds, and a possible tornado, throughout the day and into the evening.

    I was like, why not just say “the end is near” and leave it at that?

    Liked by 4 people

      • Thanks, Mary P. 🙂

        We had some small hail and a brief thundering downpour of rain shortly after I took these pictures, but I was in the truck stop’s bathroom at the time, trying to wash the gritty dust out of my eyes, so I didn’t get pictures of that. I heard the pounding on the roof while I was in the restroom and wondered if a tornado was about to tear through the building.

        I have even scarier pictures of a supercell that hit our town three years ago and destroyed or severely damaged most of the roofs here, including the roof on our house, and totaled our RV trailer. The hail was baseball to softball size! I had never seen hail that big before! The supercell cloud was really huge, it looked like the motherership UFO on the Close Encounters movie. I stood right under it and took pictures as it rotated slowly above me, with lightning bolts flashing inside and across the cloud. My husband was standing in the back yard behind me. We had only been living here a short while so we didn’t know what we were looking at. Then the sky fell and we ran inside. It sounded like our house was being pounded by boulders.

        After that, we understood why real estate prices are so crazy cheap here and home owner insurance is so insanely expensive. A lot of insurance companies refuse to cover property in our area, at any price.

        Liked by 2 people

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