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Tornado Trouble

Posted by on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 in College Life, General Information, Nashville, Weather.

Right now, I’m sitting on my bed with the window open, listening to my summer playlist. I wanted a little break before diving into chemistry for the day, but for some reason, I’m struggling with ignoring the beautiful weather. This is probably due to the fact that yesterday was the complete opposite when I was almost caught in a tornado. Okay, not an actual tornado, but I was definitely outside during the tornado warning!

Yesterday started as a normal enough day, just more rainy than usual. Around 1 o’clock, I had my first scare though. There was a big flash and the LOUDEST thunder I’ve ever heard! I literally thought a bomb might have just gone off. When I got to class, we were all discussing the crazy weather when someone told us that the lightning had struck outside of Buttrick, destroying some bricks and trees in the process. All throughout class, I kept getting distracted by looking out the windows, because the weather wasn’t consistently bad, but rather it kept going back and forth.

When class ended at 2, it didn’t look too dangerous outside and I wanted to get back to Sutherland to do the laundry I had put off for way too long. I had been walking for a minute or so when the rain started to pick up and a man drove past me shouting, “Get inside! There’s a tornado warning!!” As if that wasn’t terrifying enough, I was by myself and not near any buildings I could easily enter, since I usually walked down 21st to get back from that class. All of a sudden, the wind picked up and I noticed the few people still outside running indoors. That’s all it took for me to start sprinting back to the Commons, which I luckily reached in one piece, and hide out in the basement (that I didn’t know existed) for 20 minutes.

I later found out that most of my friends were just chilling in the dorm or, in the case of one friend, didn’t even know there was a tornado warning. Her class was in lab in the basement of Stevenson and safe anyway, so nobody told them. So yesterday might not have been as dramatic as I just made it sound, but at least it makes me appreciate the beautiful sunshine today even more! Though that might not be the best thing for my homework…

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