I had been hearing tornado warnings and everything since 3 oclock or so, figured eh...never anything around here....A couple hours later around 5:15 ----Tornado sirens had been going off for 15 minutes or so.. Well around 5:20ish (when the news said it would be in my town...man they are good) I'm standing on the front porch, looking...I see a guy driving down the road honking and flashing his lights, going probably 60 on my road (40 speed limit) and I see it: a huge mass of swirling wind and debris heading towards my house, I watch a power line transformer EXPLODE (the most brilliant blue light you will ever see) I thought...this is it...actually going to get hit by a tornado...I go in the house preparing for the worst.. A few minutes later the wind and rain died down, and I assumed nothing happened, figured I was just seeing things or it was just high winds...Boy was I wrong, looked out the deck door in back of the house...This is what I see: Apparently it took a path just a little south of my house, and formed into this within a minute or two.

 

Just a pic of the sky a few minutes later:




Sorry they are so blurry, I had to use the camera's 'night landscape' setting which requires you to hold the camera really still.

Drove around the backroads a little bit after it passed through, saw some fences down, trees blown down, power lines down....All a little less than a mile from my house..

God bless anybody hit by this...I definately have a new perspective on tornadoes.

 

Nice tornado shots...

 

Awesome pics!! Thanks for sharing.

 

Wow, from ice storms to tornados. Awesome!

 

Exactly what I thought. How can it be 70* in January anyway?..Actually this Saturday is 1 year to the day after the bad ice storm we had last year in this area...kind of weird.

 

Yeah, it has been hovering around 80 here for about 3 days. Must be GW.

 

What's the Pres. got to do with tornados?

 

Wow nice shots. nobody hurt right?

 

Well so far I havent heard of any people being hurt, just fences, trees, power lines down in some spots.. I wish I would have figured out a way to balance the camera better, I'm kicking myself over how blurry the pics are.

 

Where at in MO? We're hearing about warnings and such right now, but no sirens.

 

I don't know, it's all Algore's fault anyway!

 

Zaairman, I'm in Monett, about 50 miles southwest of Springfield...unless the radar shows you right in the path I doubt you have anything to worry about. I'm not even sure if there was another tornado besides this one, but I know its a powerful system.

 

Just looked at the radar, and there is some pretty heavy stuff headed this way. Cooool...

 

Did it hit the Toyota plant??