"The Dominator"

It appears as though every other time we travel home to ND, we have an interesting experience. I think most of you heard about our fiasco with a snowbank and AAA in January when we headed back from Christmas break. Well, no snowbanks or AAA were involved in the latest trip home (Monday), but something more scary happened.

Our trip was rather uneventful until we made it through Fargo (about 80 miles from our home). Right out of Fargo we were passed by a caravan of black suburbans lead by a very interesting vehicle (see pictures below). This vehicle was called "The Dominator," and the caravan was a storm chasing unit. The sky was beginning to darken, but we didn't think it looked that bad. As we approached Grand Forks, announcements came over the radio of tornados touching down southwest of Fargo and southwest of Grand Forks (the storm was heading northeast). It seemed as though we were always about 30 miles ahead of everything, until we got closer to Grand Forks and the radio announcer noted that motorists on the stretch of I-29 which we were on should take cover. At this point we were about 25 miles from home and it was raining hard. I, of course, was terrified and crying. Jess, on the other hand, was very calm and level-headed (what a great man!). We pulled off I-29 in Grand Forks, but then the rain seemed to let up and it was getting lighter (although a weird yellowish color), so we quickly drove the last 10 miles home. Within about 10 minutes of arriving at home (about 9:30pm), the sirens started to go off. We headed to the basement with the radio, blankets, cell phones, and the laptop (and, of course, our dog). The sirens continued to sound for about 15 minutes. Jess was keeping an eye on the television and didn't tell me until well after the sirens stopped that there was "suspicious rotation" directly above Manvel about which the meteorologists were concerned (I am so glad he didn't tell me this while it was happening). Thankfully, nothing happened!

The interesting part of this story is that we were planning on leaving Jess' parents house at about 5 on Monday, but ended up leaving at about 4:15. If we had left at 5 we would have been right in the bad portion of the storm at every point. God is good!

This is not exactly how I wanted to start out the summer storm season. Hopefully we don't experience that again. I am not a fan of tornado warnings and severe weather--especially when driving in our lightweight Ford Focus on an interstate in ND where there is absolutely no ditch and no place to take shelter...

Here are a few pictures of the storm chaser caravan. "The Dominator" is the steel reinforced vehicle that looks like it came out of a bad science fiction movie.




































The Dominator




















Hope your summer if filled with beautiful, tornado-free weather!

Darci