Skychaser; running from the bad sky to the good sky

Skychaser

I'm writing on my ipod. I went into State College to go get a post office box or at least find out the prices at a couple places. I stopped at a couple places and then I'm not sure what I was going to do after that, because my plans suddenly changed drastically, and whatever I had been about to do, I forgot what it was.

A while earlier, at a previous stop, I had looked up and seen a massive storm approaching. I admired it without any real worry. I've studied meteorology in the past, and so I recognized the structure of a thunderstorm from far away. To many other people, perhaps it only looked like a bunch of big clouds.

Then I got back in the car and drove to the next mailbox place, while listening to people on the radio talking about raising the debt limit, and talking very vaguely about their budget plan. I was more interested in that than the storm.

After I had finished up, I was thinking of going somewhere else. But I started to really notice the storm. It was getting darker and darker blue underneath it, and the storm was almost overhead. The clouds were a lot rougher than I had first thought. They were not ordinary clouds. They were like mammatus clouds, extremely low, clouds exploding downwards.

I looked into the west and saw that the clouds had a weird glowing greenish light inside them, with blue darkness behind them covering the rest of the sky. "Oh my god, that's just WRONG!" I said anxiously.

The leading edge of the storm was now right over top of me. It was a big, thick edge coming down very, very low, much closer than I like. The edge was a long, curving, horseshoe shaped wall of clouds, with mammatus bumps all under it swirling downwards. I was right in the center of the horseshoe, and I suddenly felt that something was very wrong. "I don't wanna be here! I don't wanna be here!" I wailed, while driving down the road and trying to watch the clouds at the same time.

I felt my body flooding with adrenaline, and I felt absolutely sure that something was very, very wrong in the sky above me, something evil. I absolutely did not want to be underneath that curving ridge of clouds. My body was shouting "Go! Go! Go!" My legs tensed up to run, but I was driving. The lumpy clouds were reaching downwards, malicious and greedy, reaching towards me.

My gas tank was nearly empty. The last thing I wanted right now was to pull over and stop my car at a gas station under these clouds, but the very VERY last thing that I wanted, after that, was to run out of gas while trying to escape.

So I postponed my flight away from the area and I put gas in the car, frantically looking all around at the sky, and even though my gas finished pumping, I stood there holding the handle down, not realizing it was done, as I was totally focused on the sky. Then I woke up, and put the gas cap back on and got in the car.

I now had to choose a good direction. The storm had wrapped its horseshoe shape all around me and surrounded me in almost every direction. I wanted to avoid any highways that might temporarily bring me closer to the Bad Place. I wanted to get as far away from the Bad Place as fast as I could.

I decided to move westward, deeper into the storm, into the areas that had smoother flatter clouds that looked more stable. It was very rainy and dark looking there, but the clouds looked good. So I went that way.

I temporarily drove a way that kept me close to the edge, running along it, and I swear I saw a wall cloud. I denied that it was a wall cloud, because I had to temporarily drive straight towards it to get to the highway that would take me to smoother clouds. So I drove straight towards this wall-cloud-like thing for a couple minutes. The mammatus bumps were still swirling and exploding down from the sky.

I got on the highway and was relieved to see that it took me towards the ordinary looking rainy area. I also gradually saw a patch of blue sky, faint and far away behind some falling rain, and i was driving towards it. It was actually a rather small storm after all. It wasn't long before I got away from the Bad Place, and I made a few more decisions about where to go - I didn't go straight home - and I went on to Howard Dam, where I am now. The sky is calm and the evil thing is past.

I would swear that I was right under a developing tornado. People say it makes them feel supernatural terror. That is what I felt. Scientists think that maybe the vortex of air produces infrasound, and infrasound is known for triggering the body to feel terror, in humans and other animals. Before a tornado becomes a vertical snake hanging down, it might possibly be up in the clouds as a horizontal roll, and it only needs the right forces to twist it downwards.

That is the model that I read about, decades ago, when I did a school report about tornadoes. That curving horseshoe could have been a roll of clouds that were gradually spiralling around to form a complete circle around the "eye" of the storm. If they completed their swirl, they might enclose that area so strongly that the horizontal rolls had nowhere else to go except down. The horeshoe was still open-sided while I was under it. Now that I think about it, I recall that meteorologists look for a "hook" shape on the radar. Those clouds were definitely hook shaped. It really was directly above me, this THING that was evil.

When I get home, after walking around the lake for a while, and after swimming, if I feel like it, I will look online to see any news about the storm. The sun is shining now.

I went swimming. It was as warm as bathwater.

(Update: Yes, it's called a Hook Echo, and the clouds were shaped exactly like those photos show, and right in that hook is where the tornado forms! I'm SURE that that's where I was! I will have to do more searching to find out if we had a storm watch here.)