ACCOZZAGLIA

It only makes sense to keep your subject line theme intact, albeit modified to my little run-in with death yesterday.

It was extremely stormy in Minnesota all day. There was rain, lightning, hail, and tornadoes, to say the very least. At about three p.m., after having slummed all day in my flat (which I have been guilty of doing for the past few days…I’ve been let down and snubbed since I last wrote you, which explains why), I’d been listening to the storm warnings on public radio. They had announced severe t-storm warnings throughout my area, and a tornado warning in SW Minnesota. So, being the storm-chaser that I am, but this time with a camera to arm myself with, I jumped into my car in a downpour and headed south-southwest towards the assumed trajectory of the tornadic cells.

It took me a while to get out of the metro area, as I was chasing other possibilities of funnel clouds in the area, but to no avail. They were only cloud-duds, I guess you could say. So, I headed down US169, a divided four-lane highway, to a small city called Mankato. US169 runs aside the Minnesota River, and what I’ve learned about Minnesota river (river intentionally not capitalised, because I include the St. Croix and Mississippi) valleys is that the elevations are really weird and sudden, which you may not expect in the stereotypical flatness of the midwest.

Anyway, as I headed that way, the National Weather Service was issuing new tornado warnings in counties progressively northeastward, relatively toward my direction. The reports said that while funnel clouds had been spotted by authorities, there was no sign or report of one touching down. Going onward, I went past a town about 55km north of Mankato called Le Sueur, home of the Jolly Green Giant, by the way. As I went through, the cloud gradations became very strange. To my east, overlooking a dropoff, I could see thunderheads in the distance, through a break in nearby clouds, illuminated by the sun. You could see all the way to the top of the distant cumulonimbus. To my west, and obscured by a ledge, I could make out some VERY dark skies. Very dark. Intensely dark grey. Then, it began to hail. Even though several cars continued, I stopped on the side, exclaiming OW! every time I’d hear a serious bombardment of pea and Whopper-candy-sized hail come crashing down upon Josephine. I rolled down my window to take a couple of pictures of the beautiful cloud formations out east, looked up at the green clouds directly above me (ALWAYS a bad sign, in my experience), and I changed from my telephoto to a regular lens…then I got back onto the road, at which point, the Mankanto public radio mirror went off the air. So, I switched back to the Twin Cities mirror. About 20km south of Le Sueur is a small city of about 10,000 called St. Peter, which I’d been told was supposed to once be the home of Minnesota’s state capital, before moving it to St. Paul.

As I approached the northern limits of St. Peter, The ledge to my right dropped off to relatively level, which let me see what was occurring south and west of me. It was intensely black. It reminded me of a picture I once saw of Seattle in 1980, just after Mt. St. Helens erupted, ejecting ash cloud into the air and effectively blocking out the daylight. It was frighteningly close to that. On the northern outskirts, I took a right, going west, down a two-lane highway called county road 5. To my left were newer townhouses, cheaply built within the last decade. Everything beyond that was pitch. I had to drive about two or three km west to reach above the rooflines of the townhomes in order to view the horizon unobstructed. It was here that I realised that something VERY BIG was happening.

I could see the low-lying black deck throughout, except for this area directly to my south where the black reached down to the ground. That area was, I’m guessing, 1 to 3km wide, and the edges were very diffuse. I couldn’t be certain if the formation was a dense downburst of rain or a tornado and I couldn’t tell its distance, but I was leaning 90% to the latter. I immediately u-turned, seeing that there was a car coming eastbound around this bend. I hightailed it east myself, pushing my car to 130km/h back to US 169.

Then, I made a critical mistake. I turned right, going southbound into the St. Peter city centre. I saw a reduced speed limit sign to slow to 35 mph (indicating the city limit) and an illuminated light sign for “Hardee’s, two miles” to my right, beside a Dairy Queen sign. Then…I looked directly right of me, westward, and what I observed put the fear of unhuman power in me. The downpour/tornado was now just a few blocks to my direct west, moving at an inordinate rate. Everything around me became violently windy, and between me and this closing mass were trailer homes and the bright blue pops of power lines being severed, which I’d seen in a tornado before. At this point, my adrenalin levels went from maximum to an unearthly threshold that I’ve never felt before.

The adrenalin put me into a new sensation: a primal instinct to live. I took the very first u-turn crossover and gunned Josephine into second gear. And then third. By third gear, not paying attention to my speed, but clearly redlining the engine, I glanced ever-briefly to the left of my windshield to see the wind, rain, hail and debris that was pounding me. And then it was in front…and around me completely. The wind went from left to right, severely trying to push me off the road. I went to fourth gear. At this point I must have been going 120. It was also here that I suddenly noticed that I could no longer hear what the radio was saying, as this thunderous sound of wind was enveloping me. It’s kinda like that sound you hear when you stick your head out of a car travelling at highway speeds, but far deeper and louder, and more forceful. I looked at my clock. It was 5:38.

Then, I began to hear my engine pushing up again, but my speed started to diminish down to 100. I upshifted back into 3rd and regained speed, but then this opaque rain began to fall, littered with more hail, limiting my visibility to about two metres max. I was too scared to look back into my rearview, and there was no way I could turn my head around to see behind me, lest I lose control of Josephine and anything in front of me. But I did once more look up to the left corner of my windshield to see this crescent of middle-level black clouds serrating the ever-higher lighter-grey upper-level flatness, moving at an unbelievable speed for such a high-level cloud. But you know, in hindsight, I think the depth of field of that arc was deceiving. I suggest to believe that it was dirt and debris, resembling a cloud (in reports this morning, people in the south suburbs in the Twin Cities, some 90 km away, found cheques from St. Peter in their yards).

Hardly in the clear, I put every bit of my focus directly ahead, trying to define anything in front of me, including the hazards of hydroplaning, large debris, stopped cars, even moving cars. I *did* see one car. It was some distance ahead of me, and I could only make it out when they hit their brakes. It turned out to be an Acura Legend. They were obviously aware of the chaos behind us, but since they had perhaps a km or two leeway, when I was still in St. Peter, I don’t think they knew the full magnitude of the event. They must have been going around 130, even in the blinding rain. I deduced this, because I was going 150+ when I passed them. In *any* other event, I would never have dared to go faster than 90 in conditions like that, for fear of hydroplaning (which I happened to do just after seeing my first tornado in 1992, which, by the way, was so much smaller. With that one, the vortex was clearly defined and perhaps not much more than 75m across), but this was obviously an exception.

About 2km south of the Le Sueur exit, I got under an overpass. Southbound, there were four cars on the shoulder, waiting out the storm. Whether they knew or not was unclear. I got out, ran across the road, and waved my arms, saying, “DON’T GO! THERE’S A TORNADO IN ST. PETER. STAY HERE OR DRIVE NORTH!” And of course, with my luck, the first three cars must have either ignored or misunderstood me, because they proceeded to leave. Brilliant, I thought. However, the fourth driver, in a newer red Civic hatchback (the kind I hate) with Montana plates, rolled her window down and heeded my warning. It was at this point, two minutes after I stopped my car, that the Acura I passed just moments before, passed by me (if that’s any indication of how fast I was going).

I got back into my car, drove north to the Le Sueur exit and parked in the underpass under US169. She followed me, and we stayed there for about forty-five minutes. It was so placid there, under that bridge. The skies eastward were still clear(ing), and in the west, the clouds were this moderate grey. Remarkably, there was no rain. We listened to the same station, giving out reports as they received them. About ten minutes later, they reported that St. Peter had been hit by a large tornado, causing extensive damage to the city centre. It was then that I realised how close I’d come to critical injury or my own fatality. Recounting the sequence over and over, whilst under that bridge, I deduced that had I taken the same path that I did, but delayed by ten or thirty seconds, that I’d either be dead or in critical shape. And had I’d stayed onward on county road 5, I might have missed the full wrath, making it behind the vortex to photograph the event. But timing and predicting the immediate trajectory of the cell were of the essence, and really nothing else mattered.

At 6:30, they dropped the warning, and the both of us headed back south. The state police had barricaded US169 far before where I had been, and this gave me the chills. I detoured on a little county road into a side vein of town, as many other people did. I never got down far enough to county road 5. What I did see, in the failing light, were canoes and rowboats strewn everywhere, in trees, on cars, on houses (those which stood), in mobile homes (I think trailer parks are tornado magnets), and I thought that they were from people’s personal boats. It turns out that there was a small boat dealer in that area of town, some six blocks over. Several more canoes were massed in a corner of the fenced-in lot, and I saw one wrapped around a pole. Several houses had portions torn away entirely, and many more had buckled off their foundation, especially the wood-frame homes. Trees and power lines were felled everywhere, rendering the residential streets impassable. I saw places where one house stood with minor damage, while next door there were nothing more than a few remaining boards standing where another house had been.

By 7pm, it was getting dark, and more lightning was emanating from the southwest, which prompted me to get the fuck out of there. Driving home on US169, I saw this newer Ford conversion van that had clearly been mauled by the tornado. The large panorama windows had all been shattered, and the top of the boxiness of the van had been crushed in. I didn’t look at the occupants when I passed them. I was just glad that there had been no reported fatalities. Later I passed an Integra, also slightly damaged by the storm, but much less so.

By 8:30, I reached my friend’s house, unannounced. Sara hugged me and said, “are you okay?” I said, “I don’t know.” I told Sara, her friend, and her brother about the event, which left them gaggled with amazement. We went in to catch the 9pm news, just after the X-Files. The news team already had people on scene, interviewing some nineteen year-old named Justin, who had been picked up and thrown in his red Oldsmobile by the winds. He was unhurt, but the car, which was behind the reporter and him, looked like hell. There was a green road sign lodged in his back seat, having impaled the rear window. All the windows were shattered, the sheetmetal a twisted mass, and all Justin had to say, with a smirk was, “The only thing that works now is the radio.”

Then, the reporter on scene announced that they had confirmed one fatality, a 6 year-old boy named Dustin, who had been pulled out of the broken window of a van, and was thrown 150 yards to his death. This put the severe chills in me and made me think of the crippled van I saw driving towards the Twin Cities. And it made me wonder.

But I never remembered seeing the Oldsmobile. Unless it was that car I passed, just after I U-turned 169, then I never saw it. I just want to know where the van and Oldsmobile were. Were they too on 169? No one I’ve spoken with, reporters included, seem to know.

I couldn’t sleep very well last night. This morning, Minnesota Public Radio interviewed me and got the story I just told you. Apparently, they will be having a report this afternoon, encompassing the different first-hand accounts of the storm. I heard a couple of them this morning on MPR, and while their vantage points were different than mine, their accounts were so similar to what I saw: the 1-3km wall, the sounds (but they said the wind whistled, I heard thunder-roar), the sights. But I think, though, in hindsight, that I could not have been in a worse place, being in my car in the path. And it’s a wonder that I survived. And that Josephine did too. She did sustain damage, however. The front “H” identity on the hood was torn off, the antenna was severely bent, and today, I counted about nine dimples associated with the hail and debris. It has become evident that, for several moments, I was actually *in* the tornado, in the outer perimeter. I would wager that this tornado was an F3 or stronger, and in storms of that magnitude or greater, there are two parts of the twister: the inner and outer regions. I was clearly in the swath of the outer. But I need to declare now that Josephine is the best car in the world. I don’t think I could have done it with any other car I’ve driven or owned. She kicks ass.

I’m feeling terrible about the boy who died. Before I knew, I thought that the twister had killing potential, but after I heard the news, I realised that I easily could have been the second one. It was that close.