Twister in the 'Hood

At about 12:40 PM, I was sitting in the cafeteria of the student center, eating lunch with Carol, a colleague of mine. This isn't unusual.

What was unusual was the large number of people heading down the first floor hallway, to the Pilot House -- a huge windowless basement room used for student activities. Seriously, this room is probably the size of the gymnasium at my grade school. It's not a small room. Another unusual thing was the frantic closing of the food court. Employees were pulling the gates shut before everyone could even get out of there.

Carol and I thought this was very strange, indeed.

As we were cleaning up after ourselves and heading for the trash cans, we heard someone saying something about a tornado, and having to go to the Pilot House. I figured it wasn't a huge deal, so I started to walk back to my office across the quad. Carol said she would go to the Pilot House, but she wanted to grab her purse first.

I didn't make it very far before I ran into Traci, another colleague, coming down from the third floor of the student center.

"There's a funnel cloud at Page and I-170," she said. "We have to take shelter in the Pilot House." At the same time, I saw a campus police officer directing people downstairs, and decided I should probably turn around and join them.

After about 15 minutes, I went back to my office, where not only had people not taken shelter, but I'm pretty sure they didn't even know a funnel cloud was headed for campus.

Anyway, it made for an interesting lunch.