The Sunny Side To Hell
BY DON DOUCETTE
Manhattan, Kansas
The recent outbreak of tornados in our midwestern states brought some personal experiences in Kansas to mind.
Some years ago we traveled to Kansas to be with our son for a week. He had taken leave from his Army duties at Fort Riley.
We had gone to Manhattan, Kansas to visit an air-space display.
The following day dawned clear with a crisp blue sky. We traveled on to Pawnee Rock a favorite stopping place for wagon trains traveling the old Santa Fe Trail and enjoyed the view from the top. High beautiful cumulous clouds were building to our north and little did we know that this situation would suddenly turn into a concerning weather event.
Manhattan, Kansas
As the late afternoon sky darkened, we had been touring a flat exposed place called Cheyenne Bottoms – a national Great Plains wetland site, part of the national flyway for bird migration.
We had been enjoying the migrating yellow winged blackbirds as we had never experienced these birds and then all hell broke loose. The radio warned people in the county just to our west to leave their cars and lay flat in roadside ditches.
We could actually see that county ten miles away. The storm cell was tracking northward so we fled northeastward toward the interstate leading east toward Abilene.
We needed a pit stop and found an open Dairy Queen. The weather situation became nastier, dark, forbidding and downright scary. We were told by the Dairy Queen manager that the walk in cooler was their safe space if needed – this news did not hold well with us.
We headed rapidly toward the interstate. We arrived and headed east – only us…the highway had been closed to our west to allow the storm cell to move further northward and behind us.
So…we motored east all alone on a major interstate highway with the most frightening lightning show imaginable trailing behind us. We arrived Abilene and found a car park and faced our deadly enemy to our west and now feeling somewhat safer, sat as if watching a Fourth of July fireworks display as lightning bolts flashed our way like fiery razors shot from a gun.
Pulse levels calming, we found our way back toward Fort Riley.
We learned through media accounts upon arriving back in Massachusetts that the vortex of the tornado was in fact just ten miles to our west and had been rain wrapped. We never saw it but was deadly enough to have killed an elderly man as he had dallied despite his wife’s warning to be safe in their storm cellar – she survived. He was found dead the next day beneath an overturned auto.
Now, don’t allow this story from enticing you away from visiting Kansas. Kansas is a beautiful place and well worth a look-see.
And furthermore…I feel the need at this point to say more about Kansas, but for now be patient and stay tuned.
Don Doucette