Washington State is my life-long home and gets usually no more than one tornado a year, if any at all. I really have no experience with them, but I have my "tornado story" that I share, though I do not know if it was one or not...
I was driving west in my minivan through southern Minnesota and into North Dakota. It was late at night, mid-July as I recall, 1992. The radio was interrupted by tornado warnings near Mitchell SD, the direction I was headed. On the horizon, it was the most active electrical storm I had ever seen, with non-stop lightning seemingly all the way accross the front of my view. The weather didn't otherwise seem too bad where I was driving. As I got closer to the mess and I could feel wind buffetting my van, there was a car on the side of the freeway with it's flashers on. I slowed down to check, but there was no one inside. About five miles down the road, I pulled over for a hitcher. As soon as I stopped, he slid open the side-door and threw in his pack, without even asking for a ride. I asked if that was his car back there. He said it wasn't but he saw it back there and was glad I stopped, because he didn't like the looks of the storm ahead. He had been dropped off at the SD state line by the Sheriff and told to hit the road. (oh, that's just great. at least he's honest?...)
He was a really nice guy, like all potential psychopaths, and asked for nothing except for water, and he was grateful for the snacks I gave him. We continued west and the weather started to get pretty nasty. Driving rain, roaring wind, lightning all over. It was getting really hard to see, so I slowed way down, put on my flashers and moved toward the shoulder. We were getting really thrown around by the wind and the roaring was freaking us out. We were slowly heading down an exit, where I saw a block-building that I wanted to park up against, and then we were spun nearly 180 by the wind. I didn't try to move for a bit, kind of scared that I might turn sideways like a sail and get flipped, it was so bad. We fginally got to that building and I parked right up against it, not knowing what else to do. We stayed there for about 20 minutes watching sideways rain and debris in the headlights until things seemed calm. Back on the road, we could see the lights of Mitchell, and the light-show further west, beyond the city.
When we got to Mitchell, my guest asked me to drop him off at the police station, because they usually give transients a berth during nasty weather if they don't look like trouble. After an officer came out to let me know they took him in, I found the nearest campground and didn't sleep a wink until the sun came up, and I could see that things were safe. At the cafe, I was told that there were tornados spotted in the area, but I have no idea if what I experienced around midnight about 30 miles east of Mitchell the night before was simething like that.
