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So according to the Channel 8 news a few minutes ago, the National Weather Service has confirmed that a tornado touched down briefly near Agronomy Hall on the ISU campus this afternoon (the news people are having fun with the whole tornado vs. ISU Cyclones thing). To help clarify my position during this event, I’ve provided the map you see to the right. You can see Agronomy Hall somewhat to the northeast of center. The red dot is where my bus had to stop when the tornado went through. The green dot is my bus stop proper, which we got to a couple of minutes later. The blue dot is where I had to get in the pouring (and I mean pouring) rain.

The sky started to look really nasty a couple of minutes after I boarded the bus at city hall. By the time we got within the campus area, the sky was dark. Very dark. As in, at 12:30pm, the streetlights came on and headlights were an absolute necessity to see further than a foot. I noticed around that time that the sky had turned a very deep green in the north and a blue-black in the south. I snapped this picture on my flickr page out the south window of my bus. The picture doesn’t do it much justice, I realize. I think it made the sky brighter, too, to try and accommodate for the dark conditions. I noticed that the wind had picked up dramatically in the last minute or two, and that the wind was blowing in more than one direction. I started paying more attention to the sky.

The rain started a few seconds later, and I pulled my umbrella out of my backpack, suddenly glad I decided to grab it at the last second. Two minutes later, we were in between Agronomy Hall and the Seed Science Building (yeah, we’re in Iowa, all right) when the bus driver slammed to a halt. I looked out windshield of the bus to see the fastest blowing wind I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t see more than a few inches past the window through the wind and debris. You could actually see the wind, blowing horizontally across the windshield from south to north (or north to south, not sure which. It was moving too fast). I put my umbrella back.

As I mentioned, the wind was blowing from south to north. The only problem with this is, we had very large buildings to the north and south of us. Wind doesn’t blow that way down Osborne Drive. The wind died down dramatically within a few seconds, but everyone sat, stunned, for a bit. Then the bus driver noticed there was a big branch down right in front of the bus. He and a couple of other people jumped out to move it out of the way, and we continued the 100 yards or so to the bus stop. The bus driver announced over the intercom, “for those of you who were on vacation over Labor Day, welcome back to Iowa.”

I got off the bus at around the same moment the rain really started in earnest. I took my glasses off and put them in my pocket, figuring they’d do me no good. Then I ran across the street and almost tripped over a tree I didn’t see through the rain and darkness, laying across the sidewalk next to Bessey. I put my glasses back on and made my way around the tree. Then the wind raised up again and almost blew me over. I took my sandals off, figuring I could use all the traction I could get. I started jogging to Ross.

Then the rain started. I mean, really started. I couldn’t see much of anything beyond the sidewalk at my feet as I jogged towards Ross. The whole trek took me probably a minute or less, but by the time I got to Ross, I was soaked through. About five of my friends were waiting in the entrance when I walked in. They had themselves a good laugh at my appearance, so I took off my glasses and shook some of the rain out of my hair. A few of them stopped laughing.

Then, I get up to the classroom, and a photographer shows up. Turns out they were photographing our class today for some English department grad school marketing materials. Yeah. I stayed out of those pictures.

After class, I snapped a few pictures of the downed trees around campus, which you can see on my flickr page. This is by no means a representation of all the damage around campus. These were just the trees in my way as I walked across central campus from Ross to Pearson. I heard someone say that Pammel Drive, one block north of Osborne, looked like a lumber yard.

By the by, for those of you who caught the Channel 8 newscast at 5pm, you can see my apartment in the background.