[85vette]

We’ve run into a good bit of rain this summer mostly in the northern plains. I even drove into a tornado in June. It was in Nebraska at about 1:30 in the morning. It was windy from the southwest all day with spotty thunderstorms, nothing looked very threatening on the radar. Not much traffic on Interstate 80 westbound and I was only running about 68 mph due to the constant 30-40 mph winds. I started up a bridge and could see two other trucks ahead of me about a quarter mile. A sign on the bridge said wind gusts could be present. About that time the other two trucks slowed drastically and we got hit with about a 60 mph gust of wind. The other trucks had pulled to the side of the road on top of the bridge. I slowed to a crawl but I stayed in the center of the road thinking if I was going to get blown over I wanted to be blown over on the road, not over the bridge! Then the gust stopped and the truck started shaking and from the left side came a wall of water, but it was spinning horizontally! The shaking and the howling woke my wife up and she came out of the sleeper asking what was going on. I told her to hold on to something because I was still afraid we were going over. It hit us then and we couldn’t see anything for what seemed like a long time but it was a few seconds I’m sure. Then it was gone and the southwest wind was back. The fact that we were in a heavily loaded truck is probably all that saved us. That and the prayers that I was praying! I’m sure that was a small tornado but that’s the second one I’ve been close to in my life and I don’t care to be near another one!