Message #1382

[davegrennan]

Hi Martin,

Unfortunately, I don;t have any other photos.  How it happened is I came home from work one evening and remarked to my wife that it had gotten extremely dark very suddenly.  I looked outside and saw the blackest most evil cloud I had ever seen.  I was just about to run upstairs and grab my camera when I noticed the supercell.  The base of the clouds were 'lumpy' for want of a better word and I clearly saw the rotation beginning, then out popped a funnel with made its way toward the groud.  It never quite reached the ground.  I was stunned.  I watched until I realised that the funnel wasn't going to make it all the way down and then I ran for the Camera.  The resulting photo was the one you see.  By the time I took the shot, thats all that was left of it.  An amazing event to watch.

However it wasn't the closest I'd ever been to a tornado.

New years day 2005.  My mum died the previous week and this was my first time to visit her grave.  Because of the day that was in it, I was able to drive my car to within 30 metres of the grave.  I just got to the graveside looked up and saw an evil looking black wall rushing across the graveyard.  I knew this was not good!  I ran back to my car and just slammed the door when the back of the car was lifted a few inches and just dropped.  Lightning danced all around a visibility was about 5-7 feet.  I saw a man appear out of the darkness standing two feet behind my car and I blew my horn to attract his attention to get into the car.  Even so close he did not hear my horn and disappeared into the darkness. Then suddenly visibility seemed to improve.  I looked left and saw more lightning.  What I saw next stunned me.  I black rotating column about 3 metres wide.  I could clearly see debris rotating about it (outside of the main black column).  I knew instantly it was a tornado.  It was about 150 metres away from mea and at that time was also moving away from me (I didn't see it approach).  Almost as soon as it happened visibility went back to 5-7 feet.  I sat there really scared until about 5 minutes later I saw blue sky appear again.

My Dad lives 5 minutes up the road and when I arrived there I was literally shaking.  News reports later comfirmed a tornado had overturned a car in west Dublin.  I can only assume the one I saw was a second funnel as surely it couldn;t have travelled across the entire city.  It was certainly the scariest weather event I have ever (and probably ever will) witness.