Here and There Blog

48 hours - the meetings this week were at the hotel so I haven't set foot off the property since the first night. The hotel is warm and dry, so no reason to leave until the flight Thursday morning. The odd sunset glow over the ballpark. Didn't really capture well since it was orange, not yellow but still kind of cool.

I lucked out this time. No old building, no rainfall (yet) and a glimpse of the river!

Silence.  The eerie uncaptured sound that falls on a group of people who have been deafened by the wind and are bracing themselves for the next wave. The quiet of children not crying, the hush of parents huddled over cradles in an attempt to protect their infant. Multiple texting going on with barely a sound as fingers are too shaky to punch the keypad correctly. The sound of survival. That will be my ingrained memory from the tornado that engulfed us at the Lambert Airport in St. Louis. People have asked if there was a warning. We had no siren, no call to safety. The first sign that the air was different was dust falling from the vents. The swift brush of an air current that wasn't the normal A/C flow. Fluffy particles that landed on my sandwich and prompted me to move away from my seat and unknowingly relocating to the gate that was about to welcome a F2 twister. C16. Wind starts coming in. The bartender shouts for someone to close the door but no one had opened the door. A...

I am safe. As some of you may have heard my airport karma decided to put me right smack where a tornado decided to touch down last night at St. Louis Airport. We had no notice other than the Weather Channel warning earlier in the day and the Weather Channel had it right on schedule. Just didn't know where the tornado would land. As the sirens went off downtown, the airport was quiet...until it was not. I'll post a debrief later but am still processing this now.  Cars and airplanes really do lift up off the ground and land somewhere else. Clothing, items in your hands really do get ripped off and out. I will never be near a window again when a tornado warning is posted.