Day 157 - Tale of Two Tornados

[Light-of-Truth]

I'm writing this post in the "Bacon, Just for Fun!" forum as it is not about Bacon, but is about two Day 157 tornadoes.

June 6, 1990, is a day I will never forget. It was Day 157 of the year, but I had no idea about that. It was still another 7 years before I would learn about Francis Bacon. The number 157 did not mean anything to me. The numbers 188 and 1881 were important to me by coincidences; I had been living in a house built in 1881, my phone number was 468-8188, my PO Box was 188, my business location lease began on 8-1-88, so on. I did not know at the time that I was born on Day 188 in 1960, a leap year. It was at least 7 years before I knew who John Dee was, but his numbers were all over my life.

in 1990 I was in a "Shaman" period of my life. Carlos Castaneda was a huge influence at the time. I had recently sold my Typewriter/Cash Register business to the guy who worked for me and I had enough money to take a year off living simply. My time was spent in the Colorado mountains looking for arrowheads and watching the weather, two of my very favorite pastimes. Afternoon thunderstorms were popping up every day and I decided to try a "Shamanic" experiment. I planned to "make a tornado". Yea, a crazy thought. But my life was full of magic at the time and Nature seemed to be very alive. I spent my time in Nature experiencing beautiful miracles on a daily basis. It was if Nature was providing me a spectacular show and I was conscious that I was Nature's eyes and feeding the energy and emotion back.

On the morning of June 6th I woke up at dawn. The sky was totally clear as it was every morning where I lived about a half-mile from the base of Mt Princeton, a 14,000+ peak outside of Buena Vista, CO. I was surrounded by open flat ranch land right up to the mountain.

I began by moving around in the field in circles waving my arms over the ground to build up the energy for the "storm" I was making. I'm sure anybody driving by who could see thought I was totally nuts, a long-haired hippy in a wild Grateful Dead tye-die and faded worn out cutoffs doing some kind of Native American rain dance. I didn't care, I was on a mission to make a big storm and a tornado. Just for fun.

After a couple hours the first puffy white cloud appeared above the pointed top of Mt Princeton. Once it was there I began pulling the energy from the ground I had been building up and started "pushing" it up into the cloud. The cloud responded quickly. Or at least to me it appeared to respond. I was really into this, believed 100% that I was a super-powerful Shaman directing energy from the Earth and pushing it into this cloud. The cloud exploded, it was boiling and twisting shooting higher into the atmosphere than I had ever seen from this location. I could tell this thunderstorm was going to be a doozy. My intent was focused. I was using my "Will" with everything I had to make this the biggest most beautiful storm of the season.

By about 4:30 or 5:00 pm it had become a huge dark storm when it started to move away from the mountain. Lightning was cracking and the sky turned black. I had to go inside while it came over me and oh my, what a storm! Spider-like lightning climbed all over the sky, wind blew, it was one of the most powerful storms I had ever seen. At one point a bright sizzling lightning ball came from the sky and down to the ground outside my window and zig-zagged around before zipping past my house. I could hear it and smell the ozone it created. First and only ball-lightning I have seen. The storm was kind of scary even for me who loves storms. Intense, very intense. To me it was alive, a living breathing thunderstorm and I helped bring it to life. It was "my" storm.

It moved east over the front range mountains and into the plains of eastern Colorado. Storms always get bigger over the plains and this one even when almost 100 miles away took up most of the eastern sky. I kept pushing energy into it watching with joy as it kept bubbling up churning with lightning shooting out of it. I saw the full moon rise over it later as the sun setting.

I had my radio on listening to one of the only radio stations I could get up there. It was a public radio station from Ft Collins. Just as I could see the moon they interrupted the music and reported that a big tornado just went down the main street in Limon Colorado destroying the town. The Town Hall, Police Department, the library, most businesses on main street were gone. Ooooops! My joy and thrill of making a big storm turned into horror. I was terrified that people died. Luckily nobody died but I didn't know that until the next day. I was so upset and angry with myself for being so reckless with my "Will". I swore to never do that again.

Here is a news article about that storm I found some years ago:

by Paul Daugherty
Producer, Rocky Mountain PBS

Residents could tell that something was wrong when they saw the massive cloud looming ever closer to Limon on the evening of June 6, 1990. The threatening cloud was a monster of a thunderstorm, what meteorologists call a supercell.  Although thunderstorms are a familiar sight to people living in this farming town on Colorado's Eastern Plains, this storm seemed different. The towering stormcloud writhed and bulged, and the early evening light seemed to turn a sickening yellowish-green.

At first, the storm unleashed heavy rain followed by jagged, softball-sized hailstones that caused extensive damage to rooftops and cars. Longtime residents said they had never before seen anything close to that size of hail, or the destruction it left behind. However, the worst was yet to come.

Limon's Director of Recreation, Dave Stone, was at home with his wife and two boys when the storm hit. "At around 8 o'clock or shortly thereafter, we started hearing lots of wind and there was a lot of pressure in our heads," said Stone. "We were in the basement, sitting down in the corner, and realized that there must be something pretty substantial with the large hail that we've seen before. After probably five or ten minutes in the basement, I decided I would start heading upstairs to see what was happening. And there was a window beside the stairway. Just as I was going up the stairs, a tree branch came through the window."

Like Stone, most of Limon's 1,800 residents were already indoors, seeking cover from the hail. But then the storm's most-feared product, a tornado, descended upon Limon with windspeeds reaching up to 200 miles per hour. It passed directly over Stone's house and into the heart of the town.

In a matter of minutes, the tornado ripped apart Limon's Main Street, destroying Town Hall, the post office, the Limon Leader newspaper, the State Patrol office, along with most of its police cruisers, and the First National Bank of Limon. The Super Foods grocery store one block from Stone's house was destroyed. The fierce winds wedged a 50-foot trailer 20 feet up a cottonwood tree, wrapped sheet metal around utility poles, propelled bricks and other debris like small missiles, uprooted trees, and rolled several dozen cars.

The destruction extended in a path two blocks wide and one-and-a-half miles long, leaving the town without power, 117 families without homes, and nearly every business damaged or destroyed. Miraculously, only minor injuries were reported. Limon's residents were lucky; the storm could have been deadly had it hit two or three hours earlier, while stores and businesses were still open.

Although Limon's civil defense sirens warned of the impending danger, they first sounded only about a minute before the tornado descended on the town. When warnings provide only seconds to take cover, residents of the Plains may not always be as lucky. Fortunately, the science of forecasting tornados and severe storms is progressing.

Skip ahead to June 6, 2013. Day 157 again and I lived here in Gulfport, Florida. Tropical Storm Andrea was passing by, not a big storm but enough to bring in waves of rain and wind, the ocean was stirred up. This time I knew it was Day 157 and remembered 1990 and the tornado that hit Limon, CO. But I wanted to get some photos of a waterspout which are pretty common down here. They are little tornadoes over the water. They rarely do any damage, but are beautiful to watch. So what did I do? I asked Dee to help stir up "a little something". Stupid me! I know better!

I had a Dr appointment in the morning then planned to take my camera to a place on the bay or Gulf of Mexico to take videos and shoot photos of the Tropical Storm. As I was wrapping up my appointment the receptionist screamed out, "Oh my God! A tornado just went down main street in Gulfport!" Someone called her and told her I guess. All of the horror of that night on Day 157 in 1990 came back. And this time I actually asked Dee to help stir something up knowing it was a reckless and dangerous thing to do! I had my camera in my car and went straight to downtown Gulfport, the small town I live in. There was debris and damage, lucky again nobody got seriously hurt. But the waterspout turned tornado went right up our main downtown street making a mess going right past the library and other cultural buildings. It was a few blocks from our house.

https://patch.com/florida/gulfport/tornado-spotted-by-gulfport-couple

OK, so did I make or have any influence on these storms? LOL

Of course that is crazy thing to suggest regardless of where my head was. But to me it reinforces what I believe about using one's "Will". It is critically important to be careful how you use your Will and intent. Never assume a thought you project into the Universe has no power. Even a little thought may produce ripples that have effects. Also, try to put positive thoughts out into the World, if one is going to create ripples, make sure they are positive ripples. 😉

So a strange but true tale of two different tornadoes that went down two different small town main streets 23 years apart on Day 157.

 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Light-of-Truth