No flying cows, thankfully...

Scattered showers. That's what the KULR8 weatherman said would happen. He did NOT say, "If you live in a single-wide trailer on the Montana prairie, you should find a basement somewhere this evening." Now, that would've been a helpful weather forecast.

I had just poured a very nice glass of white wine and put my feet up to read an old issue of what used to be Montana Agri-news (can never remember the new name), Maggie was watching a Tweetie Bird cartoon, Angus was snoozing in the chair. What a nice evening! Wayland, strolling through the kitchen on his way to find some sort of scuba thingee, glanced out the window and calmly remarked, "Huh. There's a funnel cloud..."

You guessed it. The one you want around in a panic situation would be him, not me.

I ran (yes, ran...he continued to stroll) to the deck, and sure enough, there was a funnel cloud. Closer to my domain than I was comfortable with. I prefer them to stay in Kansas and Nebraska, their natural habitat, and look at pictures of them in the National Geographic.

Speaking of the National Geographic, it occured to me to get my camera, which is really never far from my hand. I snapped a couple shots of the cloud up high, then we saw that it touched down, and I tried to take a picture of that, too, although I was thinking it might be a bit blurry, from the nerves.

We continued to watch the sky, Wayland rather matter-of-factly, me quite nervously. A few minutes later, the phone rang and it was Thelma G., telling us that perhaps we should think about finding a basement in short order, because the cloud had touched down on their shed and removed a portion of the roof, along with other damage that she hadn't assessed yet. She WATCHED it! And not from the basement, either.

After talking to Thelma, Wayland decided maybe it would be a good idea to go to his folks' place. If nothing else, to bring my blood pressure down. So we loaded up, quickly, and drove to Vern's, where Vern and I paced around the kitchen and the deck.

Nothing happened, gratefully, but after we got home, around 9:30, the heavens opened up and it POURED rain, here, answering our prayers. This morning is calm, wet and foggy, and we are happy to not be able to hay, happy our friends and family are alright, and happy to still be in an undamaged single-wide trailer on the prairie.

Touch down, in Green's yard.

Hard to see here, but the funnel is just under the powerline on the left, and touching down on the bottom right.

This is the first sight, through telephoto. It's remarkably clear, considering how scared I was.