TRADE DAYS TORNADO

TRADE DAYS TORNADO, originally uploaded by jimbwalking.

TORNADO PART III

I quickly wrote the epithet onto my copy of the posting to be logged in later when we returned home. I then gave a worried glance to the sky and the approaching storm. The clouds were as black and dark as I had ever seen and you could see that a violent wind was pushing them right into our path. I jumped back into the truck and started backtracking to the highway and Canton.

As I drove I told my wife that when we reached the flea market we would park in the center parking area and enter the main gates where the hidden cache should be located. From the description of the cache I knew it wouldn’t be hard to find. I explained this because we both, can be creatures of habit and or normal routine is to park in the South Lots and enter the South gates.

We topped a tall hill just North of Canton and looked down on the flea market grounds. The first thing to catch our eyes was the flashing of lights from emergency vehicles and the traffic backing up on both lanes of the road. I told my wife someone must have hit a pedestrian attempting to cross the highway. In this area parking is on one side of the road and the market is on the other and traffic goes through very fast making it sometimes difficult to cross.

As we got closer to the scene I noted that whatever was happening was happening in front of the main gates. So a change in our plans to park in the middle parking lot wasn’t going to work and we couldn’t get past the accident to park in the South lot. By then the nearest parking area to where we were was inside the markets grounds and I quickly made my turn into the flea market.

Parking on the grounds can be stressful and crowded with the foot traffic and all the vendors and we were lucky to find a parking place rather quickly. As I came to a stop I told my wife we would walk over and find the geo-cache then we would be free to start shopping. Stepping out of the truck we began noticing something strange. People were looking up to the sky, they were excited, and agitated some were on there cell phones making panicky calls and others were leaving the market all together. My wife looked at me and said “What’s going on?” and then we heard helicopters in the sky above us hovering and circling around.

I then began to listen to the conversations going on around me to learn what happened. You could feel the fear and anxiety of the crowd. What I began to hear and understand was that a tornado had just struck the flea market! As I listened more closely I heard how the wind had become very still and quiet and then a sound like a freight train could be heard in the distance and became louder as it got closer. Then from the remarks of the startled shoppers the dark funnel came to the ground spinning like a top just inside the main gates of the flea market and crashed into vendors tents tossing and throwing tents and merchandise up into the air and side to side.

The tornado then waltzed and danced through the outside stalls and the shoppers making its way through the main gates and crossing the highway into the middle parking lot where it turned over a van and attacked a giant oak tree ripping branches from the trunk and splintering wood into kindling before rising back into the clouds to travel on eastward.

Amazing no one was reported in juried, but everyone was frightened by the twister. Television news stations from the area swarmed the skies around the flea market and it was a miracle none of the helicopters collided considering how many there were in the air.

My wife and I made are way to the main gates of the flea market and looked at the damage the tornado had caused. We marveled that no one was hurt or died in its path. We then started talking, that had we not stopped in Edgewood to do the geo-cache there we would have arrived at the center parking lot and would have been entering the main gate at the same time as the tornado touched down putting us directly in its path.

With a slight chill down our backs and a sigh of relief we nabbed the cache and started searching for the treasures of the flea market.