New here...
Been a weather fanatic for many years. I'm an old fart and half blind now, but if I had it all to do again, I'd be a professional chaser/radar nut. No question about it.

A few quick stories... (yeah, old guys do that...)

Back in the early 70's I had just made a delivery in a little town called Xenia, Ohio. I was on the highway back to Dayton and watched the "whole sky fall" in my rear view mirror. All I could see was an extremely dark wedge back there... and it kept getting wider and wider. It wasn't until I got back to Dayton that I heard about the giant tornado... the pickup had no radio (of course)... just an 8-track. (LOL)
Xenia got trashed.. Google that.

I was driving across Texas, again - no radio (but a cassette this time..) in a tiny Datsun 1200. Right around Ft. Stockton we ran into heavy rain and wind. The wind got pretty fierce, so I tucked-up under an overpass to wait it out. Within minutes the wind got so high that the car was trying to roll over. The rain was so flat and hard that it was streaming in under the upper window seals. The car was bouncing !! The sounds were tremendous. Like being IN a train engine. We were terrified and actually said our good-byes. When it finally slowed down a bit and we could see again, we realized that the car had moved over 100 yards from where I'd stopped... BTW, the car had quit running at some point. Had to wait a while for the rain to slow down enough to look under the hood. I popped off the distributor cap and water ran out !! Took a while to get everything dry enough to get the engine running. We finally limped into town and hit a laundry. Everything in the car was soaked, even clothes inside suitcases. The floor had 3 inches of water.
To this day I think a tornado ran over us, but we couldn't see it cause it was rain wrapped. Bet if I wasn't under that overpass we may have died that day.

All of you chasers are awesome people. I am former Coast Guard and I can surely appreciate the sheer guts it takes to go out there.

Keep up the good work !!
Be Well...
Richard

Hi Richard. Welcome to TVN!

Something concerns me about your underpass/wind encounter where you state:

"To this day I think a tornado ran over us, but we couldn't see it cause it was rain wrapped. Bet if I wasn't under that overpass we may have died that day."

I wouldn't be doing Reed any justice if I didn't point out that underpasses are known to be death traps in high wind/tornadic events.
My guess is your vehicle was bouncing because you were beneath an obstacle that accelerated the winds through it.

Tornadoes & Overpasses:

www.crh.noaa.gov/ddc/?n=over

www.tornadoproject.com/myths/myths.htm

Reed learned this lesson the hard way 13 years ago, yesterday, the video of which is in the May 3, 1999 Historical thread.

A more recent example of how the winds push objects out from under overpasses:

WOW !!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the info and some really scary links.
That happened years before I became a truck driver. In driver training we were told about the dangers of being under (or on top of ) an overpass during a violent storm. But I have to admit they didn't have scary data like that to show us.

See.. you meteorologists have extremely important functions out there. I bet you folks even had a lot to do with warning about underpass situations. Gotta love scientists !

Best to Reed (seen everything he's done that's online)
and the rest of all the brave folks doing terrific science !

Be well; be safe
Richard

p.s.- I just love the realtime streams.. just awesome

You're most welcome. However, I'm not a meteorologist or a scientist in any shape or form; just a weather enthusiast like most who come here to TVN.

Enjoy the site, and be sure and dig around in the categories - lots of goodies in them!