I realize now, looking back at my original plot armor post, that I made a promise I somehow failed to keep. I told you there were more tornado encounters to share, specifically mentioning a third one, and then I just left you hanging like a cliffhanger in a television show that gets canceled before the next season. So here I am, making good on that promise, though I have to warn you upfront that these next two encounters exist in a strange gray area between definite tornado stories and maybe just really aggressive weather that wanted to kill me but didn’t quite commit to the tornado aesthetic. The purists might argue with me, the meteorologists might shake their heads, but I’m counting them anyway because when you’re sitting in a Greyhound bus depot watching the sky try to murder everything outside, the technical classifications feel less important than the fact that you’re alive and the windows are still intact.
The year was 2015, and my family decided that what we really needed was a trip to Arizona. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a Greyhound bus across multiple states, but it’s an experience that teaches you things about yourself, about humanity, and about exactly how long you can sit in one position before your legs forget they’re supposed to work. The trip out there was actually pretty smooth, all things considered. We watched the landscape change from whatever we started with to the kind of terrain that makes you wonder if Mars is really all that different from certain parts of the American Southwest. There’s something almost meditative about long bus rides when they’re going well, a kind of enforced stillness that lets your mind wander while your body is trapped in a seat that’s somehow both too soft and too hard at the same time.
But then we got to Flagstaff, and the sky decided it had other plans for us. It started getting dark, and I don’t mean the natural darkness that comes with evening settling in like a comfortable blanket. This was the kind of darkness that arrives too early and too fast, the kind that makes you glance at your watch and think there’s been some kind of mistake, some cosmic error in the timing of sunset. The sky turned this sick yellowish gray color, the kind of color that shouldn’t exist in nature but somehow does right before everything goes sideways. I remember looking out the bus window and feeling that same familiar twist in my stomach that I’d felt during my previous tornado encounters, that little voice in the back of my mind whispering that maybe we should find somewhere solid to be very soon.
Then the hail started. Not the cute little pellets that bounce off your windshield and make interesting sounds, but the kind of hail that arrives with serious intent to cause property damage. These weren’t ice cubes, they were ice rocks, ice weapons, frozen projectiles that the sky was hurling at the earth with what seemed like personal vendetta. The sound on the bus roof was incredible, this constant drumming that got louder and louder until conversation became impossible and we all just sat there listening to the sky’s percussion solo. I could see other passengers getting nervous, that particular kind of nervous where people start looking around for exits and authority figures, trying to figure out if this is the kind of situation where you’re supposed to do something or just trust that someone else knows what’s happening.
Thankfully, and I mean this with every fiber of my being, we pulled into a bus depot right as things were getting truly apocalyptic outside. The timing was so perfect it almost felt scripted, like someone was watching over us and decided that this particular chapter of my life shouldn’t end with me as a hail casualty in Flagstaff, Arizona. We evacuated the bus and huddled inside the depot, which was one of those buildings that feels like it was constructed during an era when people built things to last, with solid walls and real substance. Through the windows, we watched the storm rage. The hail was coming down so thick you could barely see across the parking lot. It was piling up on the ground like snow, these little mountains of ice building up wherever the wind pushed them into drifts.
Now here’s where I get into the tricky territory of classification. Was this a tornado? I honestly don’t know. There was no visible funnel cloud, no rotating wall of death that I could point to and say yes, definitively, that is the thing trying to kill me. The wind wasn’t doing that characteristic tornado howl, that freight train sound that everyone who’s experienced a real tornado talks about in the same hushed, traumatized tones. But the hail was severe, and severe hail often comes from the same supercell thunderstorms that produce tornadoes. The sky had that look, that feeling, that sense of something massive and angry churning above us. In my mind, even though I can’t prove it, even though I have no meteorological data to back me up, I count this as tornado encounter number three because it felt like I was in the presence of the same kind of atmospheric violence, just manifesting in a slightly different form.
We waited out the storm in that depot, and I remember the strange camaraderie that develops among strangers when weather gets serious. People were sharing snacks, checking on each other’s kids, trading stories about other times they’d been stuck somewhere waiting for nature to calm down. There’s something about shared danger, even potential danger, that breaks down the normal walls people keep up. The woman sitting next to my mom started talking about a hurricane she’d lived through in Florida, and before long half the depot was swapping disaster stories like they were trading baseball cards. I contributed my previous tornado encounters, and people nodded with that look that says they get it, they understand what it’s like to feel small and fragile in the face of weather that doesn’t care about your plans or your existence.
Eventually the hail stopped, the sky lightened from angry bruise colors back to something approaching normal, and we all filed back onto the bus to continue our journey. The parking lot looked like a war zone, car windows shattered, dents everywhere, ice still scattered across the asphalt in defiance of the Arizona heat that was already starting to reassert itself. We drove away from Flagstaff feeling like we’d dodged something, even if we couldn’t quite name what it was.
The rest of the Arizona trip was actually lovely. We saw the Grand Canyon, we explored desert landscapes, we ate food and took pictures and did all the normal things people do on vacations. But in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about that storm, about how close we’d come to being caught in it without shelter, about the timing that had put us at that depot at exactly the right moment. Plot armor, I thought. Still holding up.
Then came the journey home, and apparently the universe wasn’t done testing my protective shield. We were somewhere in Louisiana, exact location hazy in my memory because Greyhound bus routes all start to blur together after a certain number of hours, when the rain started. This wasn’t Arizona hail, this was pure liquid falling from the sky in quantities that made you question whether the whole concept of air was just going to be replaced with water. The rain was so heavy that the windshield wipers were essentially decorative, doing nothing to improve visibility because there was simply too much water for them to handle. It was like someone had turned a fire hose on the bus and decided to just leave it running.
Then the flash flood warnings started. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a flash flood, but the thing about them is that they live up to the flash part of their name. Water goes from not there to very aggressively there in a timespan that doesn’t give you a lot of options for graceful evacuation. I could see water rising on the sides of the road, could see it rushing across the pavement in sheets that turned highways into rivers. Other vehicles were pulling over, hazard lights blinking like frightened eyes in the deluge. The bus driver, bless his professional soul, made the decision to get us to the nearest depot rather than try to tough it out on increasingly questionable roads.
We made it to another bus station, different state but same energy as the Flagstaff depot, and once again found ourselves as refugees from weather, watching through windows as Louisiana tried to wash itself into the Gulf of Mexico. The rain was relentless, coming down in gray sheets that reduced the world to vague shapes and running water. I could hear thunder, that deep rolling kind that you feel in your chest as much as hear with your ears, but again, no obvious tornado. No funnel cloud, no rotating winds, no debris flying through the air in organized destructive patterns. Just rain, vast quantities of rain, the kind of rain that makes you wonder if maybe Noah had the right idea with that ark thing.
So was this tornado encounter number four? Again, I’m in that uncertain territory. Flash floods and tornadoes often come from similar weather systems, the same kind of severe thunderstorms that meteorologists get excited about in ways that normal people find slightly disturbing. The sky had that same ominous quality, that sense of something powerful and indifferent operating above us. But without the wind, without the visible funnel, without those telltale signs that specifically scream tornado, I can’t say for certain. What I can say is that it felt dangerous, it felt like we were once again in a situation where the wrong timing or the wrong decision could have led to very bad outcomes.
The thing about these two encounters that makes me still count them as part of my tornado story collection, even with the asterisks and qualifications, is that they taught me the same lesson as the definite tornado encounters. Weather doesn’t care about you. Nature isn’t malicious, but it’s not benevolent either. It’s indifferent, operating on scales and according to rules that have nothing to do with human convenience or human survival. Whether it’s a tornado specifically or just the kind of severe weather that often accompanies tornadoes, the result is the same: you’re reminded of how little control you actually have, how much of your continued existence depends on factors entirely outside your influence.
I think about those bus depots sometimes, those random buildings in Flagstaff and Louisiana that became temporary shelters from atmospheric violence. I think about the timing that put us at those locations at exactly the right moments, the decisions made by bus drivers who probably just saw it as doing their jobs but who might have actually saved lives. I think about all the small factors that have to align for you to walk away from dangerous weather unscathed, all the little pieces of luck or fate or whatever you want to call it that add up to survival.
The debate over whether these were real tornado encounters or just really bad storms feels almost beside the point now. What matters is that I’ve had four experiences, two definite and two possible, where I’ve been in the presence of weather that had the power to end me and chose not to, or where circumstances aligned to keep me safe despite the danger. Four times I’ve felt that particular combination of awe and terror that comes from watching nature flex its muscles. Four times I’ve walked away thinking about plot armor and probability and the strange fact of my continued existence.
Maybe I’m being generous with my classifications, maybe a strict meteorologist would laugh at me for counting hail and floods as tornado stories. But when you’re sitting in a bus depot listening to ice destroy everything outside, or watching floodwaters rise while rain falls like the sky is actively trying to drown the world, the technical distinctions feel less important than the visceral experience of danger. These storms may not have been tornadoes in the technical sense, but they came from the same family, the same atmospheric conditions, the same kind of severe weather systems that spawn the rotating columns of destruction I’d encountered before.
So there you have it, the continuation of my tornado story that I promised and then somehow forgot to include. Two more encounters with severe weather, two more times when timing and luck and whatever else you want to attribute it to kept me safe. My plot armor remains intact, though I’m increasingly aware that armor can always fail, that luck eventually runs out, that the universe doesn’t actually owe me continued protection from atmospheric violence. But for now, I’m still here, still able to tell these stories, still marveling at the strange fact that I’ve had four brushes with the kind of weather that makes headlines when it kills people, and I’ve walked away from all of them with nothing more than memories and a healthy respect for the power of the sky.
The next time someone tells me they’re taking a Greyhound bus trip across multiple states, I’ll probably share these stories, probably watch their faces as they realize that long-distance bus travel comes with risks beyond uncomfortable seats and questionable rest stops. But I’ll also tell them about the depots that sheltered us, about the drivers who made good decisions, about the strange kindness of strangers sharing snacks during storms. Because that’s part of these stories too, the human element that exists alongside the atmospheric violence, the way people come together when weather reminds us all how fragile we really are. Whether these were tornadoes or not, they were experiences that shaped how I see the world, how I understand my place in it, and how grateful I am for every day when the sky stays calm and the air stays still.