Weird Tornado Dream

lol...last night I had a dream where a rotating wall cloud passed directly over my house. Was pretty intense...in real life my house is on top of a hill but surrounded by trees and impossible to see the sky. In my dream there was a perfectly clear view of the storm approaching. The dream even included the SPC outlooks for the day...it started out as a 5% "see text" risk but then was suddenly upgraded directly to HIGH. :shock: The storm was a sort of LP-classic supercell with a corkscrewing updraft tower and a big cranking wall cloud underneath, with CGs dropping from the anvil. My family & I were watching the weatherman on TV describe the situation when all of a sudden the electricity went out, the sirens went off and it started to hail. I yelled "GET IN THE BASEMENT!!" at the top of my lungs. We went downstairs (I with my camcorder of course) and watched the storm approach from the basement window (our house is built into the side of the hill in such a way that from the front it appears to be one story with a basement while from the back it appears to be two stories). The wall cloud spun rapidly as it passed over head but didn't drop a T. I wanted to go outside and watch it to see if it did but decided against it because CGs were still crashing all around. According to the dream I got the whole sequence on video.

I was pretty bummed when I woke up. :wink:
 
When I was younger, I had very frequent (3-4 times a week at least) nightmares about tornadoes. They would almost always be chasing me, and there would usually be several of them going on at once. I remember many terrified awakenings in the middle of the night with cold sweats from these dreams. Often, the noise of the tornado in my dream as it was just about to hit me would follow me into my awakened state, and would usually turn out to be something like the air conditioner hum that my mind somehow twisted into the sound of a raging vortex of death. It would be even worse if I woke up and there happened to be a thunderstorm going on. I would lie awake in terror, certain that at any moment a tornado was going to hit my house.

Ever since I decided to become a meteorologist and chaser, my tornado dreams have become quite a bit less frequent, but have now transitioned into the "chasing fantasies" that many others here have described. Rarely will I have tornado nightmares, although they do still occur (I'd say once per year instead of 300 per year, lol). They also are far more realistic, now that my mind has actual experience with real tornadoes to work off of. Nevertheless, I am still amazed at how detailed some of my tornado dreams have been, particularly in the last couple of years since I've moved to OK. I'm often aware, even while dreaming, that they are just dreams, but that doesn't make them any less fun :).

Dan
 
As a adolescent weather weenie in Minnesota, I had frequent dreams (about 1 per month) about seeing tornadoes. In those dreams, I was invariably lacking a means to record what I was seeing in order to prove it to others (i.e. no camera or camcorder!). So the mood of the dream always started as great excitement and ended with frustration.

Now that I've had a few spectacular chase days under my belt, tornado dreams have become no less frequent. Only now, having a camera/camcorder does not seem to be an issue in my dreams anymore... it's making sure that the camera is actually recording something. Go figure.
 
I also had a lot of tornado nightmares/dreams when I was little. In my tornado nightmares (actually in most of my nightmares), I can only move in slow motion. I can't chase them or get away from them.

Here's something a bit different, but also very strange. When I was in high school, ('95-'98 range) I frequently drove through the intersection of SW 134th and Pennsylvania in OKC late at night coming home from a friend's house. I would always look SW across the intersection toward the Country Place housing addition and imagine a large tornado coming down the incline, through the intersection, and on into my neighborhood, Eastlake Estates.

Then, on May 3, 1999 it happened just like that!! Now I don't claim to have visions or anything like that. It was just my imagination running wild while driving home in the middle of the night. And the fact that tornadoes hit nearby to everybody if they live long enough in the central U.S. But when I saw that reality had mirrored my imagination, it gave a me a very odd, deja vu-type feeling. I still get a weird feeling when I drive through that intersection!

P.S. This is my first post on Stormtrack. I am a bit of a newbie chaser and enjoy reading all the accounts and opinions. Great stuff everybody!!
 
First of all, great thread. I have thought about starting one like it myself, but never got around to it. Hearing about everyone's tornado dreams is fascinating because it provides a glimpse into the different origins and interests behind a chasing passion.

Anyway, my dreams are not nightmares nor are they frustrating adventures, although I do believe they are anxiety induced. Even when I was young tornado dreams were not nightmares, but more of an anxious urge. In my tornado dreams, which may run 3-4 times a week come spring, tapering off to twice a month in the off season, I am always trying to just see the tornado, to witness it. The dreams are always very abstract and non real, like Im chasing in an abandoned city on foot. I scour the sky until I see a funnel drop and then I am satisfied (until I wake up).

The dreams were at a minimum last summer after a succesful year, which resulted in my first and only tornado catch. Its been more than a year now though and they are as strong as ever.
 
Oh yeah, I get these dreams, in fact I had one last night: there were a bunch of funnel clouds hanging down over the city, in various stages of condensation, and I was running around pointing at the sky trying to make people aware of what was about to happen - and I couldn’t get anybody to look up at the damn things! Pretty funny, actually... I felt a bit like Chicken Little.

My tornado dreams frequently involve more than one tornado - this seems to be one of the hallmarks of the true tornado dream. The dreams are often amazingly detailed visually - if only I could bring a camera into my dreams! What amazing footage I could bring back. Sometimes the tornado is heading right for me... But I always wake up before I get that chance to check out the view from the inside. ;)

These dreams definitely did used to happen to me much more frequently back before I saw my first real-life tornado. They still happen on occasion, though. What's changed is that these days there's hardly ever any element of fear involved. Most of these dreams I wouldn't classify as nightmares - quite the contrary. What’s interesting is that when I was growing up I also used to have these amazing dreams about the Northern Lights. Just all kinds of really cool stuff going on in the sky, very visual and colorful, sometimes spooky, and often very far indeed from what I knew the real thing was supposed to look like. In a way I was kind of mildly obsessed with the subject... Seeing the aurora borealis was always quite literally a big dream of mine. When I finally had a chance to witness the aurora for real - an incredible full-sky display I saw up in VT sometime in the mid ‘80s - the dreams suddenly ended, and I can’t recall having a single one since. I guess these kind of things always loom a bit larger than life in the imagination, which is unfettered by any of the constraints of reality. Once the actual phenomenon is experienced, some of the mystery goes away and the subconscious moves on to other things.
 
I've had a couple of tornado dreams (that I can remember at least). I think they're pretty cool, but most other people would probably be terrified. The most recent one, I was driving with my father in our enormous, monstruous blue van. I mean that in the kindest way possible. Anyway, we're driving into the middle of nowhere, some podunk town in Texas that has no name, to pick up my sister from the library. Why she's in a library in Texas, I have no idea. For some reason that I can't recall, my father drops me off at a gas station and leaves to go pick up my sister. I'm standing outside this broken down gas station and I get pulled up by a sudden tornado. You know that feeling you get in your stomach when you drop suddenly? I got the same feeling in my dream. I was just taken straight up into the air for several hundred feet, then set back down. That's what normally happens in my tornado dreams, in any case. The dreams don't leave me frustrated, so much as unsettled. Don't know why, though.
Sarah
 
The second night after my close encounter with the Kiowa County, Colorado beast, I had a dream of walking out of my house in Melbourne, Florida, and following someone to go chase tornadoes in the eyewall of Hurricane Jeanne. Somehow, the storm had no rain on the south side, so I could see the southern eye wall just going nuts with scud and spinning like one giant tornado with a calm center. I knew in the dream that such a sight was not possible, but I still tried to chase it. It dropped multiple vortices, then the dream went even crazier before I woke up.

Owen
 
My mother (another SKYWARN spotter, one confirmed tornado) told me of a dream once where there were as many as seven tornadoes on the ground. The kicker is that I was in the basement on my computer, she yelled that there were seven tornadoes outside the front door, and that I yelled back "I wanna see them!" and she yelled back "No, stay in the basement!"

Its funny how dreams mimic real life ;).
 
I have tornado dreams all the time. I had them for many years before I started chasing and I still have them. They are never nightmares, I always enjoy them. Sometimes the tors come really close to me but I am never injured and the worst destruction to any bldgs was some windows being blown out in Jerusalem (yeah that's where the dream took place). The most memorable dream was one where I was standing in the middle of a field with a group of about 6 people from my church. All of a sudden a tor appeared heading straight for us and we didn't have time to get away from it. It picked us up, flipped us around and put us back down on the ground unhurt. It was fun, like a roller coater. Many of my dreams include multiple tors at the same time. It used to perplex me as to why I had tor dreams but now I just think they're "wishful thinking" dreams. Where else but in your dreams can you have a tor pass 5 feet in front of you and you be totally unscathed?
 
tornado dreams/MOM

I used to have tornado dreams from time to time. It was infrequent but still happens from time to time. This was well before I ever found Storm Track and became interested in storm chasing.

Then I read some dream book and found out the tornado in your dreams represent some emotional turmoil, some conflict you have in your feelings.
Turns out the book was right. I was having emotional conflicts regarding my Mom. And it seems like I have these dreams right around family events like reunions, weddings and or funerals.

My mom died in 2002. It was right about that time that I was introduced to Stormtrack. And right about that time, I didn't have any more dreams about tornadoes. You think those dreams died with my Mom?? Go Figure!!

I got married in 2002 and one thing I've noticed that I seems to be calmer on stormy nights. Thats probably due to having a bed mate to cuddle up to when its stormy. And I seems to be having more sexual dreams rather than tornado dreams. HMMM this may requires some sleeping!! LOLO.

Larry J. Kosch
Freedom Implant 04-14-05
Freedom Hookup 05-04-05
Storm Chaser/Geocacher/CI User
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top