You Are Not In Kansas Anymore

Yesterday on my drive from Memphis to Little Rock I saw something that amazed me and had me thinking in the end that "I was not in Kansas anymore." What was this thing that so enthralled me - this thing that has me scrawling a note on my virtual message bulletin board? Are you ready? No really? Here it comes....

It was a tornado. Granted, this was not a large tornado and I didn't feel in danger at any point. On the F-scale this think might have been 1/2. In fact the sky was about 50% covered by clouds and I found the formation of this tornado to be unusual, but it was there....off to my left in a farm field near a barn twirling away. At first I thought it might just be a good sized dust devil, but as it began picking up dirt you could clearly see the core and the definition of the funnel went about 3/4 of the way up to the cloud that spawned it. It wasn't raining either, which I thought was weird and the funnel appeared to be barely moving from West to East and as I passed it I kept looking back over my shoulder to remind myself that I really had seen a tornado.