CHASED BY TORNADOS IN MINNESOTA

When you're driving from Calgary (Alberta) to Minneapolis, you pass through two states (North Dakota and Montana) before reaching Minnesota.

As gasoline is more expensive in Canada than in the states, we chose to drive more on the American soil than going through Saskatchewan.

Driving through North Dakota is an unique experience. You have to try it!

The scenery is so surreal, like nothing I have seen before.

Some areas are hilly and then is all flat!

Plus the fact that you can drive for close to 300 miles without seeing a city, a village or a gas station can be scary. Especially if you are travelling with a 3-year-old on the back seat of your vehicle!

Last summer when I took this trip, I could not help asking myself what would happen if I would had an accident.

Or what if I would have ran out of gas?

We would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere for a long time, hoping that someone would come to our rescue!

There were no cars, no trucks, nothing passing on the highway for hundreds of miles.

Did I mention that the phone or GPS reception was on and off?

Having the road to our self seemed great in the beginning but when I got a flat tire I got somehow worried.

Not to mention that we got a storm behind us the whole time we were on the road.

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Closer we got to Minnesota, darker it got outside.

When he finally reached Minnesota, our phones picked up the signal and started to beep.

We were receiving emergency text messages sent by the government.

The message you can see in the image above was meant to inform us about the tornado alert that was on at the time. That did not prevent us from admiring the landscape and the windmills in the distance. North Dakota has a lot of windmills!

Plus where were we going to go? We were still close to 120 miles away form our final destination for the day.

There was no place to take shelter anywhere around us! Only flat fields, nothing else.

Thus we continued to drive despite the fact that it had started to rain and the sky was getting darker by the minute.

As soon as we arrived at my aunt's house, there was a moment of silence, followed instantly by crazy winds and heavy heavy rain. We just had the time to come out of the car and rush inside the house before we saw things flying through the air. I was tempted to stay close by the door or window and take more photos, hoping I 'd get a great snapshot, but my family convinced me otherwise. Therefore, safety came first.

The following morning I saw a photo of the tornado that had passed by the previous day. Someone had emailed to one of the local newspapers and then it was all over the news.

Image source: StarTribune

We also found out that there was a strong cyclic supercell which had created multiple tornados moving across the state. Apparently we managed to drive between 4 or 5 tornadoes. The tornado that we felt the previous day was rated EF-2 with peak winds of 125 mph which caused a lot of damage in the Nicolett area.

To be honest, until that day I did not even know that there were tornados in Minnesota. It wasn't the first tornado I had witnessed or survived, but it was a memorable experience.

What about you? What memorable experiences you had while being on the road?