May 2011 it was a particularly month for tornados, a few hours south of where I live the town of Joplin, Missouri got leveled by an EF5 tornado. That tornado was part of a "Tornado Outbreak Sequence" which involved something like 200+ tornados forming in the midwest in one week and I got to live through one.

I was in school one spring day and it had been raining hard and very dark and windy out all day long. As I was riding the bus home after school looking out the windows I could see the sky start turning this weird electric green color, almost the color of mountain dew. I got off my bus and rain pelted me as I ran home, I turned on the news and there was a tornado warning for my area, not weird living in Missouri so I ignored it and go about typical after school stuff. I think I was making Mac and cheese listening to the newscasters talk about where a tornado was moving, when all of our power went out suddenly with a loud woosh. The wind was howling like crazy at this point and rattling my windows as hail began to pour out of the sky. I went outside on my porch and the hail stones were golfball sized and bigger, the wind was howling through the trees. I had a few 100+ year old trees in my yard whose branches were just whipping around and bending super close to the ground like they were saplings. As I looked up the street I could see trashcans and trash all swirling like mad, garden decorations being ripped out of the ground it seemed.
I realized at that point this might actually be some serious stuff so I went into the basement with my parrot and dog and hid for about an hour or so until I heard the wind die down. When I came out three of our windows were busted out from the hail but we were fortunate. My neighbors down the street had a big old tree like mine in her yard and it fell on top of their tiny house crushing it, which in the end they couldn't afford to repair and moved unfortunately. Overall I believe it was categorized EF1 tornado, the destruction wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been for rolling through our small town. Growing up in the midwest crazy scary storms are normal, and thats all I really thought it was until after it was all over. I'd never been so thankful to have a basement in my life and would never own a home in the midwest that didn't have one because of this. A few days later the Joplin tornado hit and killed 150 people while leveling their town. I don't believe in god, but I feel truly blessed that I avoided "The Big One" when the news broke.