Normal operation for a Saturday was with the SAGE crew only. The manual crew was off and on standby. So there would have been 8 of us on duty. The day started as any other good weather lazy spring day. I was doing both maintenance and the MCC (Maintenance Control Center) phone.

During the spring months we normally saw weather build up to the southwest of us moving northeast as the day progressed. If we had thunder storms it was in the late afternoon. This day was no different except by two in the afternoon we receive a severe weather warning from SCADS weather. Normal procedure was followed and we called for the diesel shack personnel to come and put us on backup power. We normally ran on REA power. Diesel`s were fired up and we made the transition.

Around four in the afternoon I received a call from the guard shack. The AP on duty said "all of you should come out and see this”. A few of us walked out to see what he was talking about. To the Southwest across the river, probably 15 miles out, there was a very dark band of clouds and a black finger of cloud sticking down to the ground.

It should be pointed out all the personnel on the site that day were either from the West or East coast and none had ever seen a tornado. We stood in awe and watched as the tornado slowly moved in our general direction. It was not moving fast as one hears about.

I came out of the fixation of watching and returned to the Ops building and called SCADS and reported the visual on the tornado and called the CQ on duty. The CQ in turn reported it to the commander and the local fire station.

During severe weather all the Fire Departments in the area begin talking by radio and worked together on visual reports. If it was really extreme weather the first thing done was to fire up the sirens. These can be heard for miles as it gets the alert out to the farms.

So, here we are standing outside watching the show. Someone finally asked the question "what happens if it gets across the river, what should be done." Well, since the bluffs of the river were a couple of hundred feet and the river close to a mile wide the tornado will break up and pose no threat, yeah right. It hit the river and split into what was recorded as three funnel clouds. One set down on the southwest side of Pickstown. No damage to the town. One came across the lake behind the dam as a water spout. The third one sat down heading for the site. We got the non- maintenance personnel to evacuate the site heading east to Wagner. The remaining started shutting down all the radars and T2 equipments. I call SCADS and told them what was going on and we would see them later. No time for a coded message, just see ya. When all equipments were down the diesels were shutdown. This left only two of us in the ops building finishing up, myself and one other. We headed for the door only to find the tornado across the highway so, with a few choice expletives we took up a floor panel and went underneath into the cable runs. Found an I-beam to hang on to (probably had finger impressions in it) and waited and waited and waited. No sound of a passing train or anything like that. Just dead quiet.

Probably were under the floor for around 10 min before we decide to venture out. The tornado had passed just to the west of the west tower. No more than 100 feet away. You could see the path in the grass and bushes. There was a horse drawn hay wagon with a couple tons of hay on it sitting next to the country church across the street when all this started. Where it went, we never found out. Church remained, wagon gone. How the tornado went by and did not do any damage to either is the nature of tornados.

This one stayed on the ground for another 30 miles. It did quite a bit of damage to Lake Andes.

Needless to say there was a new protocol put in place and eight of us now understood "don`t mess with mother nature." Just run for shelter.

Fortunately there were no other incidents like this for the remainder of my tour.