Two things off my bucket list, travel to Italy (check), take picture of tornado (check)

Most people  hear tornado sirens and run for cover, I hear them and grab my camera as I make a mad dash for the door.  My heart starts pounding as I search the horizon for a whirling mass.  With camera in hand, I watch and wait  only to be disappointed time after time.

This strange fascination I have to capture a tornado  has been going on for over twenty years.    Another item on my bucket list has been to travel to Italy and hopefully my ancestral home of Guardavalle,  Italy.  I didn’t make it to Guardavalle, but I didn’t manage to get close and I also managed to capture a picture of this tornado while traveling in Sicily.

I remember traveling down the highway with a tour group and the guide looks over and says “a tornado, it must be raining somewhere” and that was it.  No one seemed concerned that a tornado was so close.  I know it looks small and far away in the pictures but it was much larger and closer than it looks.

The pictures don’t show how huge this thing was but I have to admit, it was a little scary though I think my excitement of taking photographs of it far outweighed the scare.   I remember turning to my daughter with  a big grin on my face, in the middle of my frantic picture taking, and  saying “I can’t believe I’m in Italy and I’m photographing a tornado.”  It was one of the highlights of my vacation!