Garden City, Kansas

Out here in storm country, the old-timers watch the southwest sky, and there's good reason. Most Plains storms ride a steering wind that blows from the southwest, so the storms and the tornadoes they spin up tend to travel from southwest to northeast, or roughly west to east. But that's a tendency, not a law. The National Weather Service is blunt about it: a tornado can appear from any direction, and some places favor odd paths, like northwest tracks up in Minnesota. Here's the part that can fool you. If a funnel sits in one spot, not sliding left or right but just growing wider and darker, it is not stalled. It is coming straight at you. That lack of sideways motion is a trick of perspective, and it's one of the most dangerous illusions in the sky. Don't wait. Get low, get inside.