A tornado last night took out most of the town of Greenburg, Kan.

My parents live about 20 miles south of there. They called minutes after the storm, saying they were OK, but reporting that from what they could pick up on the police scanner, 3/4 of the town was destroyed by the mile-wide tornado.

Seeing the pictures this morning of the town I've visited countless times is just stunning. The downtown area is almost completely gone. There is a large farm equipment dealership there, and you can see how the storm picked up half million dollar combines and threw them around like toys.

Ironically, one of the few tornadoes I remember seeing was while my mother and I were on our way to the Greenburg hospital one day. We looked out and saw a fairly large twister a few miles away, traveling the same direction. We watched it for the entire 20 minute drive.

This morning, that same hospital we were going to was destroyed, and 30 people had to be rescued from the basement. At least the people there had good warning. It's just lucky the tornado first came down in rural area near my family's farm, and was spotted before it hit town.

Here is a video of a smaller tornado spawned by the same storm yesterday in Oklahoma:

Here is a photo of the Greensburg tornado. The thing is so big, it doesn't make for a good picture. The coolest looking tornadoes are the small ones, like the one in the video above. The big ones are just ugly and dangerous.