Tornado warning mid-flight
I would call myself a nervous flyer, just because my brain has trouble logically figuring out how it can actually be safe. But I fly all the time and I’m always fine with it. But holy shit. Last night I was on a flight from Denver to the east coast, and the pilot warned that we were going to be going over some turbulence and for the flight attendants to be seated. Sure, normal, whatever. All of a sudden I get a fucking emergency broadcast on my phone (had forgotten to put it in airplane mode because I was reading a book): TORNADO WARNING, SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.
We were flying over southern Nebraska. All of a sudden I can see lightning out the window and start feeling some pretty bad turbulence. I wouldn’t call it extreme turbulence, but it was in the top 5% of what I’ve felt in the past. Then I look at the seatback flight map and see our course sharply diverting to the north. I haven’t experienced many panic attacks in my life, but I had a pretty bad one. Felt like I was gonna have a heart attack. Checked my watch after I had calmed down and HR was still in the 120s. Luckily everything was fine, turbulence subsided after about ten minutes and nothing happened beyond that. We went back south to our normal course.