Left for school at 7:00am with severe thunderstorm watches starting to be issued. Man, it felt like a sauna outside for 7:00am. Very humid and warm just told me, "oh, oh, I think we are in trouble!" The sky was mostly cloudy with some obvious lighter colors to the east with the sun's rising. However, there was still no visual sign that storms were on the horizon.
Got to school at 8:00am. Study hall was my first period of the day. Then, they held study periods on the cafeteria which had a bank of windows facing to the west-southwest, perfect view of the horizon from where the storms were coming from.
I had pass to go see a speech therapist towards the middle of the period, so I went to the other side of this large high school to work with the therapist for about 20 to 30 minutes.
Upon my return to study hall, the sky had become extremely dark to the south-southwest.
Whatever was coming was coming while I was at school with 2000 other students and 150 or so staff members present.
At 8:50am, it was time to head over to my Algebra class, on the other side of the building, second floor. Around this time, it begin to rain lightly.
I got to my algebra class 3 minutes later. That day we were taking our second to last test of the year, being that 2 weeks remained in the school year. The instructor passed out the test as the rain intensified and some lightning and thunder entered the picture.
I was not more than 1/4 don with the test and I noticed that it was getting rather windy rather quickly, and also I heard the very faint pitch of the civil defense/storm sirens. I just put that back in my mind and continued testing.
Not more than 2 minutes later, one of the assistant administrators comes over the PA to mention that we are to take our tornado safety measures.
Darn, I was on a roll with the test! 
We all went for the stairwell to the first floor and one of the restrooms.
The sky, well, it was downpouring so hard, I could not make out the sky. It was very windy, destructively windy up to 90 to 100 mph!
After about 45 minutes, it was clear for us to return to normal activities.
Looking out east, I could see a small wall cloud. Up until I got home, I thought a tornado had come through. I found out that it was just a very destructive severe thunderstorm (with sirens being activated). There were isolated tornadoes with the line, though, so that was not ruled out either in areas near my location.
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May 4, 2003: Anyone who lived in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas or Missouri knows this day to heart most likely. That day up here in Omaha, I was working at a grocery store. Customer assistance was my position, helping them find items to providing assistance to their cars if desired with the purchases.
Around noon, two tornado watches, both PDS I believe, were issued within an hour. One for areas just west of the immediate Omaha area, and the second for the Omaha area and southwest Iowa, Northwest Missouri and northeast Kansas. It was cloudy, remnants of the overnight/early morning storms, and I was beginning to wonder about the reasoning for the tornado watches, particularly PDS. However, one step outside, and it sure felt like things could go nuts!
I was not happy that I had to go to work that afternoon from 3:00pm-8:00pm; with severe weather, I prefer to be at home in my ground level room monitoring it on the Internet and weather radio, plus things are ALOT less hectic in a private dwelling.
About 2:30pm, it was off to work. Storms were already going Tornado Warning out near Hastings and Grand Island, NE, and they were moving east!
It seems that people had the idea to get home before the storms arrived because going near one of the malls out in my area, it was abuzzing with activity. Sundays can be busy, but not this busy.
The same scene was found at the grocery store I work at. Very, very busy. I noticed weather radio setup in the customer service booth, so it was a "yep, they know" situation.
The first 30 minutes was extremely busy. Several times managers were paging back and forth over the PA system. I think this was some sort of coordination for severe weather procedures.
The sky did not look really threatening, just overcast. IT was humid and sticky, though, with south winds of 30 mph. Talking with the customers, they were talking about storms not far to the west, so I was beginning get a little excited to get home. Nope, no can do, very busy!
Anyway, about 3:30pm, 30 minutes into my shift, I was out on a carry out, and on my way back in, the sirens decide to switch on.
Still, though the sky just look blah, nothing to exciting. I guess that was from my perspective, because my parents told me when they crested the hill west of my store, the sky sure looked like something nasty was coming.
Believe it or not, normal operations continued with the tornado warning out and the sirens blaring.
I helped about 3 customers out with their groceries before the following occurred:
The sirens had been going off and on for about 10 minutes, probably confusing the management to pieces about wehter to inact procedures or not. On what was to be my last customer for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, I re-entered the store, told one of the customer service managers about the fact they are going off again! He immediately got into contact with the store manager about the current happenings. About 1 minute later, we made an announcement over the intercom for all custumers to either leave the store or take cover with the associates in the back of the store in the walk-in cooler.
Some of us associates went around the store explaining to customers of the warning and their options of either staying in shelter or leaving the building before we locked the front doors.
Most, if not all, made the bright idea of staying and hunkering down for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I took a peak outside on my way back to the cooler. It certainly looked like a wicke sky now!
That day, Gretna, a southwest Omaha suburb had a small F0 tornado touch the ground briefly with little or no damage reported. Large hail to softballs smashed Bellevue's (another suburb) auto row.
When I got home, I found out about Kansas City's killer tornadoes and felt fortunate that we did not have to endure that severity and prayed for the folks down that way.
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So those are a couple of my experiences. What are your sever weather experiences while in a public setting (say an outdoor concert, in a mall, stadium, schoo, etc)? What actions were taken? What was the end result from the storm?
