Never, in my... ummm... 29 years in my career, have I EVER had to evacuate my office due to severe weather... until today.

Carol called me... from the stairwell of her building. They heard the tornado sirens going off outside, so they evacuated to the interior stairwells in the building core (sounds right, knowing how these buildings are built... keep away from glass, and the concrete core for the elevators, stairs, and God knows what gives GREAT protection if something happens). So what do we do? Get up and look at the window!

She called me a few minutes later saying they heard about funnel clouds being sighted in Elgin coming straight this way, through Hoffman Estates. Great. Don't like hearing about funnel clouds passing through the town where we live.

I told everybody in the cubes around me what was going on... where she was (not far away at all) and what they were doing.

And then the announcement over the building PA:

May I have your attention. May I have your attention please. This is a severe weather alert. All personnel should immediately move to the center core of the building, restrooms, stairwells, and inner core offices, away from all glass or mirrors until the all clear is announced.

...and then the alarm went off along with strobes.

Off we all went, first to the conference room suites in the center of our office space, with all the full length glass... Well, we were shagged out of there and told to wait in the stairwells...

... and you know.. when the staircase next to the elevators is just a step or two from the railing that overlooks the lobby with it's glass windows... it's just too hard to resist staying in the stairwell... you know, you could EASILY get into the stairwell if something would happen...

...so that's where I stood... with at least a dozen other people.. including others from meetings in the conference rooms, with their laptops and wireless connections, constantly checking radar and NWS reports...

The sky was turning black... you could see the underside of the clouds getting lower... but no rain, which made a bunch of people walk outside to see what they could see. Reports of funnel cloud sightings in Schaumburg, where I work, started to trickle in. It looked NASTY outside. The radar showed a really bad cell skipping through directly west-to-east with us in the way. Then it got dark, quiet...

...pretty soon the skies got lighter.. and lighter.. and then they just opened-up... a deluge. needless to say, nobody stayed outside.

After a few minutes of continued deluge, the internal alarm systems sounded the all clear and we went back to our cubes.

Hard to get motivated after that, though.