A Tornado? I'm Not In Kansas Anymore Am I?

I've seen a variety of weather conditions here in Kansas City, MO, but the sky that I saw last night was more ominous that others had made it out to be. I left one of the buildings at school to see a yellowish sky unlike I've ever seen before. I called out to my friend Ramy that it looked like tornado weather and that it wasn't looking good. He said that we should hurry home, and I declined simply because I had a bit more studying to do and was headed to the study rooms. I entered the building to be told by Ashley, at the front desk, that we were having a tornado warning. Given that I'm originally from CA, this was not something I was used to. Upon reaching the study room, I looked out to see that the sky was getting darker as the clouds moved in. I called Michael to ask if he still wanted to study. He was just coming up the stairs so we decided to stay here and wait it out. Within 15 minutes, the rain began to fall and lightning and thunder were distracting us. I shut the windows and blinds only to be stopped a little later by the sounds of the tornado warning siren going off. Only a few of us were still left at school by that point. We headed down to the shelter in the basement (again, something I'm not used to). I brought my laptop and we tried to keep calm and go through test questions. Finally after 10pm, there was a quick break in the storm so we took it as a chance to get home. I didn't get any sleep last night and laid awake until after 2am due to the strong wind, thunder, lightning, and rain. I turned on the weather channel to see that we were having wind gusts between 60 and 75 mph. The wind was so strong that water started coming in my window and I had to grab a cup to catch the dripping water. I awoke at 5am to get ready to head out to school (it's not fun getting less than 4 hours of sleep). I made it to school a little before 6am and set up. Later, Heather started calling to see if I was alright. She had read on MSNBC about the twisters across the midwest and how 100 homes had been destroyed and 3 people killed in Kansas City. I spoke with another student to learn that some of the damage was in his neighborhood and that he heard trees cracking around him. I don't know how people get so used to this phenomenon. The concept of having a tornado hit is still just as foreign to me as an earthquake might be to many here.