Hagrid is in the House!

Wow.

Last night my hometown, Manhattan, Kansas, got hammered by a tornado. ( News thanks to kadyg )

Yes, yes, I know, this is Kansas we're talking about, what's the big deal? But Manhattan sits in a geographical oddity in Kansas: a river valley in the Flint Hills (which is the only geographically exciting pat of Kansas). The surrounding hills usually protect the town from the worst of Kansas weather. In Manhattan, tornadoes are rare.

Last night, though, a tornado ripped through town and slammed into the campus of my old school, Kansas State University. There don't appear to be any serious injuries in Manhattan (though there were deaths when the twister went through the nearby town of Chapman), but the K-State campus, where I went to school for many, many years (earning the degree I am finishing today at WWU, as chance would have it!) took the brunt of the storm.

Looks like the tornado destroyed and damaged some buildings on the northwest side of campus. Classes are cancelled, and details are sketchy, because they are still picking up the pieces this morning.

As I mentioned, Manhattan is my hometown (I love to fuck with New Yorkers with this fact), and I have spent 1/4 of my life there. Fortunately, I don't have any relatives left in "The Little Apple" -- they have all long since moved away -- but I have lots of friends and acquaintances in the area, and several people on my LJ friends list (kadyg,kcfairy,genetikayos,redhatguy) are friends I met and got to know during my years in Manhattan.