55 years in Kansas which seems to be known for nothing but Dorothy and tornadoes and I personally have never seen even a funnel cloud, let alone a tornado. Although, I have been very, very close to them. Back in the family trucking days, I was somewhere near Beatrice Nebraska one night driving in severe weather. The traffic came to a sudden stop, and someone from a few cars in front of me came back and asked, "Did you see THAT??? A tornado just crossed the road in front of us!!" That same night, slowly meandering my way to Clay Center Kansas, I drove thru Blue Rapids and one other town that had their tornado sirens screaming. When I reached Clay Center, I was totally exhausted as I had been up well over 24 hours and driving hundreds of miles in severe weather. I slept in the truck and when I woke up I'd left the marker lights on and it wouldn't start so I walked towards the local co-op to see about getting a jump. The entire main street was a disaster zone. I remember walking by the bank which had its entire facade ripped off and the alarm was ringing. A tornado had come thru in the night and I slept thru it. I never heard a thing. This may have been the same night the big tornado went through Xenia, Ohio.
I watched one on radar while waiting for take off at Midway airport in Chicago in the early '90s. We watched it build from a small cell into a giant storm with the classic pork-chop shape and get stronger and closer. We were departing runway 31L which gave us a bird's eye view of this storm. When the radar was filled with nothing but purple, we were cleared for takeoff. My response was, "Uh, no thanks. We're going back to the gate." This was the storm that went through Joliet, Aurora, Plainfield and was VERY strong. We flew over the path of that storm later that night. It started its run on the ground somewhere near Decatur IL and it scoured a path over the ground (even where there were no buildings or trees) that could be seen for months afterwards.
