I did quite a bit of storm chasing across Illinois and southern Wisconsin while I lived over there - anywhere within driving distance of home. I saw some amazing thunderstorms but the only tornado I got close to experiencing up-close and personally happened in the dark. It was fun for me, though the wife freaked out a bit.
My parents were visiting at the time so it was kinda cool for them to experience it. When the sirens went off, I was eating dinner with my parents at our local diner a couple of miles from home. We probably spent longer at the diner than we should have after that. By the time we got in the car to head home, we could have driven home without headlights because of the intensity and frequency of sheet and fork lightning. Branches were being yanked off trees, thrown at the car and strewn across the road, and the trees themselves were moving so violently that it looked for all the world like they were being felled and then standing back up again. I remember it very vividly.
My parents were enjoying the show, mostly I think because - like me - they didn't grow up in the midwest and didn't properly understand just how dangerous the weather can actually be. Weather in the UK just plain doesn't kill you on a whim. Not like it does in the US.
By the time we got back home, my wife and the kids were firmly installed in the basement and my wife's panic attack was just properly getting under way. The storm had all but passed by the time I managed to convince my parents that the safest place to be wasn't standing outside on the deck admiring the light show, but was actually below ground level, behind the boiler in the steel and concrete-reinforced utility room.
The hail that came down was about golf ball size, maybe a bit bigger. It destroyed the roof (everyone on the subdivision got a new roof that year) and made orange peel of both the cars in the driveway. About a quarter of a mile away, 20 houses had their roofs lifted clean off and a few cars were moved about, a couple of them turned over. Nobody was hurt, fortunately.
It certainly wasn't a major tornado but it was enough, at least for me, to gain a bit of respect for what the wind can actually do for fun. Extreme weather is something I desperately miss since moving back to the UK.