summer storms

And summer came in with a roar, literally.

Monday night, after Cal's baseball game, the skies were churning up a storm. Of course, being the weather freak that I am, I sat in front of the radar with my finger on the mouse to refresh any updates. I also get warning text alerts on my cell phone. The kids were playing, Mike was watching TV, and I was fixated on the computer screen. Mike decided to unplug the televisions since the lightning was just wild. There were tornado warnings just west of us, and just as I mentioned that, my cell phone buzzed with a tornado warning for our town. By the size of the storm on the radar, I knew this was something big. As we rounded up the kids, I quickly stepped outside to see if the sirens were going off. They were, but it was almost impossible to hear them because of the wind. Immediately the kids started downstairs, Mike grabbed some blankets and miscellaneous things to bring down, and I grabbed my laptop, and down we went. There are few times I've ever been afraid of weather. But this is one of those times that I was. The electricity flickered on and off at least a dozen times. There was a loud whirring sound, which Mike thought was the air conditioning kicking in. But I had turned every thermostat to off earlier. I kept a close eye on the radar, until the power went out. Then we covered our heads with blankets and hoped and prayed it would be over without our house blowing away! The kids, of course, were so scared, too. I heard a loud crash and was just waiting to hear the windows explode. Luckily I kept getting text alerts, and had people texting me to let me know the weather situation since we didn't have TV or computer, with no power. Around 10:15pm, our tornado warning expired, and there was just a watch. We went upstairs and the house was fine (what we could tell in the dark!) We stepped outside to find our rocking chairs (heavy chairs by the way!) thrown up against the side of the porch. We couldn't see much else outside, other than neighbors and their flashlights trying to check out damage as well. Unfortunately for our neighbors, when they are without power, their sump pumps don't run. When their pumps don't run, their basements flood. On one side of us they were bailing water with buckets, on the other side they were trying to get a generator running. (We have a sophisticated network of pipes and such under the house that allows most if not all water to drain to the ditch, being that our neighbors houses are lower than ours, and also theirs are 30 years old, they have water problems in heavy rain).

After attempting to survey any damage in the dark, we made the decision that without power, it'd be best to stay elsewhere since we can. So the kids and I went to my grandparents house. I was also in need of the TV to see what happened! I stayed up till 1am watching the breaking news of the apparent tornadoes that swept through the area. Several houses were leveled, many severely damaged about 20 minutes from us where they had an F2 tornado. Turns out the second tornado (an F1) touched down right nearby our house!!! The tornado that buzzed by us, caused damage to a nearby post office, littering the area with postal trucks, and ripping some of the roof off the post office. I drove around the next day to try and get some pictures of places near our neighborhood. These are enormous trees, just snapped and twisted like twigs!! I hope to get to the other town sometime this week for photos. I have a friend who lives there; her house was damaged but not leveled.

This first photo is from Cal's best friend's yard