Tornados

We survived our first (and hopefully last) tornado just over a week ago.  On Friday night, we were warned about the severe chance of tornadoes.  JC came home early and prepped the storm shelter.  That, we've done many times before.  But never before have we actually gotten into the shelter and closed the door.  We did this day.  Cam was crying because we didn't bring the cats.  Our phones didn't work below ground and the weather radio is pretty vague.  Sirens went off and on for 2 hours.  Lily and Cait climbed all over me as I tried to keep them occupied with snacks and flashlights and such.  We heard what sounded like a train.  We heard the hail hitting our garage door.  We wondered when it would be safe to get out.  Finally, we opened the door and called Bren.  He told us the radar showed the storm had passed.  We waited a little longer and finally, we all climbed out.

Our power was out and it was pouring down rain when we came out.  Looking outside, we had shingles in our yard, limbs from our neighbor's tree was in our front yard and 3 panels of our backyard fence were down.

The pictures above are from our neighborhood after the storm.  Our power, phones and internet were down for over 3 days.  Thankfully, my parents had a generator for us to borrow so that we wouldn't loose our food.  We were thankful that the days and evenings were still on the cool side.  Even more, we are thankful that we have very little damage to deal with.

After some research, JC found a map of the tornado's path and it went directly through our neighborhood.  The tornado just prior to it that evening, a little west of us, was the widest ever recorded and labeled an F5.  The one that hit us was a F1 and did not level a single house in our neighborhood but did lots of tree and fence damage.  A brick, from a random house, flew through our neighbor's glass back doors.

What an ADVENTURE!

And what do you do with 3 littles without power?  Get creative and make messes!