August 19: You Say Tornado, I Say TorNOTo

Up until this evening, I'd never been in a tornado before. Not really the type of new experience I was hoping for when I signed up for this blog gig. But, nonetheless, it happened. About 6:45 or so, the family decided to make a Slurpee run to 7-Eleven. At the time, the sky to the North of us was getting a little cloudy, but not too bad. By the time we returned home, a matter of 5-10 minutes, the sky was much darker. Shortly there after, the sirens went off. At that point, we looked into the local weather for an update of what to expect, and we discovered a tornado warning for our area. So, we ventured into the basement, and within 5 minutes or so the worst of it arrived. We could hear hail slamming off the house, the wind swirling like mad, and eventually a big THUMP outside. It only lasted approximately 10 minutes, but it sounded pretty nasty. As I hit the top of the stairs, first thing I saw outside was that the patio furniture cover had been lifted off one of the chairs which was soaked in the still falling rain. Wish that had been the worst of it. A few more steps and I found the kids' swing set to be intact on one side of the yard, however, on the other side, 3 huge fir trees were now laying on the ground, stumps up! Obviously, we now were even more curious about the exterior of the house. As the neighbors began to slowly exit their homes to observe the damage, we found our shutters in the front, which we thought were made of wood but are actually plastic, riddled with holes. I have to think there is a better way we could have made that discovery. The shutters now look like we've been the victim of a recent drive by. Fortunately, that was the bulk of the damage. The house was structurally fine, just some minor cosmetic things here and there. The neighborhood looked like it had just been through a war zone - branches everywhere, piles of hail covering the ground, street flooded to your ankles because the sewage drains were blocked with all of the fallen foliage. But, everyone in the neighborhood was safe. News reports later confirmed that a tornado touched down nearby, thus ending any discrepancies as to whether or not we experienced a tornado. Remember the movie "Twister"? Well, in all honesty, it was nothing like that, but still enough to scare the dickens out of you (and Bill Paxton, too)!