Tornado

One week ago we were on the way home from our annual Memorial Day weekend camping trip with our wonderful VA homeschooling friends.  We had a great time, as usual, and it was even better because both Nathan and Luke were able to be there with us.  Those times where all 12 of us are together are getting rarer and rarer, so we really appreciate those times when they come!  There were some thunderstorms, so we had some wet, skanky laundry to deal with, and of course everyone was exhausted and filthy.  We were looking forward to showers and sleeping in our own beds!

At some point in the drive, I realized from facebook maybe that there was severe weather predicted, but it looked like it would all be "north of I-70".  We are south of I-70, so I didn't really pay any attention to the weather after that.

We arrived home around 7:00 PM, and we unloaded the big van and the "stow-away" carrying thing that goes into the hitch on the back.  Everyone took showers, and I worked on laundry.  By 11:00, I had finished 2 loads, and another one was partially dry in the dryer, and another load was starting the final spin cycle in the washer.  The little kids were sound asleep, and so was Bob.

Right around 11:00 I got the first alert on my phone from the National Weather Service.  It said a tornado had been spotted in our area, and we should seek immediate shelter.  I promptly ignored it and went back to my book.  About 5 minutes later I got the same alert again, and my mom called.  They live just a few streets away from us, and she said her neighbors, who have a one story house with no basement, were heading over to my parents' house with their 2 little kids, and that we really should be down in our basement.  So I reluctantly got up Bob and the 3 littles, putting them down again on the futon in the basement, and I went out to the garage to bring down our camping lanterns and flashlights, conveniently located where I had put them just a few hours before!

I texted my mom at 11:16 to ask if the NWS would let us know when the danger had passed because it seemed quiet, like the storm was moving off.  Right after I sent that text, the lights started flickering and then went out.  And then it became obvious the storm had most definitely NOT moved off!  Things started hitting the windows and pinging the fireplace.  There were loud noises from upstairs, and the pressure was really weird.  I shouted at everyone to get into the bathroom.  We put Luna in the shower stall, and the other 10 of us crammed into the super small bathroom.

 Verity was scared, but she settled right down.  The little boys asked what if we died, and we talked about how we knew we would be with Jesus because we trusted that He paid for our sins when He died on the cross in our place, so we didn't have anything to worry about.  I tried to post this picture on facebook, but my phone no longer really worked.  I couldn't text, call, or get online, which was frustrating.  We were probably in there for 15 minutes or so.  It seemed like forever, all squished and uncomfortable!

 When we came out, the first thing we noticed was that our upstairs hallway attic access panel had apparently come up and then down again, but it landed sideways, and a bunch of nasty old insulation had fallen into the hallway.  We cleaned that up as best we could with a flashlight and broom and then got kids back to bed.  Bob headed out to look at the house, and he came back in saying it was a pretty significant storm, with pretty significant damage.  He noticed a lot of trees down and damage to the house, but it would wait until morning for us to really see the extent of the damage.  Neither Bob nor I slept very well, and he was on the phone with USAA at 2:30 AM.

 When we got up Tuesday morning, we could see the damage.  For one thing, the windows were blown out of the minivan Caleb had been driving to school and work (which is my parents', but we hadn't gotten around to replacing the Sienna yet, after it was rear-ended and totaled back in the end of December).  All the cars, as well as the house and any other surface, were absolutely coated with insulation, cottonwood pollen, and various other mess.

 Trees were down everywhere.  Our neighborhood was built in the 70's, and so it was full of beautiful, huge mature trees.  Those are pretty much all gone now.  A few are left, but even those lost many branches and are much scragglier.  We lost our beautiful Littleleaf Linden tree in the front, as well as a maple tree, a pine tree, and an apple tree in the back.

 We had a ton of other debris all over the yard.  There were big 4x8 pieces of plywood with shingles on them, probably from our roof, as well as other random things like patio cushions, 5 gallon buckets, mailbox pieces, and other junk.  We had a king size top sheet dangling from a branch in our big maple tree off the deck.

 The back yard had branches and junk all over it.  All of our deck furniture blew off, as well as our grill.

 This is the smaller maple tree in our side yard.  One of our neighbor's tree fell on our fence and destroyed it, with branches from the maple tree also damaging it.  The fence has been on our list to replace because Luna had discovered she could jump over it, but I am SO glad we hadn't done it yet.  It would just have been destroyed!

Our shed was crushed by our pine tree, which landed on it.  Our neighbor had 7 huge pine trees and 2 large maples (all at least 40 feet), and every single one was lost.  Most blew over, but one just lost all it's branches.  It was like that everywhere, and it was so crushingly sad to see these majestic trees just uprooted or stripped bare.

 Back in our yard, here is the hole in our roof.  We also lost much of our gutters and a lot of siding, plus soffits and other random things.  Two windows cracked and broke, but only the outside layer.  None of them shattered.  We attributed that to our old inefficient windows that clearly allowed the house to weather all the pressure changes, lol. Also, none of them took any direct hits, fortunately.

 Our poor deck had a lot of the deck railing blown off.  Our grill blew right through it into the yard!  You can see the pine tree on the shed better in this picture too.

 This is looking at into the park.  You can't really tell in a picture, but there are so many trees down.  Just devastating.

 This is my parents' house.  Their entire front porch blew off.  One of the porch supports actually blew through their front storm door, knocking open their front door, and spraying glass and leaves all over their entryway and even into their family room and down their stairs.

 This is a guest bedroom in my parents' house.  The window shattered glass all over the room, and something slammed into the outer wall as well, because it made a hole and pushed the insulation through.  What a mess!  Fortunately the man that is staying here wasn't home--but he was actually driving in the storm.  He thought he was hit by a crazed semi-truck with no lights on because all of a sudden, he felt a huge impact which spun his minvan around several times, and the car was lifted up and carried a quarter mile down the road and set down in a ditch!  It was a miracle he was okay!

By Tuesday evening, our roof had been tarped, but the power was still out.  We were all still kind of reeling.  It was just so unexpected!

And now I can say I have survived an emergency plane landing AND an EF-3 tornado!  I am hoping not to add anymore to this survival "bucket list".