Tornado

Last Thursday we had some very severe storms move through our area. It was so scarry. It started about 8pm and lasted to about 12:30 am. We were watching the storms on the news and saw that the worst part was moving right through our town, so I cleaned out our coat closet. It is the only downstairs interior room that we have in our house without windows. I made the boys spend about a half hour in the closet as the weatherman said that they could see a tornado forming just south of us. I even spent about 10 minutes in the closet. It was just raining and lightening and then the sounds changed,the direction of the wind changed and the wind started blowing very hard. Our cable went out for about ten min. Then everything just stopped. The rain, the wind and all. It was over just like that. Well, the next morning Paul left for work and his normal 20 min drive turned into an hour drive and the same thing on the way home. The farmers market, which is only 2-3 miles from our home was hit by an EF3 tornado. It suffered extensive damage and many of the vendors lost most or all of their produce/flowers/bushes. The gas station across from it had the canopy over the pumps blown clear off. A truck driver in that area was asleep in his semi which was hit by the tornado and he was killed. Our area was fortunate as it hit an industrial park and it was night so there was not anyone working at htat time. Areas south of us, 20- 30 min., were hit much harder and some people lost their homes. We are so fortunate. We thank God for protecting us. We drove around the other day to look at some of the damage. I took some pics which really don't show how severe the damage was but it might give you somewhat of an idea. A lot of the damage had already been cleaned up.

A lot of trees were just snapped in half like this one. Others you could see where the tornado had twisted the broken branches around.

If you look closely at this picture you can see where the entire tree has been uprooted out of the ground. We couldn't count how many trees were like these.


This huge tree was ripped down in someones front yard. They live about 1-2 miles from our house. Thank God that it went the direction that it did or it would have landed on their house.