Tornado

The weather all spring had been pretty wild.  So many big storms, and we had been pounded with some insane amounts of rain (6+ inches in a storm).  It was mothers day, and we were sitting in our family room when Max looked out the window.  It was late afternoon, and his eyes become huge.  

"Mom, LOOK at those clouds!"  They looked like little marshmallows lined up next to one another, were moving at a good pace, and seemed to cover the entire sky.

He ran to get one of his books, turned to the page, and said, "LOOK!  Those clouds are exactly like this picture, and this book says those clouds come before a major storm."

Then he started to get a little panicky, so I downplayed the whole thing.

Sure enough, a couple hours later, the storm rolled in.  Then the sirens turned on, so we all headed down to the basement.  Mike stayed upstairs (as he often did), to check the weather on TV, and to watch the storm from the windows.

About 5 minutes later he came downstairs and had this look on his face.  A little different look than usual.  The kind of look that you don't really like to see.  

So, I checked the weather on my phone, and sure enough, there was a hook of a tornado on the map, and it was headed directly at us.  

Mike later told me how the sky had turned completely green, and it was raining so hard, you couldn't even see the playset from our windows.  He said he felt the windows shifting, and knew we'd better all stay in the basement.

Did we end up in the tornado?  

An F1 made it's way through our town.  It missed us by about a 1/2 mile.  It destroyed SO MANY trees, a couple people completely lost their homes, and the damage from rooftops, fences, playlets, etc. was more than you could count.

While I can't describe the feeling of being in a tornado, I can tell you, the feeling of being "close enough."  The noise in unbelievable.  The wind coupled with debris makes you feel like you might not recognize things when you get back up.  The rain was so intense and so strong.

When we came up, we snapped a few pics (although they really don't do justice to it all).  Our home was actually protected by our neighbors behind us (they sat higher, and shielded a lot of the wind from our home).  Because of that, our playset was one of the few left standing and our roof/siding was intact.  We didn't know it then, but that turned out to be a huge blessing to not have to worry about that + selling a home just a few weeks later!

The backyard was a lake:

 Our chairs had been tucked into the table.  Essentially they were locked.  But the swirling circular winds lifted and threw the chair out onto the yard.  Again, so blessed it went that direction and not into our house.

 Just up the road, where the path of the tornado went.  I couldn't drive up further, but a beautiful farm home had been ripped up.

 So many trees uprooted.