May 2, 2011

  • Day One...The Tornadoes Hit!


    It was the sound of the storm that woke me around 6:10am.  We had left the back door open and, of course, had fans in most of the windows.  When the wind got fierce and the trees were whipping around in circles and bending over at the same time, I started pulling the fans out of the windows to close and lock them.  The Beast, hearing the wind, got up and helped.  We closed all the doors and sat there at the kitchen table pretty sure that we were somewhere near a tornado at least.  We could hear the sirens that signaled a tornado was sighted and down on the ground.  When the winds calmed down after several minutes, we watched the rain come down and wondered.

    I turned on the weather radio, which meant I had to put the batteries in since our electric went out with about two minutes into the wind gusts.  I don't keep the batteries in all the time because you can't really turn off the radio at all if they are in.  I know, I know....the whole idea is that we get warned all year long since tornadoes have no real *season* and have occurred during every month of the year.  But, I hate it going off during the night just because there's upper circulation, not even any real sighting.  But, I digress.

    It was relatively calm for a while and we sat just talking quietly, wondering how long this outage would last and how much damage there would be.  I kept going out and checking the sky.  The color of it indicated it was definitely tornado weather, including the cloud formation and the way the clouds were circulating.  Scary.The Beast decided we should be watching the weather on TV so we set up our TV's so we could track the storms using solar power.

    The Princess was at work, I knew and I soon got a call from the preschool that they were closing at 2pm because they had lost power.  I knew they had it earlier in the day because that was why the Princess had taken Chewlee to school that morning when they had lost power at home.  I watched the weather and thought about the drive and hoped I would get there before the next set of storms hit us.  I had planned on picking up Chewlee early anyway but not quite that early.  Chewlee was happy to see me but was almost as shocked as I was on our drive home at all the trees we saw that were down and the two power poles close to the house that took out our electric.  A huge section of tree had been broken off and laid right across that.  As you looked up and down the road, it was obvious that a small tornado had come down the road and hit here and there.  Wires, fencing, trees uprooted, some unknown debris was scattered everywhere.  I had to zig and zag to get home and put the car in the garage.  I don't know why I felt safer once the doors were shut because I know that our homes, with their ventilated crawl spaces underneath are little better than a trailer with a tornado rolling around.

    I was really scared having Chewlee there with us but kept her by me.  The Beast had taken the dog out for a run while we had that short break and found trees on the opposite side of our circle here that had been broken in two about halfway up.  Most of those trees were 50-60 feet tall.   

    We heard the news about Tuscaloosa being totally destroyed and my heart just sank and felt so sorry for everyone there.  It was a nice college town, albeit an older one and there were families that had lived there for several generations.  Even early reports had many dead and injured.

    When the second storm hit, Chewlee was in my lap and wanted me to hold her tight.  She told me she didn't like the storm.  We could hear the sirens going and I held Chewlee while I looked out the windows to see what I could see, if anything.  Human nature, I guess.  Not really good thinking but I was ready to dart into our walk-in closet with her in a heart beat.  When the hail started coming down, THEN I got worried.  That's a sure indication of being somewhere close to a tornado and I headed towards the closet as the radio kept warning that a tornado was seen in our area.  I got so tired of hearing that sound by the end of the night, I can't even begin to tell you.

    The news got worse and worse and we were really starting to worry.  The Princess came to get Chewlee and I hugged Chewlee good and tight and kissed her with a prayer that she and the Princess would be all right.  We finally went to bed, grateful for the solar that the Beast had installed just the previous week in a precognitive moment?  The signal went off once more during the night but we were exhausted and just listened.  It was only two to three steps away to the closet and we figured we could make it.  I had put the Beast's meds and what I had of mine in my purse and it was on the floor right next to me.  We fell into an exhausted sleep when the sirens finally went off.