HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY

Happy Friday 13th kids. It was exactly 10 yrs ago to the day that my entire family and I were huddled in a closet as a tornado ripped through our little town, absolutely leveling our neighbors house. I can't actually remember if I have ever shared this story with you all or not.

It was 10 years ago, and I was home for summer from college with my parents and our dogs of course we had just gone out to eat in town and we're heading home. For some reason we had driven separately and I was riding with my father, and my mom stayed in town to run errands. When we got home I was working outside and our neighbor yelled over to me that we were under a tornado warning, and obviously I went inside and told my father who said "It won't hit we get put under those all the time" Ya right idiot. I think he, and I realized it was serious when the police started going up and down the streets with a bullhorn telling people to take cover due to a tornado warning. It started to get a little more scary then especially since my mother wasn't home yet. Luckily she got home in plenty of time to sit and worry with us all. We had the radio and tv's on we had all our stuff ready to take to our shelter, we made sure we had shoes on and we waited. You hear all the time it's the calm before the storm they aint lying, it seemed dead calm and then the sky started turning a nasty looking green, and then the hail started to come. That's when my mom and I started to get the dogs and head to the closet(we have no basement) My retarded father decided to stay on our back porch and watch for it, and when he finally saw it he started screaming get in the closet, and we're thinking duh dumbass we've been in here for 20 mins. In a matter of seconds it was over and it was time to see the damage. It's pretty cool one of our neighbors got a good video of it coming and made a copy for all the people on this block, and it was good for insurance purposes.

Going outside on our block after it hit was so surreal, and seeing the destruction. It's so random in which houses got it and which were spared. We had roof damage, our basketball goal was knocked over on my mom and I's cars damaging the back of hers, and damaging the roof on my covertible. My dad's car parked on the street had a tree limb shot through the back window shattering it into pieces, of course trees were down everywhere, and power lines it was crazy. One of our neighbors boat had been blown all the way down the block, and another had a hammer stuck in the side of their house. Then we looked across the street and 2 houses over the only room left standing of our neighbors house was the closet they were in, talk about lucky. The scary part was about 20 mins after it came through we got put under another tornado warning, and luckily it never hit. Needless to say ever since that day I have taken these warnings and watches extremely serious.

I laugh when I watch TV shows that do a tornado theme, and you see them going back to normal the next day and they have power and their houses get fixed so quickly. It took nearly 2.5 weeks to get our power back! I was taking a summer school course at the local college and basically lived at their computer lab typing up all my papers with no power. It took nearly as long to just get people out to help us all get started fixing our lives, and getting our houses back to normal. It was a unique experience to go through, one I don't want to go through again. It was also featured on the weather channel's STORM STORIES which is pretty cool. So this being the 10th anniversary I thought i'd share it with you, and guess what we're under a thunderstorm watch! Kind of fitting.

Have a great weekend
Phats