The "mini" tornado

April 11th at 2AM we were awakened by a loud thunder clap and an immediate power outage followed by winds that shook the house.  I remembered people saying that a tornado sounds like a train or big truck coming and that's what I heard so we rushed upstairs to grab the kids.  I'm not really savvy at tornados.  We have a little space under the stairs with our 72 hour kits where I plan to go if/when we ever have a tornado, but frankly it is small, stuffy and not that fun, so I don't really want to cram us all in and sit for hours on end.

So we laid our sleeping bags out in the living room around our little battery powered lantern and waited to see if we would hear the tornado sirens.  We didn't have power and so we really weren't sure what was going on.  It was definitely windy and it was raining hard, so we waited.  After awhile we all tried to go back to sleep until we had power and or heard the sirens. Since that day I've seen the terrible destruction of tornadoes through the mid-west and I'm questioning my philosophy.  I don't think the tornado sirens are all that reliable and frankly with the wind and rain we may not hear them.  By the time we realize we are having a real tornado it may be too late to get in the closet.  I guess I need to look at making the closet more fun and less stuffy so we can wait it out safely.

Then next morning the kids were astounded to see that our neighborhood looked a bit like a war zone (well a light artillery war zone- maybe).  Many of the fences were knocked down and some trees were uprooted.  The yards and road were covered in shingles and everyone's roofs looked pretty beat up.  Lawn chairs and outside "stuff" were blown all over- as well as some swing sets and trampolines.

The kids wanted to "explore" the town and see how others fared.  It was pretty amazing.  Most of the damage came from trees, but all of the stores near us had damage to their signs and all of the freeway signs had been knocked down.  Later when we visited our favorite park it was sad to see some of the GIANT trees that had been uprooted.  We began to appreciate even more our safety and the relatively little damage that was done to our home. 

Since then I've become a bit storm obsessed.  Anytime the skies look questionable I'm on weather. com checking out the local forecast.  Although I love having the master bedroom downstairs and all the kids upstairs for functional reasons, I'm worried about being so far from them when it comes to fires or other natural disasters. 

Well all of the official reports say that we didn't "really" have a tornado, just a good storm with "straight line winds" around 80 mph.  That was good enough for me.  I think I'll pass on anything more severe.