The Storms Keep Coming

Last night Rory and I had our first experience with a tornado warning. The news channels had starting warning people early in the day that we had a tornado watch until 10 pm. So all day we were waiting for the storm to hit. Rory got home from work and we watched the news for a while. Rory had Young Men's that night and they were playing kickball. I was worried about him going but they said it hadn't been cancelled. Things still looked nice outside so he went and promised to keep his cell phone close so I could text him if he needed to get home quick. He had a fun time and came home and still no storms. I watched American Idol for two hours and just watched the little storm ticker that went along the bottom of the screen the whole time. Tornado warnings had started just north west of us. As soon as American Idol was over at 10 the weather came on and we just kept watching.

Rory and watched as viewers sent in pictures and video of the storms they were seeing. We saw a house leveled by a tornado and ping pong sized hail. Although we heard some people reported baseball sized hail. We were worried about our car since we don't have a garage. Mobile homes were flipped and power was going out everywhere. And this is the storm we saw coming towards us.

You can see Louisville in the middle of the screen. We live just above that right next to I-65. At this point the storm was pretty close! A lot of people were under tornado warnings which is different than normal. They said with this storm a tornado could pop up pretty much anywhere along that line. Normally they can usually pinpoint a little closer where one could potentially start. But this storm was just nuts! This picture below is a 3d view of the wall of nastyness coming towards us!

Isn't that crazy? At this point we were ready to ride out a tornado if it hit. Luckily we live on the bottom level of the apartment building. We are half in the ground and half above. So that's about the best you can do if you don't have a complete basement or storm cellar. Our bathroom is in the middle of the building with no windows so we were prepared to ride out the storm in the bathtub. We had the essentials, our wallets, phones, public alert radio, and that sort of thing in the bathroom. We had pillows to put over our heads if things started flying around. Once we had everything ready we just sat on the couch watching this line of weather coming our way and waiting to take shelter.

It was supposed to hit by 10 but the storm had slowed down, so it was after 11 and we were still waiting. Even though we wanted to go to bed, the longer it took the storm to get to us the better because the storm gets weaker as it goes into the night without the heat of the day to fuel it. So around 11:30 we finally got rain. But at this point we no longer had a tornado warning. We had dropped to a tornado watch. I was definitely relieved we weren't going to have to sit in the tub worrying something might happen. Finally about midnight we went to bed to a nice thunderstorm outside. So after an hour and a half of sitting there nervously waiting for the storm to hit it was nice to go to bed and stop worrying.

It's still kind of stormy outside right now, but we're safe and sound and we never lost power!