Tornado 4/16/11

Here in NC we have been threatened with many many tornado watches and warnings, but here not in almost 6 years have we ever had one that touched down so close... this morning we were told there'd be stormy weather and that's nothing new to us. I had to do a short drive north and on my way Carl called and told me the first tornado had touched down about 15 miles from us in a town called Raeford and that it was headed down 401... which runs about 2 miles from our home. It veered off course and we were outside watching the storm when the clouds shifted and started heading towards us. It was a pretty unreal site and we have it all on video. There was some of the loudest thunder I've ever heard and flashes of lightening that literally were like the photos you see in calendars, it was beautiful! (and a bit scary) We filmed the funnel forming at what seemed right above us, that's when Carl and our neighbor decided it was time to stop filming and get inside. We came inside got in our laundry room (which is in the center of our home) and huddled together... the kids didn't understand why we had to be in this room with no lights, but it was okay. When the loudness stopped we came out and everything was fine... the sky was brightening up and the clouds were pretty much gone. Of course then it hit us that Alan was at the mall at work and we didn't know how he was... we couldn't get through to him because our cell phones were down... but later got word that the mall was without power and everyone was being held there for security reasons. He was safe. It was scary that we couldn't communicate with our close friends here to check on them, but we are grateful that besides being out of power and some debris (one with some damage to her truck). There are still streetlights and lamps out, the base was hit hard and we have a lot of friends still without power and without water, there was a gas leak on base... so there are definitely areas with many problems, but we are safe. We let the kids play in the puddles outside and checked out our house... that's when our neighbor brought photos of our neighbors to us so we went for a drive. Come to find out, by the time the tornado touched down it was about 1 block behind our neighborhood and we got skipped over. We feel very blessed and fortunate to not have any damage and to all be safe.

Sky beforehand

 After the tornado hit and we were out of power

 2 blocks away

 About 100 yards away

 Snapped!

 Debris

 They got hit hard, no front of the house, tree through roof, tree on car, car alarm was going off... pretty scary

 I don't know why this photo flipped funky... but thats the top of a tree through the front of their house, about a block away

 one street over...

 Again blogger is being dumb and flipping all my photos... Randi helped with the SMALL amount of debris on our front lawn

 And if you tilt your head sideways you'll see a few limbs down in our back lawn... we were definitely blessed!

It is amazing the force of mother nature and it's crazy to see how quickly something can tear through an area and cause so much destruction. But through this all I can think of is Japan and the other places being hit by stronger, deathlier, and scarier situations and it makes me grateful we had something so minuscule. Life is definitely not something to take for granted...