Tornadoes Too Close to Home

Last night was a rough night. Threats of tornadoes loomed everywhere. My husband was nearly finished working for the day, but he'd not make it home before the storms hit, so I suggested he stay where he was until everything had passed.

It was a fast moving storm.

I watched the TV reports as the storm hit Fort Worth. Reports of damage were already pouring in even before the storm landed in Dallas, less than an hour away. Since we live east of Dallas, we just watched and waited to see how the storm progressed - and wondered if we were directly in the storm's path.

We were. Directly.

Earlier, in preparation for the storm, I cleared out the downstairs closet making enough room for both girls, and if need be, myself, too. We store comforters and blankets in the closet anyway, so I knew that aspect would be helpful if we had to stay there for any length of time. I also unplugged our little power station and brought it in from the garage. It holds power for quite awhile, has a radio, flash light and I'm not sure what all else. It went in the closet, too.

Around 7:15pm, both girls were also ushered into the closet as the storm began to reach our city, dropping hail a little smaller than a ping pong ball. It was rather strange that the hail was dropping before the rain even started. I'd never seen that before. The TV station noted that any tornadoes could be rain-wrapped, so I decided to quit looking out the front door and stick close to the closet. I kept the TV on and watched as the storm tracked its way right over us.

We were lucky that no tornadoes hit our city. Several did drop down from this storm, but two were west of us and two were east of us. We also did not see the baseball size hail that fell in Ft. Worth. I saw pictures of some of the larger hail stones on TV later in the evening and couldn't believe how huge they were.

When the storm passed us, I called my husband on his cell phone to tell him that we were ok. He had stopped at a McDonalds in Caddo Mills and waited until the storm went through there before heading home. I was so glad to see him when he arrived home safe and sound. The girls were, too.

We'd prayed before the storm came through and we prayed again when the storm left us in its wake. We were ok.

Some other people weren't so lucky.

We prayed for them and their families, too.