A Twister Tale

Happy Good Friday! If you have an extra long weekend off from work, I hope you enjoy! We don't have any major plans except Easter dinner at Jason's parent's house and I am getting together with a few high school class mates for dinner sometime over the weekend! Oh yes, and there will be running...I'm super excited about that!

This long weekend is a nice, much needed break for us, especially after the experience we went through on Thursday. Even though I've been through my fair share of hurricanes, I've never experienced an isolated tornado event like I experienced on Thursday morning.

Around 4:45 a.m., I heard a LOUD commotion outside. Since I was in a sleep delirium, my first thought wasn't to go grab Brayden and jump in a bathtub...my first thought was "what the heck is going on out there?"

So, I looked out the window and saw wind and rain blowing in a million different directions and it was LOUD. After about 20 seconds, I heard a loud BOOM and thought it was our deck chairs being flipped over the deck. I moved to the back door so I could see a little better and noticed something that looked like a giant concrete planter with a foam roller sticking out of it. I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. Thankfully Jason was still home before leaving for work so I hollered at him to come check it out. I even opened the door and debated on going out but common sense got the better of me. After Jason came to the door, he said..."Umm..that would be our CHIMNEY!" 

OUR WHAT?!

Yes, our chimney. What. The. Heck. Just. Happened??

We went into the attic to make sure water wasn't pouring inside and once the rain slacked up, we went outside to survey the damage. Thankfully, the storm had left about 3 feet of chimney IN our roof and it was just raining into our fireplace (that was manageable)!

After the sun rose and the rain stopped, I went back outside to survey the damage and when I looked up, I realized that our little Rubbermaid shed was GONE!

The part that baffles my mind is the fact that it took the shed but left all of the contents, including the hammock pillow. Yes you read that right, the hammock pillow.

At this point, I changed out of my work clothing and into a rain jacket and boots and began the neighborhood trek to locate pieces of Jason's shed. It was then that I realized that we must have had a tornado pass through our back yard. What. The. Heck.

You could even follow the path it took which also baffles my mind. This tree was down across the main road near our neighborhood.

If you turned around, you could see that the tornado hit the neighbor's fence and their tree...

After passing there, it then hit my direct neighbor's fences (the below picture), took my chimney and shed, then crossed the street and went on from there.

It also damaged the roof of several of the houses behind mine and bent a trampoline in half. Shingles are EVERYWHERE.

Trees are down everywhere and electricity is out all over the place. We knew a storm was coming but had ZERO warning that it would get to this degree in our area. (I'm not saying this is on the meteorologist part, I'm saying it's amazing how fast and furious this thing hit.)

Parts of Jason's shed had been flung OVER our fence, through our neighbor's yard, and onto the main road behind us. See that trampoline? It flew over a house and was a the top of the tree line at 5:00 a.m. until it finally fell down. Pieces and parts of Jason's shed were all in the ditch near the trampoline.

Right before leaving for work, I noticed something else missing - our trashcan. Our trashcan sits at the FRONT of our house. The contents had been emptied and it was flung into our neighbor's backyard. How this storm picked some things up and left other things really baffles my mind. I'm just so grateful that all of the damage is fixable and nothing major happened to our structures.

...and you can just call me Jungle Jane...covered in mud and soaked to the bone! It took me a good hour to pick up the pieces of Jason's shed and I'm sure I didn't even get them all. Thank goodness for Dopey Finisher rain jackets, though!

What. A. Morning.

Once we returned home from work that evening and could further survey the damage without the rain, we noticed that the storm did this....

It literally twisted the metal of our chimney!

Yesterday evening, the National Weather Service FINALLY confirmed that a category EF-1 tornado passed through our neighborhood (and covered a path of about 1.85 miles) with wind speeds up to 110 mp!

Our damage could have been SO much worse and I'm so thankful it wasn't!

You know when you've had "one of those days" and just need to see a bright spot in it? Well, these were mine...

Brayden had an Easter party at Mother's Day Out and was so precious dressed in his little Easter outfit! He came home with so many goodies, too! Let's face it though, he's always the bright spot in my day! :)

Yesterday was also Opening Day for baseball and the Astros and Rangers started it all off! The Astros won, so of course that made me super happy!

Anyway, here's to hoping the weekend ends better than it started! I hope you all have a great weekend. Don't forget the real reason we celebrate Easter! :)

Have you ever experienced a tornado?