It's after 1am...we've been in mom and dad's basement since almost 10pm. We had been watching all the storms go through Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas all evening. We were prepared to leave if we had to and watched this line tear through houses and property on the weather channel live feed. By the time the line of storms reached the Kansas line, the chance of tornadoes had diminished. I had pretty much came to terms with it being over and had calmed down. Just before 9:30, the sirens sounded. The storm had changed and there was rotation in the clouds. I yelled at the kids and told them it was time to go. After seeing what Sunday's tornado did in Joplin, we weren't taking any chances. I know that because of the tornado 8 years ago, our house was now in a clearing with no cover and if a tornado was coming through again, it would be gone. It's hard to walk away from our pets...I told them all bye and that I loved them...and cried as I locked the door while they were lined up watching us go. I tried to get the computer cam up and going in a hurry before we left, but couldn't get it on. At least that would have given us some idea what was going on out here.
We got to moms and went to the basement. There were 13 of us in all that congregated there. I kept in contact with Troy by text message when I could get through. He was at work...a sickening feeling to be separated and scared. We all had our phones, ipods and computers keeping track of the storm. I have a storm spotter as a friend on facebook, so we also had his input too. When they spotted rotation outside Carl Junction while sitting at 43 and 96, my heart sunk. I knew if a tornado dropped from that location, our house would be gone again. We waited until the storm passed...nothing reported as touched down...I could breath again. We noticed no wind damage on the way home. They were calling for 75 mph winds with the storm. We made it though another warning, but I couldn't help but think about all the families a few miles away recovering from 2 nights ago and then having to endure another possiblity of being hit again.
I'm trying my best to think about what all I need to do to prepare us for more storms. I think a storm shelter is a must at some point this year. We will all have our cell phones on us and charged if we know storms are headed our way. Our dogs will get new collars and ID tags. We've left our house many times running from storms everytime all the kids have grabbed something that they can't live without. This time was much different. No one grabbed anything. My camera was already in the truck with the hard drive holding most of our photos. I'll be spending some time soon scanning in the rest of our pictures. Way too much on my mind right now...off to bed hopefully...nearing 1:30am.
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