Sunday, April 27

We woke this morning to a dark and gloomy day that threatened storms later. Skipped my exercises after breakfast. Hubbie accompanied Mother to our house mid-morning.

Other than washing a couple of loads of clothes, programming the DVR for this week's shows, reading the Sunday newspaper, and making chicken noodle soup for lunch (Mother helped with this), I didn't accomplish much.

One thing we did was search for Mother's eyeglasses. She missed them this morning and couldn't find them in her purse or anywhere in her house. We couldn't find them here or in the van either. I finally decided that she might have lost them at the theater yesterday.

Tried to call the theater, but got an automatic message listing all the movies and the show times, but no live person. So I sent an email through their website. A few hours later, I got a call from the theater manager. He had found the eyeglasses, thank goodness. He agreed to keep them at the theater until we could go down there and get them.

After lunch, we watched TV. The threat of severe weather made us anxious and not in a mood to do anything but keep checking weather reports.

Later in the afternoon, it began thundering and getting darker. Around 5 p.m., Mother insisted on going to her house, even though I felt she should stay here until the weather cleared. Hubbie accompanied her.

Around 7 p.m., TV meteorologists began reporting a tornado touchdown. The massive quarter-mile wide funnel traveled about 80 miles, destroying everything in its path, and killing fifteen people. For a long while, I didn't know if my family was safe. I knew the path of the storm included a town where several of my family live.

After what seemed like forever, I finally learned that all my family was safe, but my granddaughter's nearly completed new house was destroyed. She and her family were inconsolable, of course.

Later, we learned that among the fifteen victims of the storm were two little boys, one of whom was a classmate of my great-granddaughter (her family's home was the new one destroyed).

The tornado cut a path almost exactly through the same place as the one that hit three years ago. The path included the residential area where my son and family live. Since the last storm, he had a storm shelter built. They were there during the tornado.

Just before the tornado hit, one of my granddaughter's went to Son's shelter. Son at first thought the banging on the door was debris hitting the shelter, but then determined it was a person knocking. Granddaughter and her four children joined Son and family, so that there ended up being fourteen in the shelter...a tight squeeze, but adequate to survive the tornado.

Fortunately, the brunt of the storm hit a couple of blocks from Son's house, so his house still stands. But Granddaughter's new house was in its path. That granddaughter and her family were safely sheltered at the school's safe room. This safe room was built after the last tornado. It is intended to protect not only school children, but anyone in the community who needs it.

The town where family live, though, is nearly completely destroyed. It has been reported that 95% of the businesses in the town are gone. One heartbreaking loss of the town was a new school building.

Another small town near this town was also decimated, and there were deaths there, too. Daughter-in-Law works at the school in that town, though that school and the one where family live are closed for now.

I spent all evening monitoring my social network page for news of the storms and family. Around 9 p.m., I went to Mother's house to administer her eye drops. At that time, a meteorologist reported that our area was under a tornado warning. So we insisted that Mother come back to our house, so we could shelter in the pantry, which is the room that is in the very center of our house, and is protected by a staircase.

Mother and I stayed in the pantry until the warning passed, but Hubbie refused to get in there. He just watched the weather and said that if the wind came up, he'd get in the pantry.

Hubbie accompanied Mother home, again, and then we headed to bed. We were so keyed up, though, that we couldn't sleep. It began thundering again, so I turned on the TV. We got a deluge of rain, but no other severe weather. A tornado warning was in effect for east of us, though, in communities where Hubbie's relatives live. So we watched the reports until we were sure the storms had passed that area.

By now it was after 2 a.m. I'm not sure what time we finally fell asleep.