glad to be okay

Tuesday night was pretty uneventful until about 7:45. After eating dinner and watching some TV, Sarah was checking her email one last time while I played a few songs on guitar. Unexpectedly, we heard our town's warning sirens begin a slow, "WWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNN."

The city tests the sirens every Wednesday at noon. My first thought was, "Hey, it's not Wednes... Hey! Wait a second!" I immediately checked the weather online and saw that there was a Tornado warning for our specific city. Not just our area. Not just a 'watch.' A warning for our city.

After seeing images of the devastation in Joplin, MO, we weren't about to take any chances. We immediately headed to the only windowless room in our house: the guest bathroom. I did some more checking online and saw that the nasty stuff--including baseball-sized hail--wasn't forecasted to hit for another 15-20 minutes.

We went back out to do more preparing. We got our cell phones. I put a mattress over the tub. We turned on the TV to check the radar. In retrospect, we should have done a little more (e.g., brought food, water, and flashlights into the bathroom). Then Sarah wondered aloud if we should bring one of the cars into the garage. I quickly made room for it (all my re-modeling stuff was still spread out in there), and the hail started just as we got it inside. I parked my car in the driveway. It was partially protected by an overhang and two trees. As I ran back into the house, I got pelted by a few pieces about the size of a dime. It hurt.

You hear forecasters say a lot about softball-sized hail or golf-ball sized hail. Usually it's all hype. Not so fast. 

I collected those pieces after the big ones stopped falling. Given that they had about 15 minutes to melt in the 80-90 degree heat, I'd say we probably did have softball-sized hail. And the back yard was covered with these (and others that were smaller).

We spent most of the rest of the night in and out of the bathroom with all the pets. Things could have been a lot worse. We're thankful we still have a house. I'm working on getting somebody out to look at our roof, but I think we sustained some damage that will reduce the life of our already middle-aged roof. We hope the insurance will cover it. My car also has about 20 dents on the roof and trunk lid (the size of nickels and dimes) and a broken tail light. I don't think we'll submit a claim for that, because it's probably pretty close to our deductible in damage. I've already ordered a new tail light online, but I'm pretty bummed about driving around a dented car for the next 10 years.