My husband was talking to his parents on the cell. I yelled in to him to ask if we should take shelter. He just kept talking on the cell. I went into the bedroom turned on the local weather station and folded the clothes. I could see it looked pretty bad. They said there was a tornado on the ground about 10 minutes west of us and we should take shelter. Being the storm chaser want-a-be that I am, I chose to watch out the window instead. The electric went off, but we still had the battery operated radio. About 10 minutes pasted and about a mile or two away to the west, I could see a line of trees, I could see there was something above and behind them happening. It looked like a of darkness and light fighting above the tree line. I said to my husband is that the tornado? It is so calm he said, I told him "the calm before the storm", he gave a little laugh, like I made it up or something. Then he got off the cell phone. I have been out in two tornadoes before, but being in the tornado you don't see the tornado. It wasn't long and the darkness took over. I could see a large funnel shape coming toward us. It was so dark, as if all light no longer existed. But the funnel could still be seen, like BLACK on black. I started praying and kept on praying out loud continuously praying. The wind pick up, but just a little, here, by us. It was going off to the north and I watched it until it was out of sight. I don't know if a minute passed or less before we started hearing the voice on the radio shouting, "there is debris flying all over Edinburgh, and people calling in, reports of major damage through out the town.It rained a wail after that, friends and family called to check on us. We were fine, we heard the town not so. Slowly people emerged from their homes in our neighborhood and we gathered in our driveway. A co-worker of my husband came from a town south of us. He said he had driven around, there were reports of two tornadoes one just north of us, another just south. Some said they heard it, didn't you?, my husband and I looked at each other, we didn't hear it. We seen it. Later we decided that we probably couldn't hear it over my continues praying. We kept hearing we were lucky. But we know we were Blessed.
Wednesday, No one was hurt thank God. The electric was back up. We went for a drive to check out the damage to our town. Tornadoes are strange. A large old tree here, two feed from it one pulled up by the roots and laying on a truck, another large old tree on the other side of the truck still plated, like nothing happened.
One house like a movie set, front only,the rest of the house completely gone. The house behind that gone, another near by missing a roof. A line of destruction, I guess this is a little like a war zone. Then at the edge of town, a gas station, appeared to be untouched, if not for the face of one set of pumps missing. The night of the storm their was gas spraying out and had to be cleaned up by a hazardous waste team.
The Army base just west of us was hit real bad. We seen the twisted trucks and piles of wood that were buildings, houses.
Storms again last night, more wind here. Passed though quickly, peacefully.
Today June 5th we are so glad to have seen the sun again.
