And I Was Worried About Tornadoes

Yesterday we experienced a big storm. The National Weather Service called it an "Inland Hurricane". I thought we exchanged hurricanes for tornadoes when we moved here from Connecticut, but apparently not.

I do not want to be a weather wimp. So, when I saw a break in the weather I got in the car with the kids, plus a couple of neighbor kids, to drive to school. We must have hit the sweet spot because, although it was nutty and branches kept hitting the top of the car, I can tell now from all the uprooted trees that the weather was comparatively weak during our drive. It was so foolish of me to go, and I am stunned and thankful about how the drive worked out.

We saw a bus unloading at the town waste collection site, so I figured the schools really weren't gearing up for a normal day. I had no idea how bad this storm was.

So I took my whole carload to the high school, where buses happened to be unloading all kids. We were ushered into the wrestling room where was dimly lit by generators, crowded, loud, and warm. My four charges sat down, and I comforted a crying kindergartner and then a sweet, stressed autistic boy who could not be left alone. I wound up moving to the library when I was told special needs kids were being put there, and that was much more pleasant. Eventually I found someone to watch Zachary, and brought Alex and Missy to the library with us.

By this time the district was sending elementary children to their proper schools, even though there was still only generator power, so that they could be more organized about who was where. Alex and Missy stayed with me, and we hung out mostly with the special needs kids and tried to help.

Eventually we wound up in the cafeteria, which has sky lights, as the generators lost most of their power. At about 10:30 the principal dismissed the high school staff because there were only about a dozen high school students, at most, who had not gotten a ride home yet. So we left.

We came home to a pretty good situation. One falling limb had damaged our gutter, we had a very large tree down in the back yard (that's Kurt's project today), and things were kind of messy, but that was about it. I called insurance, and we started to clean up. We had no electricity and heard rumors it would be out for a week. We shipped our freezer contents to friends in Neosho and verified that our water heater does work without electricity.

Last night our power came back on at about 9:30.

Here are some pictures....

Tree down in the backyard.

Really down.

The kids were great about moving debris in the clean-up.

They were even greater about playing in it.