it started innocently enough. sunshiny day. plans to go hit the local carnival before the leave town... there was supposed to be a bit of a thundershower late in the day... but the radar was making it look like it would all swing north of the city and miss us. we got ourselves cleaned up and headed out a little after 7pm.
the first booth was one of those dart throwing booths... the guy gave me one free dart, and just kinda sucked me in. i ended up loosing 10 bucks to that booth, but on the bright side, i did get a nice-looking plush yellow rose with a pose-able wire in the stem. i wrapped it around my arm like a decoration, and we wandered over to the 'toss a ping pong ball into a mini-fishbowl to win a goldfish' booth. just as we got there, they started shutting the carnival down, because the weather was starting to look really bad. we said "bummer", and left to go to Wal-Mart, about a mile away.
by the time we got there, it was pouring so hard, you could barely see. the entrance driveway has no stop sign going in, but a cross street with stop signs both ways...just as we were going in, someone ran the stop sign on my side, and when i tried to stop, i hydroplaned into them. everyone was shaken up, but no one was hurt (thank God). it was still POURING, so hubby suggested heading over to one of the local stores, so we could at least talk out of the rain. i got back in the truck, soaked to the skin, sat down, turned the key, turned on the lights, and realized it was raining so hard, i couldn't see to drive. in the two seconds it took to reach that realization, the power to the entire shopping center went out. now i couldn't see anything at all besides the other car, 5 feet in front of me. then the wind kicked up harder, whipping the rain past the truck in sheets and bands instead of a solid wall. then, it started hailing. not hard at first, but as the hail got bigger and louder against the truck, the wind kept blowing harder and harder, until i could feel the whole truck shaking. lightning was flashing all around, and other flashes, like lightning, but lower, and the wrong color... orange-y or greenish, instead of the standard blue-white. i was terrified, and clung to my husband, shrieking into his shoulder... and he cradled me in his arms like he could keep me safe from anything.
it calmed down within just a few minutes, but it wasn't until about an hour later when the policeman finally got there that we found out that a tornado had passed by behind us, not more than about a thousand feet away... the flashes of light i'd seen were power lines going down as their poles either fell, or snapped in half.
this is a gallery of photos i took the next day of some of the damage i saw
in the map pic, the green dot is where i was, the red circles are places that i heard on the news that building walls had collapsed, and the red line is the stretch of road where i saw damage last night, and took photos today.
i went home, had some ice cream, and went to bed. that sucked.
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