Today will go down in history as the first time since we've lived in Amarillo that we've had to hunker down in our broom closet because of a tornado threat. Of course it happened at night when all the kids were already asleep. And of course Jeff was at work. Honestly, it wasn't that big of a deal. I had been watching the progress of the storm on the news. I could tell that the real tornado threat was south of us. But when the hail began and the tornado sirens started going off, I cleared out the closet and got the kids up. We watched the rain for a while. But when Erik started shivering because he was spooked I suggested we go to the closet. That made him feel much better. So we hung out in there for 20 minutes, watching Phineas and Ferb on my laptop. A couple of things I learned for the next time we have a tornado warning:
1. It's really hot in there with six people.
2. We didn't have our shoes on because we were all in our pjs.
If a tornado had struck us, it would have been nice to have
shoes.
3. Next time, I'll take the box of tools off the top shelf. I
imagine tornadoes shake things up a bit.
4. There's not room for Jeff.
The weatherman suggested wearing bike helmets. I thought that was a good idea. We didn't actually need them for the storm. The kids put them on because they kept hitting their heads on the shelf above them.
At the peak of the storm, it sounded like the hail was in my kitchen. But then all of a sudden it was over. We emerged from the closet to see this:
(Blurry, but you get the idea.)
Our hail was half inch to an inch in size. At the hospital, it was more like ping pong ball size. When Bailey saw it, she said, "Snow!"
