Sunday, May 3, 2009

Tornado


The day after we arrived in our new home here in Hutto my mom and dad went to the store and returned with a housewarming gift. It was a little radio that plugs into the wall that also requires batteries. My dad went on the set up this radio and said it was a severe weather radio that will go off when there is severe weather in the area. I thought OK, everyone out here doesn't seem the think that the weather is a problem so I thought what the heck.
Well, early Monday morning the alarm off at about 3:30 AM and proceeded to alert me that there was severe thunderstorms in the area. Cool!! I love thunderstorms!! 3:45 there is a large and close lightning bolt.. power goes out. seconds later the alarm goes off again. This time it alerts me to a tornado warning in the county. I am a little nervous but I have to get back to sleep as I work in the morning. 3:55 am the alarm goes off again...the county is now under a tornado watch. This is more serious. I get up and get out the lamp. I start to pace the house just looking around when the alarm goes off again.... a tornado has formed 8 miles east, southeast of Georgetown, Texas. I pause...wait a second.. WE are 8 mile east, southeast of Georgetown. Now I panic and start looking out the windows. There is so much lightning that it was like daytime. The alarm continues to go off giving instruction as to what to do. I remember it saying that if you are driving in your car to stop and get out and look for the nearest ditch. If you are in a mobile home to evacuate. and if you are in your home to find the closet and cover yourself with a mattress. I really didn't feel like doing that so I just watched out of the window. after about 10 minutes the alarms stopped and the weather started to calm down. It took me awhile to settle down and get a few minutes of sleep before work. The next morning I was shocked to here how close the tornado came to us. Now let's be clear, this was a smaller end tornado that did little damage. At the time I am thinking a tornado out of the movie Twister. I guess tornado's rarely make it this far south and when they do they are of the smaller variety. I was able to get a couple of pictures off of the local new website:

A trailer that was overturned


Some downed trees




A map of where our house is in relation the the tornado. The little blue circle is where our house is, the red one where the tornado touched down.

Let's hope this was the once in 10 years tornado that they say it was. By the way the next town over received 12 inches of rain in one day. We received a modest 6 inches.

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