Almost a Tornado

Yesterday I was praying for rain because I had used up all the water in the rain barrels, and we almost had a tornado! I had been checking the weather online in hopes of rain when I saw that a tornado was coming our way. I told the girls to put some lawn chairs down in the storm shelter.  Then I reversed myself and said, never mind, because it looked like the tornado was going to pass by to the North. 

There was thunder, dark, dark clouds, threatening drops of rain, and it was very windy, and right about that time the neighbor's dog and three puppies escaped from their yard and began running around the intersection. Our neighbors weren't home so Claire and I tried to get them back in their yard. Garry arrived home to find a puppy round up in progress. There Claire and I were running all over the neighborhood after puppies, when it was obviously about to pour down raining, and nobody was keeping an eye on the tornado.  Garry now looked online. The tornado was  headed straight for us again and we had a severe hail warning of 100% to boot!

The sirens kept sounding. People were going out into the street to look around.  We kept trying in get the friendly but uncooperative puppies back in our neighbors yard. With Garry's help we finally  caught them all and simply dropped them over the short chain-link fence (the gate was pad locked.) Now we all began running around to get the chairs that I had nixed earlier, get flash lights, and water (Claire even got cheerios.) During all this Anna had been trying to get dinner cooked and had totally ignored the sirens. She was surprised when we burst into the house and told her to forget dinner and get in the storm shelter. 

Of course, as usual we waited until it was really raining before we made the dash to the storm shelter, so we all got soaked. We squeamishly tiptoed down the cobwebby stairs and huddled in the center flashing our lights around. Even the innocent lawn chairs that had been out in the clean air a moment ago were avoided until we all were convinced that nothing disgusting lurked in our shelter. 

Was there anything lurking down here? Were there bugs or snakes or monsters? Were creepy black alien arms going to poke their way through the wood screened window, a la "Signs"?  (I decide not to mention that particular thought to the dear children.)  

Do you get the idea that I need to go down here more often and outfit this place properly?

We were pleasantly surprise to see by flashlight a clean, dry, bug, snake, rat, and monster free safe place to be! I mean it was white washed clean down there and almost empty, except for the chairs and the people now sitting in the chairs. We had water, cheerios, a cell phone, flash lights and chairs, now we had to wait for the possible tornado or hail. 

We prayed for no tornado, no hail (remember my garden), but we did want lots of rain please. We prayed for the neighbor's puppies, our house, or cats in the house, and for all our neighbors to be safe. That accomplished, I began thinking how ironic it would be if our house blew down before the insurance inspector could get here to inspect the roof for damage from the last hail storm in May. Hey, what a rip-off it would be to exchange a new roof, for no roof!

We also discovered that a concrete underground storm shelter is a great place to sing! We sang all the hymns and scripture songs we could remember until Garry pronounced it safe to go back to the house. The girls didn't want to leave, but I was starving.

What an anticlimax to have had no tornado! The tornado had gone off to the North after all, and dissipated without touching down anywhere. We sat in the storm shelter for two inches of rain and no hail - it was good choir practice though.