It sounded like a train....

When a tornado rips through, it sounds just like a train going right above your head! Luckily when it went over Matthew's grandma's house it wasn't actually on the ground! About 150 feet before her house the tornado went back up and then a few blocks from the house it touched down again near Kansas State University. Thanks to Missy, I have this little map to show you the path of the tornado. The brownish-red dot is Matthew's Grandma's house and the black dot is where Amherst Storage was. It was pretty much leveled, except about 2 small storage rows near the back and that's where Matthew's parents have a storage unit and it was okay.

So about 10:30 pm we heard the tornado siren sound. I wasn't sure if it was too serious because Matthew didn't really seem to mind too much, he just wanted to stay in bed because he had to get up early the next day. But his Grandma told us that we needed to go down stairs in the basement. So we got Kanani out of bed and took her downstairs as Matthew reluctantly followed. Aleah was already downstairs with Auntie Missy. This is just to illustrate the differences between the male and female species, all of us females, Me, Missy, Grandma, and Great-Grandma and, of course, Aleah and Kanani are all in the basement bathroom. While Matthew is sleeping in the hallway in front of the bathroom and his dad didn't even get out of bed. (At least he was in bed in the basement!) Anyway, we're in the basement, listening to the radio for news and updates, Grandma has the flashlight, which luckily we only needed for a short moment, and the siren is going on and off. I wasn't too worried because Matthew and his dad didn't seem to care too much, so I'm thinking, well hey it's probably nothing, but I'll do the drill. However, while were down there, there are things here and there that keep you wide eyed, like the guys on the radio who keep extended the tornado warning and telling us the areas it hit and how those areas are getting closer and closer to us, and the radio is cutting in and out, the loss of power, and all the thunder and lightening. I think about 20 minutes or so pass by when all of a sudden it seemed kind of quiet and calm, according to Matthew's dad, the wind died down for a moment, yes he was looking out the window like a crazy curious person. A few moments pass and then it starts to get loud, and then louder and then louder and then it sounds just like a TRAIN PASSING RIGHT OVER OUR HEADS!! Holy cow, what was that. I tell you it was less than a minute while it passed, but phew, it was INTENSE! We could see the emotion in each others eyes. We didn't know how scared we should've been. After that it pretty much died down. Then everyone started inspecting the house for breaks or leaks. Aleah took her little flashlight and followed Great-Grandma around the house to help with the inspection. Then we took a few glances outside and saw some of the mess.

Here's a little footage if your interested, Video 1, Video 2 and some photos

It was a little while before we were calm enough to go to bed, but we did fall asleep, just to wake up bright and early the next day to do a little cleaning up.

Well, here are a couple photos of our tornado survival, and many more to come if we move to good ol' Kansas.

The neighbor's tree

This is the neighbor's too, I just wanted to show you that it's uprooted.

Matthew's dad surveying the damage.

This is kind of hard to see, but there's a 2x4 sticking out or the neighbors roof.

Debris on the street.

Debris on the roof.

Debris in the trees.

Cleaning off Grandma's roof.

It's spiderwoman............. okay just kidding, it's me on the roof pretending to shoot a web, but I know you had to do a double take to make sure.

That's that.

We know that we were very blessed and we thanked the Lord for that, many times!