Night Of Storms, a.k.a., I Have Never Been So Scared

Tonight was almost a typical night for the McFaddens. Cary had school, and I was going to hang around the apartment. But tonight was cool, because 10 days earlier, I had been given a starter kit for Amish Friendship Bread and I got to bake tonight!

I had decided against making one loaf and sending out more starters, but instead bake all of it and deliver them to my family and friends. Maybe this is why we had the interesting night...

The weather forecast was monitoring terrible storms for the evening, and I was nervous about being home alone until Cary got out of school, so I was very pleasantly surprised when he called and said he was going to skip school and come home.

When we went to bed that night, I had the storms in the back of my mind, thinking that they were going to skip over us. And again at 3:00 a.m., when I woke up briefly, I thought very little of the storms.

5 minutes later, I was scared for our lives sitting in the bathroom. The wind had kicked up very high very quickly, so Cary had jumped out of bed and turned on the tv, only to see the meteorologist saying "If you are in this area, I advise you to seek shelter immediately!"...and the area he was referring to happened to be immediately on top of us.

The wind was very aggressive, and I just knew at that moment that we were going through a tornado. So we dashed to the bathroom, sat on the floor, and then realized that my phone was in our bedroom. What if someone tried to call me? So Cary got up and went to retrieve it.

And as I sat on the floor, observing our surroundings, I realized that there was a lot of glass/mirrors around us. So Cary jumped up to get our comforter to cover us.

Then my mind jumped to the upstairs tenants. Whenever storms come up, then they should seek shelter in the lowest part of the building. So Cary, the best guy ever, went to unlock the front door. Just in case they ran downstairs and tried doors trying to seek shelter.

They never tried our door that we know of, and the storm subsided a few minutes later. Cary checked the news again to find that the storms were now moving towards Lewisville, Plano, and Allen areas. I said a prayer for those in that area (our families and friends especially). Around 4 a.m., my adrenaline had subsided and I was able to relax enough to go home.

We woke up the next morning with memories and stories to talk about with our co-workers, and I was interested to see if there was any damage around me between the apartment and work. Boy was I in for more than expected!

As I pulled into the parking lot, our security guard was directing all cars to go to the other building around the corner, so I followed everyone, found a parking spot, and made my way to the break room. We were then told to go home and call back around 11:00 to see what we will do regarding working today because of the storms. Apparently the electricity had been knocked out of our building, and they weren't sure if it would be back on for the day.

So to kill the time I had until calling in, I drove around and took pictures of the damage. Here is what I found:





And these are just a few that I found in the mile drive back to my apartment! I didn't even think about going out further than that area, which now, I wish I did, just to see how the weather had affected our entire area, not just the close vicinity.

At 11:00 when I called my job's weather line, I learned that we still did not have electricity, so we were closed for the rest of the day. Whoo hoo!