We're Alive!

Texas weather has thrown us for a loop! We knew we'd be facing some severe storms, but we never could have imagined what this spring has blown our way. Tuesday's storms were the scariest by far, though! There were a series of four or five storms — each with hail, tornadoes, rain — that pelted us over a five-hour period.

My oldest brother George (he was in town for a few days; more on that in a later post) and I went downtown to Sundance Square to look around when we heard the tornado sirens. It was my first time hearing them outside of the weekly test period. It was freaky, especially since in 2000 a tornado wiped out a part of town about three miles from where we were. But the freakiest part was that nobody else seemed phased; they kept going about their business.

I called Tim, and he said the storms were 45 miles from downtown. George and I cut our trip short anyway and headed back to the car. On the way home, Tim called to tell us the storm was now 10 miles from downtown. The five-minute drive back to our house seemed to take forever; to my left I could see some spooky clouds forming. We also saw a news chopper pass overhead; we later saw the tape of a tornado he shot. By the time we got inside, the sirens were sounding again. There was wind and rain followed by a lull. The pattern repeated for a few hours while we were watching the news. I got really spooked when the weather guy speficially mentioned our street. When the hail came, we decided to wake up Nigel so he could see it since it melted before we could get outside after another storm the previous afternoon. Up until this point, Nigel was sound asleep. (If you click on the video below you'll be able to hear just how loud the hail was.) Many areas of D/FW got softball-sized hail, but as you can tell from the picture to the right, ours was smaller. The sirens went off again, and we made the decision to get into the hall. I was so proud of how brave Nigel was. I guess all of our drills paid off! Turns out that final siren was sounded by mistake, so we just put Nigel back to bed.

We're very grateful for the way things ended, and we hope it'll be a long time until we have to hide in the hallway again.