For about 30 seconds at roughly 4am this morning, with my heart pounding I thought McKinney might end up over the rainbow. It was roughly 4:15ish am when I woke up to howling wind and the noise of our tornado sirens going off. I knew there had been a tornado warning the night before for some of the counties west of us, so it made perfect sense for it to have headed our way. Growing up in Texas I knew the drill...get into an interior room of your house without any windows, if possible take shelter in a bathtub with a mattress over you, and cover your head. While I was debating in my head which would be the safest room in our house that all four of us would fit in (all of our rooms have an external wall), I decided to turn on the news to see what was going on. Fortunately, those of us in McKinney lucked out and just caught the outskirts of the storm. The tornado warning ended about a minute and 30 seconds after I'd turned the tv on. Needless to say, I could not go back to sleep after that. A tornado never touched down, but the wind got up to 85mph and caused all sorts of damage. Apparently Allen and Plano suffered a large portion of that damage. Kyle and I drove down to the Allen Outlet Mall and witnessed numerous freeway signs completely collapsed and a telephone pole that had snapped in half. Tornadoes always remind me to live in the moment. Tornadoes can cause extensive, fatal damage in a matter of seconds and then disappear a moment later. Following that intense minute and a half of hearing our tornado siren and waiting for the weatherman to tell me to go take cover, I was so grateful for the moment of relief that followed the termination of our tornado warning. I was grateful that the worst part of the storm had passed, I was grateful for my house that was still intact, I was grateful for my husband who I was trying to appear calm for because he tends to freak out about tornadoes, I was grateful for my two peacefully sleeping children, I was grateful that we didn't have any baseball sized hail pounding our car in the driveway, I was grateful our trampoline hadn't blown into our house, I was thankful that I am such a light sleeper and can hear a pin drop in my sleep (the sirens hadn't woken Kyle up), I was thankful for the weatherman. It was a very thankful moment at about 4:17 this morning.
It's funny this experience occurred only 4 days following Elder Ballard's talk in General Conference about young mothers and how we need to remember to live in the moment. I think I certainly needed to be reminded of this!
10 comments:
This is exactly why I do not and will never live in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, etc. I don't blame you for freaking out Kyle! I'm glad everything turned out ok for you guys.
We were all huddled in our interior bathroom this morning, but no one dared to get into our dirty tub. Jeff was the one who saw that the storm had just passed over us and sent us all back to bed. YEAH right. Isn't it so weird, our telephone rang at the same time the alarms were going off? It only rang once though. I had to wake jeff up 2 times! Right after I heard the sirens, I started to shake him and yell "JEFF! JEFF! The sirens are going off!!" He said "yeah??" and rolled over to doze off. I had to keep trying though. What is up with this spring?! 2 tornado sirens in 2 weeks.
I'm glad it wasn't serious!
We had some crazy crazy lightning and thunder for a good hour or so but no damage in our little neighborhood area. however, our power went out for about 2 1/2 hours so I was up all that time and it was miserable! blah!
We had 65 mph out here in west Texas but missed the scary stuff you all got. Gotta love Texas!
What a crazy morning! Why does it have to be at 4 in the morning? I'm so glad the storm weakened when it hit McKinney. What a great talk by Elder Ballard.
Scary stuff! I'm glad you guys didn't get the worst of it and you're all okay!
I am so glad you are ok. How scary!!
We did the exact same thing. I heard the sirens and I went out and turned the news on and was very relieved. Hayden slept through all of it. i am glad I didn't wake him up.
I didn't get to hear his talk during conference. You're the 2nd person that has mentioned it. Can't wait to read it.
Okay...how come everyone EXCEPT me hears the sirens? We had a bad storm Monday night. It was seriously LOUD! Isabella slept with us all night and we woke up at 1:30, 3:30 and 4:30. At 1:30 things were so loud that I wondered to myself - I wonder if I'd even hear sirens over the storm. But did I go and turn on the TV? No. The next day while teaching preschool one of the kids mentioned that he and his family had gotten in their tornado shelter (those are really big here in OK for obvious reasons)in the middle of the night. He doesn't live far from me so I asked his mom about it when she came to get him. Sure enough, they had and apparently the weather men on TV were frantic telling everyone in my town to take cover immediately. I am still bothered by the fact that we didn't hear anything or react in anyway. I asked my mom if she had heard them, and she did. I said, "WHY DIDN'T YOU CALL US?" She figured we had heard them. I told her NEXT time she should call and be sure and I will do the same.
Gotta love spring weather.
you are lucky you even get to hear the alarms-i heard about the sirens at 10am this morning-only 6 hours later!! i called the fire department to complain and he said our house is just outside the zone of hearing-we're supposed to get closer ones when they put them up at the new middle school-thankfully we'll be gone by then, but until then you'll just have to call us during the next tornado ok????
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