at about 7 pm last night, i got a text message from my friend los who lives in riverside, california. it says, “so, are you hunkered down in some hole?” i had no idea what he was talking about, but knowing there was a chance of thunderstorms approaching, i flipped on the television and all our local channels were lit up in reds and yellows (the colors of impending weather doom) as sirens began to blare all around the dallas/fort worth area.
fortunately, nothing too severe came through the small, middle-of-nowhere town where chris and i currently reside (top white house on the map), but as we watched the news, tornado after tornado kept touching down along the interstate 30 corridor…and lake pointe church is right on i-30 (bottom white house on the map).
after assuring los, and his friend brian that we were okay (you know your friends are cool when they sit around watching the weather channel on a friday night and worry about you) we began to get a little nervous as we saw the rotation markers appear literally right over the spot on the map where lake pointe’s rockwall campus nests. soon, they confirm a funnel cloud is spinning right over heath, which is maybe 60 seconds south of the church. fortunately, nothing too crazy went down in rockwall county, despite what the maps and weather guys said.
i’ve always been a big fan of tornadoes and maybe one day i’ll get to chase them down. someone asked how many tornadoes i have seen in my life and i researched some records online today. i’ve experienced first-hand 28 tornado touchdowns since my birth. the most vivid ones are:
1) my first (when i was five)
2) one which hit our house and church when i was twelve (we made the front page of the san angelo standard-times the day after!)
3) the march 2000 tornado that ripped a three-mile path through downtown fort worth (cool video footage of it hitting downtown) and tore up the arlington neighborhood i lived in during my junior year of high school (my parents had moved, so they were safe)
4) the kansas city tornado outbreak of 2003 (only a few miles north of my former church)
5) the last one in kansas which i blogged about that happened only a few weeks before we moved to texas.
what about you? ever been in a twister?
Related posts:
scariness!
glad to hear you all ‘hunkered’ well!
I know there were plenty growing up in OK, I remember some hitting during school…and having to get up in the middle of the night to o in the hall and my parents put our mattresses over the doorways.
And the only time I ever remeber climbing in the tub for protection from a tornado was the May 1999 F5 tornado. That was the scariest. It hit just a mile from our house.
Tornados have always fascinated me, unfortunately have never seen one. Only up to last year i thought we didnt get them in Australia but they are acutally common in Western Australia. Not much around there though :-D
Saw my first when I was six, it terrified me and I have hated storms ever since. My hubbie loves them so I am trying to overcome this fear and look forward to them. Not so much yet.
i’ll never forget my first tornado. we were on a camping trip with my grandma. i was about eight years old. she was cooking macaroni and cheese for my sister and me in her camper when it began to shake back and forth.
my dad banged on the door and told us that we needed to go to the restroom up the hill for shelter (since that was the only solid structure on the campground). when we went outside, i saw my dad in his whitey-tighties running after our tent which the tornado picked up from its stakes and was at this point flying east at 30 mph.
that’s really the main part i remember. oh, and also, we sat in the girls bathroom. which was my first and last time ever to sit in a girls bathroom.
i love how everytime you “freelance” your blog gets a complete makeover with 20 new plugins.
No, and very glad I haven’t. BUT Andrew and Katrina were enough to give me a real appreciation for the power of the storm.
Despite living in Kansas for a while, I haven’t experienced a tornado first hand. Have also not become a person who runs TOWARD the tornadoes when there are warnings, which apparently is how they know I’m not from here.
I WAS, however, in a house that got struck by lightning.
First couple weeks in Austin, I noticed a green looking sky…my wife saw it touch down.
…I sure miss Texas!
jealous.
and i remember a time when you were freaking out to the point in which you were going to hang out in the basement with me and my parents. haha.
i don’t mean to dominate your blog, but Carole helped bring to mind another memory relating to large, spinning meteorological masses.
all the kids in my neighborhood usually played baseball in our street at the close of each summer day. when they wanted to mock me, they’d call me hurricane Andrew. i never really understood how likening me to a powerful storm was supposed to intimidate me, though.
When I was 4 we lived in Oklahoma and it ripped right through our house, garage and boat. Yay….we were all safe and my parents got a butt load of money to re-build. I thought it was cool to hang out in the closet with a mattress over our heads.
Glad you are OK.
Having lived a few years in Wichita I’ve done the whole hunker down in hole thing. The worst I remember was during high school and we were down in the basement and it sounded like house was falling down around us. All the noise was because of the crazy hail that came with the storm. My grandparent’s house was trashed and our cars all had ginormous hail dents in them. My mom was holed up in the inner bathroom of her house Friday night with the dog b/c of the same storm as you.
Thankfully the twisters stay out of Chi-town. Not enough room to maneuver I guess.
The new header is fantastic.
That was some crazy night! We had to take shelter too.
I like that peeling paint picture up top!
I was at the Freshman center, about to watch our young friend Lucas play the lead in “Robin Hood”.
They emptied out the auditorium & had us all go into the hallway, where we waited for 30 minutes or so.
Of course, *ehem* SOME people would leave the hallway occasionally to look outside… being one of THOSE people, I can say with some authority that we didn’t even get hail at the school.
So, overall it made for a lot of drama, but was kinda a let-down.
Since I live in Florida most of the tornadoes here are associated with hurricanes and unless you physically see the tornado you don’t know if it might just have been strong hurricane gusts that did the damage. In 1995 during hurricane Opal we believe a tornado pulled the back porch off of our house, among other things. During hurricane Ivan I saw several tornadoes not more than a couple hundred yards away, it was really strange to me that they seemed to stay right along the highway. I’ve also seen waterspouts right behind my house.
glad you were okay, and no, I live in California, so we don’t see too much air turbulence out here, just ground shaking!
In Grenada, Mississippi, we ended up at the Fire Dept. a couple of times to hang out in the hallways. We camped out in the pantry under the stairs another couple of times.
My favorite, however, was the time they were coming up and down the street the night before with the sirens and loud speakers and we found out (the next day, of course) our entire family had slept through it.
There was a really, really bad one in Water Valley, MS when I was in high school. Took out their 1st Baptist Church and a few people.
Glad you and your church are OK……how are you?
I was just north of Denton during all that. Kinda’ scary, but it missed us pretty much!
I know I’m late getting in on this one, but I was trying to catch up with you. I had the pleasure of experiencing Twister 2000. I was in the Cash American building that took a direct hit (they talked about it in that video) at the time…pretty crazy stuff. Something I know I’ll never forget!
That twister that hit Haltom City was just a few miles from my parents house…my parents were watching Preston at the time (I was in Plano!)…I get a really sick feeling in my stomach when I start hearing tornado warnings in the area…I guess ’cause I’ve been through one and it stuck with me.
I lived in Water Valley, MS in 1984 when the “Easter Tornado” hit in April. We lived on Main St, and my father had a business on the same street, but a mile south. My grandfather called my mom and told her there were warnings, and she called Dad to come home (we had a basement). My father decided to use the bypass around town, instead of coming straight up Main St. When he was on the bypass he saw 2 tornados drop from the sky and merge, and head directly towards town. He turned around and went back through Main Street. By the time he made it to the middle of town, he could see the tornado in his rear view mirror, wiping out everything in it’s path. I remember standing on the porch, watching the sky turn green and seeing my Dad pull into the driveway, he said his car was shaking. Afterwards, we walked downtown and there were people asking “Have you seen my family? They were at home, and there’s nothing left but a concrete slab.” Very scary, many people lost their lives, and the downtown area has never looked the same. I heard many stories from friends about where they were when it hit.
There were huge columns in front of the First Baptist Church, and I think several were found later in Alabama.