Rough night

So at a few minutes after 3:30, I woke up. The winds outside were the loudest I have ever heard and the lightening was more or less constant. I listened hard and alhtough it sounded very, very bad, I didn't hear a freight train or a jet plane landing in my back yard (thet's how my friend Tracey descibed it when her street was hit by a tornado in Lady Lake, Florida last year). I was sure there were tornados in the vicinity, though, so I reached for my glasses and the remote and sat up and attempted to turn on the TV.

It made the little blipping sound it makes when turning on or off, but then there was no picture. So I kept pressing the buttons over and over until I realized the night light in the bathroom was off...we must have lost electricity just as I turned on the TV. The winds were still whipping, and the lightening was still really bad. I got up to get my robe because I figured if I was maybe going to lose my roof, I needed to be wearing more than a nightie.

So I climbed back into bed and sat there debating digging up batteries for a radio I have that doesn't have batteries in it (yeah, yeah, I know...be prepared...yada yada yada), and the electricity came back on. So I turned on the TV and C finally woke up.

"What are you doing?"
"Trying to find out if there is a tornado headed our way."
"Wha? What are you doing?" (he was very asleep)
"Can you not HEAR that?" I said, "all hell is breaking loose."

It doesn't help that our master bedroom sticks out into the back yard, so we have exterior walls on three sides. By this time, though, the wind had died down enough that is was still blowing very hard, but I didn't feel like we were under a funnel cloud.

NBC had a dopplar radar up on the screen and I could see that a thin line of storms from north to south was passing right over us, moving west to east. The heaviest stuff had just passed over our house and the whole storm was moving 65 miles an hour due east. Winds were "in excess of 80 mph" and they didn't know for sure whether there were tornados, but the winds and the radar made them think there may be at least one heading from us across Carrollton, Addison, North Dallas, etc.

I got up to look for hail and I didn't see any, but opened one of the back doors to check. The rain was unbelievable and I know that it had been worse five minutes before. I didn't see hail. C told me to come back as I was supposed to be "taking cover" and I told him the worst was past us via the radar and we didn't need to worry about a tornado any longer.

But my parents live due east and a bit to the north. About an hour and a half away. These storms were stretching from the Red River down past Waco, so I waited while the storms moved east very quickly. It looked like Allen got seriously slammed and my brother lives in McKinney, but the radar made it look like they got a weak part of the storm and not the tornado-level winds we had. There is a lot of damage at the McKinney municipal airport, though.

So then I decided to wait it out and see how G-ville was going to fare. One thing that had been conspicuously absent was tornado sirens and I still don't understand how we can be under a tornado warning and not have the sirens, but almost nobody in the metroplex got sirens and the cities are saying it is because there were no confirmed funnel clouds. Well, doofuses, it was DARK outside. How were we supposed to spot funnels? A warning is serious...it means that one has been spotted or may be there.

So I figured since Mom and Dad were likely asleep that minute (it was 3:45ish), I'd see what was going on and call them if it developed more.

Well, the storm got over to the east side of Dallas and the potential hook seemed to die down and instead of lots of dark red on the radar (aka bad stuff), there was mostly yellow and orange...and it slowed down. It took another hour for it to reach G-ville and I sat there the whole time watching the TV. I did mute the volume most of the time so C could go back to sleep, but I couldn't sleep not knowing what was going to happen to G-ville.

A red spot developed right as it hit G-ville, but the tornado warnings were gone after it hit east Dallas and I knew Mom and Dad were safe, so at 5 am I finally turned it off and eventually got back to sleep.

Our neighborhood looks a little beat up...lots of bits and pieces of leaves and trees, but no big limbs or damage. There are broken trees in other parts of town, especially those pretty but crappy Bradford pear trees. My friend in Carrolton lost two trees and one took out part of her fence. One friend in North Dallas' neighbor lost a tree on her fence, and it looks like there have been some confirmed tornadoes around the metroplex today as they assess damage.

Springtime in North Texas....