Tornado Damage

We are so very thankful that our house was protected through the tornadoes that came through two weeks ago.  The kids and I were actually at the farm freaking out over the weather that was headed through there when my brother called me (from the big city in the middle of the state) to see if our house was okay and if Daddy T's parents were okay because he had read that it had been damaged.  I was actually live-streaming the news over the mountains and then watching the farm news weather.  I hadn't heard exactly where the tornado touched down in the valley until I finally heard it hit our road.  Needless to say, I had a lot of people calling and texting me to make sure we were okay.  It was so very thoughtful of them and I appreciated it. 

I got in touch with my father-in-law and he told me about the damage that it had done on the road where we are planning to buy a house.  He did tell me that his neighborhood was okay but it hit the subdivision next to theirs.  My niece called to check on us and volunteered to run over to our house to check on it for us and to move our trashcan before the next round of storms.  (So very nice of her!)  She called with a good report saying that it didn't touch our neighborhood.  Less than a mile away wasn't so lucky.  Trees were uprooted, houses destroyed, marina gone, and boats sunk.  When we drove home the next day, my heart sunk to see the end of our road and how it did not resemble anything like it used to.  Then my next revelation was that if the tornado had stayed straight and not turned when it did, it would have come up and down our ridges and taken out our house from behind.  (Not going to lie...that kinda really freaked me out!)  The road where the worst of the devastation happened is still closed and not free for traffic.  I think we are going with the youth at some point to help in the cleanup.  Many trees need to come off of houses and away from buildings.  It apparently went clear through our little town and straight into the county on the mountains.  All in all, I think it destroyed about 80 homes.  Thankfully, no one died despite the number of people who were home and took shelter with the EF-3 tornado hit.  I saw somewhere that it had about 165 mph winds with it.  Here's a few pictures of devastation.

We've been told you could hear the horrible sound from our neighborhood so I'm very thankful I wasn't home or I really would have been a lot more nervous, especially with my kids!



This is pretty much what the entrance to our road looks like:















This would be the subdivision next to where we want to move: